Approximately fifty students from Groningen joined the protest against the slow study penalty in The Hague last Friday. ‘If we don’t take to the streets, they’ll do whatever they want.’
It’s 9 a.m. and a group of students huddles together in front of the train station as they wait for the bus that will take them to The Hague. The drizzle and fog match their reason for going: to protest the three thousand euro penalty the government wants to implement for students who need more than a year extra to graduate than the official course duration.
‘The government plans are really bad’, says Jitske Wielers, chair of Groningen student union GSb, which arranged the free transportation. ‘Excuse my language, but shit is going down, we have to do something. I hope we inspire enough people so that our voices can be heard from Groningen to The Hague.’
International students
Despite the protest being in Dutch, many of the attendees – around a thousand in total, from all corners the country – are international students. The Groningen group, consisting of members of GSb and other political student associations, counts a fair number of internationals as well.
‘This is affecting everyone’, explains Romanian artificial intelligence student Ilinca. ‘The budget cuts, the penalty, they’ve really made it harder to attend university. With a government like this, if we don’t take to the streets, they’ll do whatever they want’. That’s why she convinced her sister, a first-year UG student, to come too.
March through The Hague
The demonstration kicks off at noon in Koekamp park opposite The Hague Central Station, with several speakers, ranging from student union leaders to students and activists, taking to the stage to address the slow study penalty, the budget cuts, and the decrease in the basic grant.
‘The slow study penalty is not a financial matter, but a disciplining technique’, one speaker says. ‘They have money for wars, but not education’, another claims. Then, the protesters start marching through The Hague, while chanting slogans in Dutch like ‘Fight, fight, fight, education is a right’, ‘piss off with your fine’, or ‘students’ struggle is class struggle’.
Towards the end of the march, police vans block the road: they don’t want the protesters to return to Koekamp. After some persuasion, however, the students are allowed to continue on their way.
Positive impression
The protest left an overall positive impression on Groningen students. ‘I didn’t like that there was so much police. But we made a lot of noise, and that’s good. There is passion and morale to keep going’, says GSb board member Kayla Johansyah.
‘I was surprised that it was much more left-leaning than I expected, the chants at least’, a Hungarian physics student says. ‘But I’m glad so many people mobilised.’