An improvement plan drawn up with external advice is a requirement set by the Executive Board for Tragos to become eligible again for their board grants (more than 30 thousand euro annually) and participation in university events, such as the INKOM introduction week. UM introduced the sanctions last September after reports of misconduct during hazing, when songs were sung of a “racist, sexist and discriminating nature”.
Commissioning an external party was also Tragos’s wish, chairman Thijmen Vermeer says. “We want our culture to be investigated with an open mind, with no tunnel vision.” The association has resorted to a Dutch agency that has previously screened the culture at other student associations. Next month, all members will be asked to complete a questionnaire about the standards and values that they think are prevalent at Tragos at the moment, and what changes they would like to see in this respect.
No force
Why is this only happening now, while the requirement set by UM dates back to September? “For the first few months, we focused on the initial steps towards cultural change.” This concerned, among other things, communication towards the members themselves. A page containing a code of conduct appeared on the website. “This already existed, but has now been revised. It is now more clearly described what we view as unacceptable behaviour.” It was only after that that the search for an external investigation agency was started. “This takes a lot of time. We had discussions with various parties.”
Using the results, which Vermeer expects to be available in a few months’ time, the association wants to have a meeting with the university. “To jointly look at what needs to be improved, and how we can achieve this. We feel it is important that we take our members’ wishes and desires as the point of departure. It won’t help them, for example, to force a training course upon them that they don’t agree with. Real change is only possible if it comes from the members themselves.”
Vermeer is hopeful that the improvement plan will convince the Executive Board. “We have also noticed that the members themselves want change. As an association, we want to keep up with change – things that may have been normal twenty years ago, are really not acceptable anymore.”
Incident
How did things go so wrong during the hazing then? “That was an incident. It occurred during a part of the programme in which the men and women were separated. Despite many warnings beforehand, a small number of male members started singing sexist and discriminating songs. One person threw a cup of urine. These eight members were removed that same night and have been suspended.” According to Vermeer, rumours of vomiting members or an appeal to grope the women, which appeared in various media, are incorrect.
In the period after the incident, he noticed that a majority of the members did not condone the suspended member’s behaviour. “Our female members no longer accept men making sexist remarks.” But completely preventing it will be difficult, he reckons. “We are doing everything we can, with codes of conduct and warnings. The question is to what extent you can be held responsible as an association for the excesses of individual members.”
The association will pay for the external investigation from its own pocket, in the same way as the board grants that they miss out on this academic year will be dealt with. “We need to dig deep for that. We cannot permit ourselves to not receive our board grants for the next few years as well. In that case, we would need to become much more commercial, which nobody wants. Our members realise now that things are serious.”