A gown for everyone
It has become more difficult at PhD graduation ceremonies at Utrecht University (UU) to recognise the professors. Every member of the PhD committee is now allowed to wear a gown. This dress code was previously reserved for professors. According to UU, the decision fits in well with the Recognition and Rewards policy, in which equality of employees is of paramount importance. “In this way, we want to make it clear that every question put to the PhD candidate carries equal weight,” said rector Henk Kummeling to sister newspaper DUB. The university will provide gowns for non-professors. This, by the way, is only for PhD graduations: in other academic ceremonies, the professors will maintain their gown monopoly.
This makes UU a ‘trendsetter’ in terms of academic fashion. Will Maastricht University follow the example? No, not for the time being, rector Pamela Habibović stated. “We regularly have experts in the committee who are not connected to a university, and for them it would be illogical to wear a gown.” But, she adds, “the Board of Deans is keeping a close eye on developments and will regularly discuss the implications for UM.”
Be old-fashioned, read your e-mail
Should the Law Student Messages be embellished? Or would a switch to Instagram be a better plan? Or should students simply not whine and just read their e-mails? In the law faculty council meeting last week, it was all about student communication. The problem was the newsletter, Law Student Messages (LSM), which is not being read well for quite some time. So, what can be done about this? After all, the messages are said to be important.
Sjoerd Claessens, vice dean of education: “You also have to learn how to gather information as a student, without emotions at the source,” referring to the e-mails that many students consider to be old-fashioned. They mainly use WhatsApp to communicate. According to Otto Heijboer, student advisor of the board, thoughts on a new “communication platform” for students are underway at Executive Board level. He doesn’t know about the finer details, but it will most likely be “a kind of UMployee”. Mark Kawakami, council member for academic staff, leaves no room for speculation: “LSM may be an old-fashioned medium, but it is better than a student UMployee.” If they don’t read LSM and miss out on information, then that is just too bad for them, he concludes.
And what about Instagram then? That is popular among students; is that not an alternative for the intern communication, student council member Nandika Singh suggests. Claessens: “Don’t forget that we have certain values as a university. Do we want to share our internal information on Instagram? Let us not just blindly ‘surrender’ to big tech businesses that are behind social media.” There will be a follow-up to this discussion. For the time being, the message will remain: be old-fashioned, open your mailbox.
Leak damage
E-mail addresses, Citizen Service Numbers, notes on political preferences: a selection of the data of 530 thousand people seized by a hacker from the Universities of Applied Sciences in Arnhem and Nijmegen (HAN) in 2021. The institutes refused to pay a ransom, after which the data was put online.
Reason enough for a former student to hold HAN responsible for the damages suffered: the fact that his medical information was made public is eating away at him to such an extent that he is now less inclined to share information with relief workers. His trust has been damaged, because the university of applied sciences insured him that his data was in safe hands. HAN has not responded to the claim.
The local court, however, ruled last week that the former student should receive compensation of 300 euro. That is less than the thousand euro that he demanded, because the consequences were limited; the disclosure of his medical files did have consequences, but the disclosure of his “general personal data” did not, for the time being.
By the way, the hack resulted in the medical data of 2,087 students with a functional impairment being disclosed. If they also receive compensation, that will cost the institutes more than six hundred thousand euro.