Did you know it was the student parties that ensured the bsa was lowered during the Covid pandemic? That they made sure that the UB added desks and coffee machines? And did you know it was a student party that stopped a megalomaniacal plan for a branch campus in China?
Ask a random student about the university council and you’re lucky if they even know what you’re talking about. While action groups have been popping up everywhere the past few years, very few students seem to understand very much about co-determination at the university.
Turnout
This is evidenced by the election turnout: in 2021, 24 percent of students voted in the council elections, a number that went down to 20.6 percent last year. It’s also evidenced by the trouble student parties have in finding new candidates.
This is especially jarring when you consider that the university council is the only body that represents students that the board of directors is legally obligated to listen to. But you might be surprised to hear about all the things the student parties have managed to do over the past few years.
Branch campus in China
It was Lijst Calimero in 2018 who provided the decisive vote against a UG branch campus in the Chinese city of Yantai. It was also Calimero, in conjunction with the personnel faction, who a year earlier ensured that the university council was given the right to consent, which meant it had the final say.
This later turned out to be of great importance. Because while former board president Sibrand Poppema foresaw a golden ‘global future’ for Groningen, he was continually unable to satisfactorily answer any questions on risks, cost-benefit ratio, educational quality, or academic freedom.
Lijst Calimero, DAG (no longer on the council) and the personnel faction felt the first version of the final plan from the fall of 2017 wasn’t good enough. The board of directors took the criticism seriously and started work on a new version. While DAG and the personnel faction had lost all faith in the endeavour, Calimero was keeping an open mind.
But a new version in January 2018 wasn’t up to par, either. Calimero could not be convinced. Together with the personnel faction and DAG, the party’s five seats formed a majority in the council, putting an end to the Chinese dream.
Coffee problems
The university council doesn’t deal with big matters like Yantai every year, but that doesn’t diminish the impact the student parties have on the daily operations at the university. It was the Studenten Organisatie Groningen (SOG), for instance, who campaigned for more coffee machines at the university library (UB).
Students came to SOG to complain about coffee machines not working or running out of cups or coffee beans halfway through the day. This particularly happened during the exam periods. The party put together a memo and broached the topic during a council meeting. Even though it wasn’t the most pressing issue on the agenda, people still listened, and the board ordered extra coffee machines for the UB>
Confucius Institute
In 2020, De Vrije Student (DVS) showed the board of directors a petition from worried Chinese students. There were concerned about the university’s collaboration with the Confucius Institute (CI).
According to them, the institute was too close to the Chinese government, posing a threat to academic freedom at the UG. The contract with the CI had just been tacitly renewed, the institute was housed in UG property, and board president Jouke de Vries was on its board.
A month after DVS expressed its concerns, the Ministry of Education also urgently recommended universities started keeping the Confucius Institutes at arm’s length. The board then decided the CI would have to move out that same year and started an investigation into the administrative ties between the UG and the institute.
Bsa and desks at the UB
LIjst Calimero and the Groninger Studentenbond went out in early 2021 and collected five hundred statements, some of them particularly harrowing, from first-year students who were feeling the intense stress of the binding study advise (bsa) during the Covid pandemic. The UG then went and lowered the bsa by 10 ECTS.
In March of 2021, the student parties banded together to finally get more desks added to the UB. Other universities were doing much more to ensure students could have a place to study outside their house, but the Groningen UB was at the time mainly open to vulnerable students rather than the general student population.
Together with fifty study associations, the student parties wrote an urgent letter to the board: relax the restrictions to prevent the students’ mental health from deteriorating any further. The students suggested several concrete actions, and the board listened. A few days later, the UG announced that desks had been added to the UB.