Yesterday at the Kursaal Congress Centre the ceremony with the lectio magistralis by Zagrebelsky
The inauguration ceremony of the 2024-25 Academic Year of the University of the Republic of San Marino opened with a sheet bearing a series of messages of peace: supported by sixteen students, about twelve meters wide and seven meters long, it crossed the hall of the Kursaal Congress Center passing over the heads of the public in a gesture that revealed the attention and sensitivity of the university community with respect to the international situation, summarized by the Rector Corrado Petrocelli: "Being indifferent, looking the other way, we must not and do not want to do that", he stated. "Today there are 53 conflicts underway, the highest number since the end of the Second World War". And again, after speaking about Gaza: "Last year we asked for a ceasefire and this time we are starting like this".
During the event, held yesterday afternoon, the Rector referred to a university considered as an “antidote and which by nature is not only against wars, but also walls, barriers, discrimination, marginalization, exclusion”. A place, he reiterated, “of meeting, comparison and sharing”.
Petrocelli also provided a summary of the main initiatives implemented by the University in the last year, including, on the Design front, “the project for the San Marino pavilion at the Osaka Expo” and a “master in Sustainable Cities with the Norman Foster Institute”.
The University Training Center on Security “has produced 160 events, more than 9 thousand students involved, 300 figures between trainers and speakers, 92 courses of which 52 international”. As for the PhD in Historical Sciences, “between the end of 2023 and October 2024 the podcasts of the lessons, edited by the Usmaradio broadcaster, have recorded over 56 thousand downloads”. The activity of Civil Engineering on environmental sustainability was also highlighted.
Petrocelli then informed the audience about a “survey conducted with freshmen, coming from all over Italy”, which showed that among their “values, politics and religion are at the bottom, while social commitment floats in the middle”. At the top are “family and friendship”. The new students see themselves as “innovators” but feel considered “slackers, big babies, unreliable”. The University of San Marino, explained the Rector, “is not here to make a profit or sell” something, but to “offer them a space for open, free and independent discussion”, so that “they can fully become citizens of tomorrow”.
Among the projects in the pipeline, in the Management Engineering area, the idea of an “observatory on the figure of the elderly that brings together public and private entities, becoming a point of reference” was mentioned. In the Department of Human Sciences, they are thinking of “a training initiative on communication and journalism proposed by Giovanni Valentini and Carmen Lasorella”.
The activities done and to be done are accompanied by “full entry” into the Erasmus Plus program: “Soon – Petrocelli announced – we will have the first incoming and outgoing student exchanges”. Returning to the general dimension, the Rector did not hide some “weaknesses”, some of which “do not depend on us” and must be “transferred” to the government: “We need resources for research – he underlined – and the availability of a student residence”.
His words were collected by the Secretary of State for Education and Culture, Teodoro Lonfernini, who reassured: “A fundamental objective that I intend to pursue is the creation of this essential infrastructure, to offer students a welcoming and functional environment, improving their educational experience and encouraging the growth of our academic community”.
On stage, after the presentation of a project from the Design degree course, the main guest of the ceremony, Gustavo Zagrebelsky, then took the stage. During the lectio magistralis entitled “In Praise of the Small”, offered to an audience that included, among others, the Captains Regent Francesca Civerchia and Dalibor Riccardi, the jurist analyzed the history of San Marino, defining the Titan “an entity that has always defended freedom as its own identity, not a passive beneficiary of balances, agreements and concessions between other powers. In short, not the result of other people’s interests. Of course – he said – financial flows have been channeled into this land, about which in our times we want to see clearly. And the fortress is a destination for tourist flows. But we cannot reduce a reality that is large in meaning and small in size to these petty visions. If we consider the lines of development of European and world history, San Marino presents something miraculous”.