Buday Árpád a szegedi M. Kir. Ferencz József Tudományegyetem Diákjóléti és Diákvédő Irodája élén
Árpád Buday leading the Students’ Welfare and Protection Office of the Franz Joseph University in Szeged

Summary/Abstract: Árpád Buday (Marosgezse/Gheja, 17 January 1879 – Szeged, 7 April 1937). Private professor of the university of Cluj (1911–1917), honorary public non-ordinary professor (1917–1918), secretary of the Supervisory Board of the Mensa Academia and Students’ Home (1904—1919). During World War I, this office offered invaluable experiences obtainable elsewhere for a students’ welfare leader. As a secretary, Buday was the one who had to consign the furnishings of the Mensa Academia to the Romanian Government Board after Transylvania became part of Romania. The Franz Joseph University resettled from Cluj to Budapest, and from Budapest to Szeged. From 1924, Buday moved to Hungary and worked as professor of archaeology in the university of Szeged (1924–1937). Meanwhile, he was the dean of the Faculty of Humanities (academic year 1931/1932) and vice-dean (academic year 1932/1933). In the academic year 1932/1933 – after the Great Depression –, he became the president of the Students’ Welfare and Protection Office at the university. As a president, he chose as his most important task the mitigation of the 1929 Depression’s – as he said “the general economic downturn” – harmful consequences. The Students’ Welfare and Protection Office was the first such university organization unit in our country. The office’s primary goal was to provide students protection and support within an institutional framework. One of its tasks was to build the system of constant student aid and another one to control the incoming aids. The institution’s emphasized task was to keep a record of all university students from moral and educational aspects. The head of the Office was the president who was chosen by the University Council. He was always a highly respected professor. This paper attempts to draw up the portrait of the “student protector professor” and to show the assignments he was to manage.

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