The carnival organization is currently determining if they should impose a Studentlund membership requirement for the carnivalists. One of the reasons is retaining the rent subsidies in AF-borgen.
Next year’s carnival will be the first one without the union and nation obligation. This means that all students at Lund University automatically do not be part of a nation, which previously was a reason for the most of them being a part of Akademiska Föreningen.
This has become one of the issues that that could possibly force the carnival to rewrite their regulations. The reason is that the carnival receives rent subsidies from Akademiska föreningen, AF, in order to be able to rent premises at a lower rate for their non-profit working carnivalists in AF-borgen. During the last carnival, the rent subsidies amounted to 448,000 SEK.
According to the AF operational director, Emelie Hult, subsidies might be withdrawn if no changes are made.
“But nothing is certain, and so it’s up to the AF board to make a decision on the matter in the coming fall. But the idea of the rent subsidies is that they are funded by the AF memberships, and in case everybody wasn’t a member it would be more difficult to justify subsidies, says Emelie Hult.
In order to prompt the modification of the regulations prior to next year’s carnival, the decision has to be run through several meetings at the carnival leading organization karnevalskollegiet. Therefore, an additional meeting with the karnevalskollegiet was instated in the early part of June.
“The unions raised the issue at an early stage, and if it passes the meeting in the beginning of summer, we could bring it up for a second run-through and have the matter settled prior to the next carnival,” says karnevalskollegiets chairwoman Tora Törnqvist.
Translation: Maximilian Aleman Tennell
