He agrees, says Charles de Groot, student council member of the University Council on behalf of NovUM. “The minutes of meetings are difficult to find, but also: too many matters are dealt with behind closed doors. In my opinion, that is not always necessary. These are matters that concern the whole university, they are not state secrets.” He would also like to see the voting included in the minutes of the meeting. “Who voted for and who voted against. The University Council is a political body; this way the people who voted for us can also see if we voted according to their wishes. This kind of openness is an important ingredient for good politics.”
Instagram
The student council members themselves have made an Instagram account (umuniversitycouncil). “There, we share information about what we do, we hope that more people from the community will follow us actively.” De Groot also has a personal account for his political work (charles_politics). “I have more than four hundred UM students following me. I share my point of view on relevant topics and respond to questions or ideas from the community.” He reports which questions he asked during the meetings and – under the heading ‘proposals victory’ – shows what the council achieved. “Even though it may be something minor, like a microwave in the University Library in the city centre, I want the more than three hundred people who voted for me to see what I am doing for them. This is all my own initiative, I feel it is necessary. And the fun thing is that sometimes people recognise me from my Instagram page and start a discussion about issues that they would like to see changed. Very motivating.”
Limited view
“Just by chance, my eye caught a reference to the minutes of the meetings in UMployee this week,” says Anouk Heuts, education co-ordinator of the basic curriculum at GP Medicine. “Otherwise, I would have had no idea where to find them. Before this, I spent 28 years at the Faculty of Law and if I remember correctly, they were included in the newsletter there, but I’m not quite sure. That is how much of an impression it made. Whether I knew what was going on in the faculty council depended to a great extent on whether I knew a council member personally. Then it would sometimes come up in conversation.”
Worse than not being able to find the minutes, I feel is their limitedness. “There should be stricter rules about when something should be allowed to be dealt with confidentially. At the moment, a chairperson or council can keep a lot from being made public. The public minutes therefore give a limited view of what actually happened. For example, I found it highly remarkable recently that the University Council chairperson stepped down and none of the council members said anything about it. It was all so secretive, while someone doesn’t leave just like that. Open communication is also better for the organisation, otherwise people start to guess.”
How and when
Another reaction, what the council gets done is not invisible, says Jeroen Moes, member (academic staff) and chairperson of the Faculty of Science and Engineering’s council. “The results are often very definite, such as budgetary decisions that concern the whole faculty, the content of the exam regulations, appointments of professors, students’ wellbeing, personnel workload, and practical matters such as sufficient bicycle parking facilities and security. But the way in which those decisions are arrived at, or how and when we discuss them in the council, could and should indeed be more transparent.”
Do council members discuss issues too little with their supporters? “I don’t know, I myself regularly talk to various people within my department. Still, it could be more often and more structural. As far as I see it, one of the obstacles there is the huge workload of staff members, often not leaving enough time for matters that go beyond their core responsibilities. The same applies to the other side: for employees who themselves are not in a representative advisory body, actively ‘going against something’ is an extra appeal to their already overfull agenda.”
Round table meetings
He sums up a number of “definite steps”: “In the past, the faculty used to organise so-called round table meetings, where council members talked to people from various departments. Due to lack of time and attendance, this kind of subsided, but I would like to revive it. Furthermore, we could consider circulating a periodical newsletter containing the themes discussed and decisions taken but especially the upcoming points on the agenda so that employees and students can provide input beforehand.”
Also the way in which the minutes are made available online, should be improved, he reckons. At the same time: “I don’t expect people to proactively go looking for the minutes from the faculty council.” A newsletter that attracts attention to them could be a solution, he reckons. “In the latest period, we worked (I think successfully) on reducing the number of confidential items on the agenda, and for those that needed to be kept confidential, to still give a short public summary of what was discussed behind those closed doors, and to make these minutes also public.”
Wendy Degens and Cleo Freriks