PSU students chose a girlfriend with a mobile phone and a book for the bronze schoolboy from Polotsk

February 21, Vitebsk / Diana Kurilo - BELTA /. A mobile phone and a book are symbols of a 21st-century student. This is the opinion at Polotsk State University (PSU), where the competition for the creation of a sculpture of a modern student has concluded, the university's educational department informed a BELTA correspondent. A bronze girl with a mobile phone and a textbook will "sit" on a bench in the foyer of the university's main building in Novopolotsk at the beginning of the next academic year. During the public discussion of the six competition entries, the majority of votes (185 out of 230) were cast for this particular work because it embodies the spirit of modern student life – the desire to learn new things and always stay connected. Laptops, tablets, and other tangible attributes of IT technologies seemed banal to Polotsk students. The members of the city's art and architecture council and the professional jury, which included members of the Belarusian Union of Artists, agreed with them. Polotsk University is perhaps the only educational institution in Belarus whose faculties are located in two cities – Polotsk and Novopolotsk. Therefore, they did not limit themselves to one sculpture and decided to create a diptych dedicated to student life. The first sculpture (a medieval scholar) was installed at the end of 2010 near the walls of the Faculty of Information Technologies in Polotsk as a tribute to the first higher education institution in Belarus, which was the Polotsk Jesuit Collegium founded in 1581 by Stephen Báthory. The second sculpture, according to the plan of the PSU rectorate, is to be dedicated to modern students and installed in Novopolotsk. -0-