University
Babette Salamat Photo by Reyer Boxem

Babette Salamat fights for students

Empowered by the law

Babette Salamat Photo by Reyer Boxem
UG law alumnus Babette Salamat turned her battles with her high school teachers into a career. Now, she fights for students who have been wronged by their university or landlord. ‘Most people are afraid of the law, but it makes me feel empowered.’
20 January om 13:24 uur.
Laatst gewijzigd op 22 January 2025
om 14:16 uur.
January 20 at 13:24 PM.
Last modified on January 22, 2025
at 14:16 PM.
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Door Ingrid Ştefan

20 January om 13:24 uur.
Laatst gewijzigd op 22 January 2025
om 14:16 uur.
Avatar photo

By Ingrid Ştefan

January 20 at 13:24 PM.
Last modified on January 22, 2025
at 14:16 PM.
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Ingrid Ştefan

It was November 2023 when Babette Salamat, then still a master student, took on what she calls ‘my proudest case’. She had just started working as a jurist in higher education law and it was her second student case ever: fellow law student Mirthe van der Voorst was being accused of fraud by the UG, for using written tabs in her reader at an exam. 

‘It was a very difficult case’, she recalls. ‘Usually, examination boards don’t provide all the evidence to students, or their decision has a lot of flaws, which makes it easy to argue. But here, the UG did everything correctly. So it was really about looking at what had happened and how we define fraud.’ 

She was convinced from the start Van der Voort wasn’t guilty of fraud, but the UG’s rules said otherwise, so it came as a huge surprise when the Council of State decided in the student’s favour. ‘I basically went against the rules, and it worked. Now it’s not just a win for us, but for law students in the whole country’, she says.

Powerless

To her, working in education law is about giving students a voice, and turning their helplessness into empowerment. Because she knows how it is to feel powerless. ‘I was a pretty troubled kid growing up, always fighting with teachers’, she admits. ‘When I thought something was unfair, I’d speak up. But teachers didn’t really like that’.

Salamat still recalls the countless times it got her kicked out of class in high school and how unfair it all felt. ‘I remember thinking back then that if I just knew the rules of the school, I could fight them with their own weapons’, she says. 

I just knew the rules of the school, I could fight them with their own weapons

That’s how she ended up studying to be a paralegal, but it wasn’t until she interviewed a real lawyer that she realised that she could be one, too. ‘He was just like me, the kid who always spoke up, always in trouble with teachers, and he became a lawyer’, she says. 

‘If it’s possible for me, it’s possible for you’, he told her. And so seventeen-year-old Babette made a pact with herself that she’d go to university, get her master’s degree, and become a lawyer. 

‘That was nine and a half years ago. And today is very special, because I just graduated’, she says, dressed in a pinstriped power suit and holding a leather briefcase. 

Shattered dream

It wasn’t an easy road, though. Her biggest dream was shattered when the law company she interned for refused to take her on as a trainee lawyer, despite having promised to do so. ‘I fell into a deep hole then and getting out of it was extremely difficult’, she says. ‘I’m not religious, but it felt like God closed a door. I felt pushed towards something else.’

That’s when she came across Casper van Vliet on LinkedIn, who focused on higher education law cases with his firm Van Vliet ELS. ‘I had been fighting teachers all my life. So I thought, why not do it professionally?’ She messaged him and they started working together. ‘I knew nothing about education law. But I got hyper focused, bought myself some books, and took on the first cases.’ 

Now, the two are partners at Cum Laude Legal, a firm – rebranded from Van Vliet ELS – offering legal assistance pro bono to students. They deal with any university-related case, from plagiarism and fraud to negative BSA, and also help students having problems with their landlords or employers. 

Aiming to make life for students a bit better, they take care of every step in the process, from drafting up appeals to assisting students during hearings. ‘Almost every week I’m travelling to a different city, to a different hearing’, Salamat says.

Fulfilling

To her, the work at Cum Laude Legal is the most fulfilling thing she’s ever done. ‘At a big law firm, you help rich people get richer. Here I help people fight allegations with serious consequences for their future’, she explains. 

At a big law firm, you help rich people get richer

Like that time she helped a student who was just about to graduate when he was accused of self-plagiarism and denied the right to take a resit. ‘Delaying his graduation meant he’d exceed the ten-year term in which DUO turns student finance into a gift’, she says, and he’d have to pay back 20,000 euros. ‘He’d also just had a baby and recently struggled with his mental health.’ 

Salamat won the case. She still gets goosebumps talking about it, because the student was so grateful. ‘To think I made such a big difference for someone, and it only took me a few hours.’ 

Establishing a sense of justice for those who feel powerless gives her satisfaction. That’s why she got a tattoo of the Justice tarot card. ‘Most people are afraid of the law, but it makes me feel empowered. No one can tell me nonsense anymore.’

Underestimated

The work doesn’t come without its challenges, though. The biggest one? Being a young woman in a male-dominated field. ‘I underestimated that when I started’, she says. ‘But it’s really true that as a woman, you don’t get taken seriously in a lot of places. And that really pisses me off.’ 

It happened to her during a hearing at the University of Amsterdam, when the chairman of the board of appeal for examinations started laughing at her in the middle of her discourse. ‘He told me I’m teaching him how the law works’, she says, frowning. ‘The only thing you can do is keep your back straight and go on.’ 

She’s used to it now, but sometimes the question still pops into her head: ‘Why am I even doing this if that’s how I’m treated?’ Though the answer is usually right there: it’s for the students. 

Lack of support

That doesn’t mean it’s not frustrating, just like the lack of support she felt from her own university, the UG. ‘That was the hardest thing for me to accept’, she says. Salamat wanted to do her thesis on the topic of fraud and the rights of students based on article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights – the right to a fair trial. While her supervisor seemed excited and gave her the green light, she was soon pulled off the subject.

Clearly, I hadn’t made any friends at the law faculty

‘My supervisor told me they couldn’t help me because they’re part of the examination board and it would be like the sword of Damocles hanging over their head’, she says. It was the first time in a long time that she felt powerless. She could have fought the decision, as she did for so many others. But fighting for yourself is not the same, she thinks.

‘I just wanted to get my degree and get the hell out of there, because clearly, I hadn’t made any friends.’ So she did the only thing she could do: ‘I said, screw them, and took every UG case that came my way because they had pissed me off.’ 

Unfair regulation

The last mark she hopes to make at her old faculty as a new graduate? Giving law students a third chance to take an exam, a case she’s currently working on. Within the UG, if you only have to pass one more course to graduate, you get a third chance for an exam. In the law faculty, you need to have scored at least a four and a five on the first two attempts, or you won’t get a third. 

‘I think that regulation is really unfair. It seems to be more about keeping the workload low rather than supporting students’, she says. ‘We want students to have a bit more power. That’s why we have to fight these policies, because no one else is doing it.’

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