STUDENTS? COMMUNITY CENTER

The activity of the students? community center ?Grigore Preoteasa? was a pretty intense one back in the ?80s, maybe even richer than now. The most popular were the students? shows, ?organized by students, for students?. We used this formula. Music was the main chapter. There were many bands, but they were it was tough to promote them, because of the texts, because the censorship worked. Maybe it worked a less in the students? community center and in clubs, but when one had to perform before a large audience, there were certain issues with the texts. One had to be granted a thousand visas. Mihalea?s group - ?Song? ? was among the most fashionable bands, and we used to give concerts with them. One had to obtain a thousand visas from the Culture and Art Committee of Bucuresti, from the Association of Students? Community Centers, which we depended upon. We would put together a whole notebook, in order to get the right stamps and signatures. The texts were read, and on one of the pages, there was traditional folk song with two stanzas with just la-la-la- la-la? Of course we got two stamps on that page, because there was no problem. The group ?Song? did not sing any ?party? song, any eulogistic song addressed to chambers 1 and 2. We persuaded comrade Clatici, the propaganda secretary from the University Party Center, who kept telling us that it was impossible that, in a concert, we should not sing any song dedicated to the party. We convinced her that this was a smaller revue promenade choir, and that it would have been awkward, a real sacrilege to sing about the party in such a choir. .

The texts of the artistic brigades were disastrous! There was a real massacre, but during the performance they stuck to the initial text. If there was a scandal, it was appeased. For instance, the presenter appears announcing: ?A gag is coming up next?. Everybody expected a joke of some sort, and there was this one man, who came with small steps with a gag in his mouth. Something else that aroused a scandal: the show was kept on a stage that had in the background a portrait of Ceausescu. The organizers put the mike, with the round part in the mouth of the portrait. Serious things were underlined in the show, things that seemed to be told by the character in the portrait.

The artistic brigades of the Academy of Economic Studies and the Polytechnic Institute were the ?worst?, the most incisive of them. Calin Husar, the present owner of the famous ?Enache?s Dairy / Laptaria lui Enache?] and Fiti Ariesanu were part of the AES artistic brigade. In general, they emphasized the students? problems that could be criticized: they criticized the canteen, the hostel, but these problems touched upon the bad economic situation. For instance, they said that everything was due to the panel (the electric light was interrupted because of the electric panel), but in that period Ceausescu?s portraits were everywhere.