The National University of Ostroh Academy students met with The Day’s editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna at the university’s premises on January 24. She is, among other things, a member of the university’s supervisory board. Our regular readers know that Ivshyna’s meetings with students of the first university in Eastern Europe have become over more than 10 years something more than just a good tradition or an exchange of views. It is some sort of a “general staff” meeting, tasked to develop a high-quality alternative.
The Day is looking for an intellectual alternative and Ukrainian “islands of intellect” everywhere, but especially where they can and should exist par excellence, that is, at the universities. It should be said that these efforts are being converted into useful work. As they say in Ostroh, The Day has contributed to genesis of almost all of the university’s initiatives. In particular, it was The Day that had supported and implemented the idea of celebrating the Ostrozky Princely Family Year and the 1,160th anniversary of Ukrainian statehood.
The meeting was unprecedentedly long, lasting for four academic hours with Ivshyna answering 28 questions. The issues discussed were open to endless debate, as students touched on the problems of historical memory, journalistic excellence, civic position in journalism, and modern media situation in general.
Answering second-year student of creative fiction Oleksandr Podvyshenny’s question about the need to provide financial support for the gifted youths, Ivshyna noted that Ukrainian society was divided in its understanding of the support as such and emphasized the importance of the youths themselves wanting to get help in learning how to think. “This is not an individual problem but a national one,” The Day’s editor-in-chief stressed, “because in a certain period of its independent existence, Ukraine should have been asking the civilized world to advise it on how to learn rather than asking it to give some money.”
