News & Views June 2019
New Breed of Services to LSE Alumnae and Alumni, Total Revision, Updates, At 30, and Rivalries
New Breed of Services to LSE Alumnae and Alumni
Benefit/Service No. 37: National Collective Subscription Service
The Association is introducing a new breed of services to LSE alumnae and alumni, starting with the National Collective Subscription Service managed by the Association under arrangement with Tamedia AG, the publisher of the leading Swiss newspapers and magazines. LSE alumnae and alumni can subscribe to the Tages-Anzeiger, Sonntags-Zeitung, Finanz und Wirtschaft, Schweizer Familie, Annabelle, Der Bund and Tribune de Geneve at greatly reduced corporate rates. The Service covers both current and new subscribers among the LSE alumnae and alumni as well as businesses associated with LSE alumnae and alumni up to a certain size.
Current subscribers to any of the listed publications can pick up savings of up to CHF 192 per year, with no interruption of delivery and access and a pro-rata rate transition.
New subscribers can remove the paywalls by taking advantage of the lowest rates.
The savings can run into thousands of Swiss Francs per year for businesses associated with LSE alumnae and alumni.
You can only submit new subscription requests to the Association once a year within a month-long administrative window which opens on 1 June and closes on 30 June (i.e. 1.6.-30.6.2019, 1.6.-30.6.2020, ...). Leverage your status as an LSE alumna/us by taking advantage of this new service today:
https://www.slseaa.ch/benefits/media-lifestyle/national-collective-subscription-service
Revising and Updating the Articles of Association
Over the past two decades, the Swiss LSE Alumni Association (SLSEAA) has evolved from a small club into a large national membership organization with a diverse program of activities and events and a sizable portfolio of benefits and services geared towards LSE alumnae and alumni. Our Articles of Association, however, have remained unchanged since 2001.
A few constitutional amendments have been proposed by members over the years. As any require the support of a three-fourths majority of all Ordinary Members, they cannot be easily effected.
We take the start of our third decade as an opportunity to make all the desired changes in one large revision of our Articles of Association. Before the postal ballot, members will be consulted repeatedly. The first consultation paper has been postal mailed to all members and can also be viewed on our Web site:
https://www.slseaa.ch/docs/totalrevision/RevisingUpdatingArticlesofAssociation.pdf
Updates on existing Services and Benefits
Our Membership Journal "Foreign Affairs"
https://www.slseaa.ch/benefits/membership-journal
LSE alumnae and alumni have been enjoying the "Foreign Affairs" journal free-of-charge as part of their membership. If you are not yet getting the journal but want it, activate your subscription by 31 July 2019 in time for the next publication cycle starting with the September/October 2019 issue. Our
Collective Health Insurance Scheme
https://www.slseaa.ch/benefits/insurance-finance/collective-health-insurance-scheme
Members of the Association very much loved the 10 to 20 percent discounts on their supplementary health and hospital insurance plans. The Federal Government, however, not so much. SWICA, our contracting partner, was pushed by government regulators to end all of their smaller collective health insurance agreements, including ours. The Federal Government's reasoning is that Swiss health insurance companies ought not to be cutting their profit margins with discounts benefiting relatively small and privileged groups while at the same time drawing ever increasing indirect public subsidies. We get the point.
Our Secretary General, nonetheless, managed to wring a promise from SWICA management on remaking our collective health insurance agreement if we pass regulatory muster by gathering together many more insured persons via an expansion of our Scheme to all LSE alumnae and alumni in Switzerland. The new Benefits and Services Officers will take this renegotiation project up in the coming months.
Tiananmen at 30
The latest publication in the Foreign Affairs Anthology Series, e-books complimentary to Members of the Association, revisits the history of the Tiananmen crisis and queries how 1989 shapes China today.
The anthology offers insights into the events surrounding 3 June 1989 when Chinese security forces opened fire on student-led demonstrations in the area surrounding Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Especially interesting are the articles summarizing the so-called Tiananmen Papers, reports and minutes of decision-making at the highest levels of the government and party secretly spirited out of China.
Rivalries
As debated at last year's Founders' Dinner and as Mira Rapp-Hooper and Rebecca Friedman Lissner outline in their essay in the May/June 2019 issue of our membership journal "Foreign Affairs", great power rivalries have made a comeback. The two authors argue that in an emerging world order in which the United States has degraded capabilities and motivation, and China and Russia increasing facilities and ambitions, the first priority should be to maintain global openness instead of spreading liberal economic values and democracy.
We invite you to read the other thought-provoking essays on the search for a new grand strategy, or to listen to their easy-to-follow narration on your mobile devices.