“We Will Not Give Up the Linna Building!” : Student Activism Against the University’s Neoliberal Policy

Abstract

This article is an ethnography of a student protest against a Finnish university’s plans to give up 25 percent of its campus buildings until 2030. The Finnish universities faced financial deficits primarily due to education cuts implemented by Finland’s right-wing government between 2015 and 2019. To balance the budget, Tampere University proposed surrendering some of its buildings, including the Linna, the home of social sciences, and the main library. The students organized the We Will Not Give Up the Linna Building movement (WWGU) to oppose the university’s decision. This article is an ethnography of the movement’s resistance and outcomes and analyzes what the student activists learned and how they changed during the protest wave in 2021. Our analysis uncovered six key insights the student activists learned on democracy, social media in activism, activism’s temporality and persistence, the role of emotions in activism, and the university’s power structures. The study contributes to a general understanding of the student protest movement, the social transformations that student activists undergo, and how they learn to perceive democracy, develop political imagination, and understand power structures.