Various animal welfare organisations are reporting the Vindicat students in whose house two neglected geese were found last Saturday to the police. The students, in the meantime, have been getting death threats.
As a precaution, the members have been moved out of their house in the city centre and housed elsewhere for the time being, says Vindicat chair Adriaan Zoetmulder.
He is shocked by the threats and has contacted the police. Threats have been coming in by both phone and mail. According to Zoetmulder, they’re ‘very scary’.
In the meantime, Stichting Ganzenbescherming Nederland and the Groningen Animal ambulance are reporting the members for neglecting the two geese.
Bad prank
The Animal ambulance went to the house on Saturday after Sikkom published an article. The city blog had received photos from a goose on the loose in a student room. Additionally, there were a large Star of David and an inverted swastika painted on the walls of the room.
It turned out the Vindicat members had purchased the geese ‘for a prank’. They said they wanted the geese to poop all over a first-year member’s room.
According to the ambulance employees, the geese were in shock. They found them hiding in a corner, terrified. One of the geese also had several damaged feathers.
Suspended
Zoetmulder was dismayed at the discovery. On Saturday, he said he was cutting ‘all ties’ to the house and suspending the members living there.
Later that day, the board published a statement on the Vindicat website, saying the members of the house have been suspended for a year. That means they’re not allowed to participate in association activities as a house.
The association will reassess the situation in a year ‘in part based on the steps the residents have made to improve’. According to the statement, the boys have been told emphatically to make positive contributions to animal welfare, tolerance, and anti-discriminatory efforts over the next year.
The statement also says the members will be subject to the association’s internal justice system. The board is demanding each member be individually suspended. A verdict will follow.
Impulsive students
In their own statement, the Vindicat members said it was a ‘thoughtless, very wrong thing done by impulsive students’ that they very much regret. They say it’s unforgivable that they didn’t consider how stressful the whole thing would be for the animals. ‘We made a wrong judgement call here.’
As far as the symbols on the wall are concerned, the residents plead ignorance. ‘We didn’t notice those symbols on the wall until we moved the cabinets from the walls when clearing out the room’, they write.
‘We don’t know how they got there or how long they’d been there.’ The residents all disavow the situation and said ‘there’s no room in our house for such repulsive symbols. They have nothing to do with our plans for our roommates’.
According to the statement, the room was repainted immediately.