Now that the faculty will not be given an extra building at the new Healthy Ageing Campus and their lease on the temporary space at the Bloemstraat is up, several offices in the Heymans wing have to make way for education. But not everyone is happy with the relocation plans. Several staff members feel that their criticisms are not taken seriously and that they have been poorly informed.
The staff members are worried that departments will be split across different floors, that there will be no more room for intensive personal coaching of students and that the contact between programmes will worsen if groups are housed in different buildings. They also worry that employees will become more stressed if they have to share workspaces. ’There’s this enormous lack of communication. No one is paying attention to what the alternatives are’, says one of the employees who wants to remain anonymous.
Discussion
Dean Kees Aarts acknowledges the staff’s worries, but he denies that communication was lacking. ‘Right from the start we did everything we could to safeguard the employees’ involvement, to keep the discussion going’, he says. According to him, the psychology staff is adamant about keeping their offices in the Heymans wing. ‘But that’s not what we want, so that’s a point of conflict’, according to Aarts.
According to the dean, the faculty board has tried to accommodate the complainers. Earlier plans about sharing offices were called off, he says. According to the dean, departments will stay together in the Heymans building, although some of them will be split over various floors. ‘The only bone of contention is that one of the psychology departments will have to move to the Nieuwenhuisgebouw, two buildings over. As far as I’m concerned, it’s more than acceptable. It’s not like they’re moving to Zernike. They’re still part of our campus.’
Echo chamber
Aarts is taking the criticism seriously, he says. ‘I’m willing to shoulder some of the blame here. Some things could have been done better or differently. But at the same time, it’s given rise to a kind of echo chamber which makes it harder to distinguish between serious messages and echoes of rumours.’
According to Aarts, building or renting new educational spaces is not an option right now. ‘At least not within the next six months. That’s because of the student numbers and the amount of staff we have. We’re not shrinking, and there is a lot of space at our Hortus location. Although we can’t just start building there, because many of the buildings are monuments. At this time, we have plenty of space for education. I don’t know what it’ll look like in four years though, we’ll have to reassess it then.’
The psychology employees will have to move this month. They continue to be dissatisfied with the plans. ‘Surely everybody knows you shouldn’t split up departments? But apparently the board doesn’t give a toss’, the employee says. The forty protesters are waiting for the dean’s response.