The third and final public hearing held by Unicamp to discuss the ethnic-racial quota policy had the theme "Quotas and affirmative actions: PAAIS, its scope and limits". The hearing was held on Tuesday (12) in the auditorium of the Faculty of Medical Sciences (FCM). There was the participation of speakers, teachers, students, members of the Unicamp Rectory and the Working Group (GT) that organized the debates and discussed the topic at the University. Social movements participated in the plenary. [Watch Video video produced by RTV Unicamp]
Guests at the debate table to talk about the topic were the executive coordinator of the Permanent Commission for Entrance Exams at Unicamp (Comvest) Edmundo Capelas, the professor at the Institute of Geosciences (IG) Renato Pedrosa, former coordinator of Comvest, the professor and researcher João Feres, from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), and professor Amélia Artes, from the Carlos Chagas Foundation.
Capelas and Pedrosa recovered the history of the implementation of affirmative action policies at Unicamp with an overview of the 12 years of the Affirmative Action and Social Inclusion Program (Paais) since its creation, until the last reformulation in 2016. The relevance of the program for the expansion of social and ethnic-racial inclusion at Unicamp and the differences between the vacancy reservation policy and the bonus policy were discussed.
“Affirmative action makes sense in public universities, but we should not be under the illusion that they will solve the problem of social and racial inequality in Brazil. It is a drop in the ocean of a catastrophic educational situation. The fight we have to do is for a significant improvement in basic education”, stated Renato Pedrosa, the first to speak at the public hearing.
Edmundo Capelas made projections comparing the system adopted by Unicamp to the quota policy and stated that there is a qualitative difference, mainly. “In the event that quotas are implemented, students will be admitted to courses with low demand, whereas with Paais, students will be admitted to courses with high demand. Paais guarantees more qualified inclusion than quotas,” he stated.
João Feres was the third to speak. The UERJ researcher presented results from a study carried out on Paais Unicamp, entitled “Affirmative Action at Unicamp: bonuses or quotas? ”. For Feres, greater inclusion would be guaranteed by a model that added the quota policy to the Unified Selection System (Sisu). “With Sisu you guarantee that competent students actually compete for university places, with the advantage of being open to the whole of Brazil”.
The last guest at the table, Amélia Artes, presented the experience of the Carlos Chagas Foundation in partnership with the company Ford to finance affirmative action programs in postgraduate studies. “What the Foundation did, for 15 years, was to help young people from the popular classes, black, brown and indigenous people, to access postgraduate studies in Brazil. I want to talk about the importance of providing differentiated programs to guarantee more equitable access to higher education in the country”, she highlighted.
Hearings
A first hearing of the cycle that discusses the policy of ethnic-racial quotas was held at Unicamp in October with the theme: “Quotas and affirmative actions: historical perspective and the role of the Public University in Brazil”. second hearing, held in November, was about “Quotas and affirmative actions: national and international experiences”. Under the leadership of rector José Tadeu Jorge, the hearings aimed to support the discussion to be forwarded to the University Council (Consu) on the ethnic-racial quota policy, as a procedure for admission to the University's undergraduate courses.
The report with all the testimonies, presentations and demonstrations will be prepared by the GT that organized the hearings, coordinated by the dean of Postgraduate Studies at Unicamp, Rachel Meneguello. She stated that the report should be sent to Consu in February of next year.
The GT was also composed of other teachers, students and employees, appointed by Ordinance GR-50 (6/9/2016) and also had the collaboration of professor Julio Cesar Hadler Neto, coordinator of the Strategic Thinking Forum (Penses), present at the table of the third hearing. The group was formed from the mobilization at the University to address this issue. The Public hearing procedures are recorded in a notice.
Rector Tadeu Jorge noted that the debates were fundamental “especially for the University Council, which is responsible for determining the guidelines for how the Unicamp entrance exam should be”.
