The music video ‘Orange, Black and Blue’ has been a topic of discussion for months. It contains a number of "female-unfriendly scenes" and those go against SBE’s core values, said dean Mariëlle Heijltjes to Observant. Heijltjes’ predecessor, Peter Møllgaard, had already asked the study association to take the video offline. If they didn’t? Then they would not be paid for board months.
A misunderstanding, said chairman Felipe Herting to Observant last November (he has since then stepped down). At the time, he had only known for two weeks that an agreement had been made with the Lions board before him. But, said Herting, “if the requirement is that we remove the video, then we will do so”.
Still, this did not happen under his chairmanship. On 24 January, after questions by Observant a day earlier, the video was suddenly taken offline. Too late, because the four board months for the Maastricht Lions had already been given away. They were being managed by SCOPE, the Lions’ umbrella organisation. On the faculty board’s advice, SCOPE decided earlier this year to allocate the board months to VECTUM, another of SBE’s study associations. Why VECTUM? “Because in the past they received eight board months compared to the four that they received this year, so on the faculty board’s advice, we allocated the months to them,” SCOPE chairman Gizem Büyükkeçeci stated half-way through January.
For the Maastricht Lions, this is not the end of the world, because now that the video is no longer on the Internet, SCOPE will pay the board months missed out on from its own funds.
But why so late? Carl Wisenberg, chairman of Maastricht Lions since last Saturday, says that the music video wasn’t a priority for the association the past month, as they changed boards and due to Christmas and New Year, but it is now. “We took it down because we really want to comply with the university’s rules.” He does not answer the question whether he himself found the video unfriendly towards women, but emphasised that “there were no evil intentions behind it”.