In recent years, medical students have made a number of demands related to linguistic rights. The last graduate study was carried out by students who had the possibility of obtaining the honorary degree. Leire Ugarte explained that they had no problems in presenting the works of all the students to the court for the first time, "those who presented in Basque had a court in Basque and those in Spanish had their own". After the presentation of the studies, among all the medical students of Donostia, who studied both in Basque and Spanish, six were selected as candidates for the honorary degree. All the students were going to have the same court: "In the case of Donostia-San Sebastián, three Spanish and three Basque professors were selected, and for the court three Basque professors were also selected and three Spanish professors were selected, two of whom did not understand Euskera".

The fact that not all the members of the Tribunal understood the presentation in Basque was considered a disadvantage by the students, although they were told that the decision would be made by those who understood it in Basque. Ugarte explained that in the first message they were explained that they were candidates for honorary tuition, among other data there was a language related paragraph, but after the conversations between them they decided not to do anything. Later, on May 27, they received another message, in this case only those who presented the work in Basque, "all that message was about the language and we felt the pressure to present it in Spanish". The second message they received in Spanish was disseminated through the social network. As it can be read in it, although they were told that they could make the presentation in Basque, it was pointed out that not all the members of the court knew Basque, at least they would be grateful for the "effort to present the slides in Spanish or in English".

They decided to denounce the situation after a second message.

Oñatiarra explained that in the case of Leioa the situation was even more serious, as only one in five members of the jury understood Basque. "We knew they were more likely to be part of the tribunal, as our teachers told us that they could participate in it." In addition, "a student at Leioa told us two years ago at Leioa School that another girl also complained, but it didn't go any further." In this situation, we "decided to make public the email we had received, so that people could value what happened and value what happened. With the image there, we wanted to see if the UPV/EHU responded, as the message showed quite clearly what they asked for." They decided to publish it on Facebook, and their impact surprised them. "A lot of people shared it, and then they wrote us from Berria as well."

 

 

 

 

Request for forgiveness for deanship

Once the claim was made public, they all received a message from the Decanato asking for forgiveness: "However, the initial message they sent us was written by a vice-dean in Spanish and forgiveness was requested by another person, who also says something," he added. After two days, Ugarte explained that they had received another message: "The dean wrote to us the day before the presentation saying that the court had changed and that it would be bilingual," he added.

"It was worth it."

Last May 31, every noon, the final degree papers were presented to the bilingual court, and Leire Ugarte also got the honor plate. In addition to obtaining registration, the oñatiarra has underlined what was achieved with the complaint: "Making this whole issue public will mean that fortunately in the coming years it will not be repeated again, and we hope others will also do so to denounce this situation when the conditions in Euskera are not met," he added.

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