In the three weeks that have passed since Van Wesel, council member on behalf of the administrative and support staff, made the appeal on 23 March, pressure increased on the University Council to take a stance. Both in Observant itself but also in national newspapers such as de Volkskrant and NRC, in which opinion pieces, columns and letters of disbelief about the University Council’s silence in this matter were published.
Jan Smits, dean of the Faculty of Law, was one of the first to make a move, first on Twitter, afterwards with an opinion article. “Other than the University Council appears to think,” this case is not about Observant, he wrote. “It is about the values of our university. My university is one in which everyone feels free to say what they want and in which this can be refuted by others without hindrance."
In the University Council statement (published on this site), the council members condemn not only the DDoS attack, but also those who were subsequently positive about the attack (the student group Feminists of Maastricht, among others, gave a ‘a thumbs up’ to the cybercriminals on Instagram).
The council members end their statement by saying they have learned a lot; the communication must be improved and “our decision that the matter had been dealt with [the Executive Board had given a statement and the editors had filed a police report, ed.] may have been inadequate.”