Is the municipality desperate regarding student housing as they now will rebuild a health care premises into 67 dormitories? Read more about it in Lundagard’s weekly summary of Swedish news.
67 dormitories on Väster
It is possible that health care premises in the district of Väster, can be rebuilt to student housings. The plan is to have 67 dormitories and next week the Municipality Building Board will decide whether or not to give a time-limited permit. The premises have been empty for a while and the owner of the property would like to rebuild them to student housing. The officials at the municipality are positive to the suggestion but as the plan says health care premises and offices in the area there has to be a five-year time limit on the permit.
New archbishop in the Swedish Church
For the first time ever the Swedish Church has elected a woman, Antje Jackelén, to be the next archbishop. At present she is the bishop in the Lund episcopate but will as archbishop work in Uppsala episcopate. In the election she had competition from four other theologians, and she won with comfortably by 55.9 percent. The present archbishop Anders Wejryd will retire next summer and from then on Antje Jackelén will be the new head of the Swedish Church.
Antje Jackélen is not the first female archbishop in the world. In Norway the church is led by Helga Haugland Byfuglien and several other churches are headed by women.
Huge traffic jam in Lund
When commuters arrived at Botulfsplatsen in Lund last Tuesday the faced a huge traffic jam when a three-week road work started in central Lund. Busses went the wrong way, streets were closed and delays met the commuters, and the bus drivers went frantic when they were hit by endless questions. The confused morning travelers were many hundred when the big road work created a new bus map. Not the least the lack of synchronization between incoming and outgoing busses irritated many commuters who change busses at Botulfsplatsen to continue their journey to jobs and schools in other parts of the city.
Bronze statue worth 1 million SEK stolen
A statue in bronze, Stranger (’främling’), has been stolen from the faculty of Physics. The statue is more than 2 meters high and weighs around 300 kg. The statue is considered invaluable. The production cost is estimated to 1 million SEK, but the thieves will only get 10000-15000 SEK from a scrap dealer. It is very hard to put a price on an artwork like this as you have to consider both the value from a cultural-historical standpoint and the value on the art market.
As far as is known not that many thefts have occurred at the University, even though the university owns an incredible amount of artwork.
Swedish universities may be privatized
The new foundation form is tailor made to favor big, international and research intense universities and colleges. Voices from three big universities express their views on the proposition from the government.
Per Gudmundson, Vice-Chancellor at the Royal Institute of Technology, says ”that they will be positive as it opens up to possibilities for more self determination”.
Anders Hamsten, Vice-Chancellor at Karolinska Institutet, says this question is very important to us as KI is very research oriented”.
Eva Åkesson, Vice-Chancellor at Uppsala University, says ”You have to give it som thought whether university foundations are the best way or not”.
