After a ten-year absence, Groningen student union GSb hopes to return to university politics in the upcomoing elections. There are seven candidates for three of the faculty councils.
GSb chairman Ken Hesselink says the desire to participate in decision-making again is fueled by an urgent call for ‘greater democracy’ they are hearing from students. ‘We can’t make changes to the council without being on the council.’
The union expects to win at least two seats; one at the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences (BSS) and one at the Faculty of Law. The GSb is not participating in the elections for the university council.
Same issues
‘We see that the university council is already quite effective’, says Hesselink, who himself is a candidate for the BSS faculty council. ‘But the faculty councils are more disconnected.’
The GSb believes it can achieve more at the lower level of the faculties. ‘Different faculties tend to have the same problems, so if we have representations in multiple faculties at once, we can address the problems simultaneously.’
Mandatory recordings
One of the things Hesselink wants to achieve at BSS is to make recording lectures mandatory. According to him, many lecturers are currently not doing this, which leads to uncertainty among students, especially during exam periods.
Voting for the university council and the faculty councils ends this Friday, May 17. All students can cast their votes for both the university council and their faculty council.
There are no faculty council elections at the faculties of Religion, Culture and Society and Spatial Sciences, because there are as many seats as candidates.