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28 February 2019 | Story Leonie Bolleurs
Student Affairs Dialogue
Long-term goals of the Dialogues Programme are to have students trained as strategic facilitators who can facilitate dialogue. Pictured here with students is Shawn Stützner.

A word can start a war, it is said; but it could also build peace. The Student Affairs Dialogue Programme at the University of the Free State aims to create a framework for peacebuilding dialogue between students – both on and off campus. This project relates to Social Inclusion, Social Cohesion, and Critical Diversity as part of the larger UFS Integrated Transformation Plan (ITP). “We deeply care about and commit ourselves to create a campus climate that is socially just,” explains Shawn Stützner from the UFS Dialogue Programme.

Movement on a mission

The long-term goals of the Dialogues Programme are to have students trained as strategic facilitators who can facilitate dialogue. The vigorous training that these facilitators go through, also gives them incredible graduate skills, Stützner explains. For example, critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, communication skills, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, peacebuilding and conflict analysis. Such skills will not only benefit the students and their workplace, but also the community in which they serve.

Training to take the lead

“Currently, we are in the middle of our training process of about 25 strategic facilitators, and the participation has remained consistent. Our students are eager to be part of meaningful and engaging projects. This pilot project is aligned with the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice, exposing students to practical opportunities as part of their training,” says Stützner.

 

Through this dialogue initiative, the team hopes to eradicate all forms of unearned power and privilege, internalised oppression, internalised domination, and discrimination.

Get involved

“We encourage students to look out for the advertising of the Campus-Wide Dialogues, and for all to participate,” Stützner urges. “We will be having a build-up to the Campus-Wide Dialogues Day, with interaction in demarcated areas on campus culminating toward the Campus-Wide Dialogue in the Centenary Hall. With this first dialogue session, we also hope to close the gap between the co-curricular activities of residence students and off-campus students.”

News Archive

SA must appoint competent judges
2009-05-08

 
At the inaugural lecture are, from the left: Prof. Teuns Verschoor, Acting Rector of the UFS, Judge Farlam and Prof. Johan Henning, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the UFS.

Supreme Court of Appeal Judge Ian Farlam has called on the South African government to appoint and continue to appoint competent, fair and experienced judicial officers to sit in the country’s courts.

He also emphasised the need to have an efficient and highly respected appellate division, which rightly enjoys the confidence of all.

Judge Farlam was speaking at the University of the Free State (UFS) where he delivered his inaugural lecture as Extraordinary Professor in Roman Law, Legal History and Comparative Law in the Faculty of Law.

He said there were important lessons that emanated from the study of legal history in the Free State, particularly including the lesson that there were courageous jurists who spoke up for what they believed to be right, and a legislature who listened and did the right thing when required.

“This is part of our South African heritage which is largely forgotten – even by those whose predecessors were directly responsible for it. It is something which they and the rest of us can remember with pride,” Judge Farlam said.

Addressing the topic, Cox and Constitutionalism: Aspects of Free State Legal History, Judge Farlam used the murder trial of Charles Cox, who was accused of killing his wife and both daughters, to illustrate several key points of legal history.

Cox was eventually found guilty and executed, however, the trial caused a deep rift between the Afrikaans and English speaking communities in the Free State.

Judge Farlam also emphasised that the Free State Constitution embodied the principle of constitutionalism, with the result that the Free State was a state where the Constitution and not the legislature was sovereign. He said it was unfortunate that this valuable principle was eliminated in the Free State after the Boer War and said that it took 94 years before it was reinstated.

Judge Farlam added, “Who knows what suffering and tragedy might not have been avoided if, instead of the Westminster system, which was patently unsuited to South African conditions, we had gone into Union in 1910 with what one can describe as the better Trekker tradition, the tradition of constitutionalism that the wise burghers of the Free State chose in 1854 to take over into their Constitution from what we would call today the constitutional best practice of their time?”

Media Release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Assistant Director: Media Liaison 
Tel: 051 401 2584 
Cell: 083 645 2454 
E-mail: loaderl.stg@ufs.ac.za
8 May 2009
             

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