Students who hold a board position, whether for an association such as Tragos or Koko, a student sports club, drama association Alles is Drama, pastoral care The InnBetween or for Muslim association Nour, often suffer a study delay. To compensate for this, Maastricht University gives them an annual financial subsidy in the form of board months (one month equals 345.50 euro). It is the so-called Administrative Months Committee, consisting of students from the organisations themselves (determined via a lottery) plus a student from the University Council, who draw up the advice. Initially, this goes to the director of Student Services Centre and subsequently to the Executive Board.
Premature
Tragos did not receive any money from Maastricht University for the past two years. Hefty sanctions were imposed on the association in September 2022 because of misconduct during hazing. The ties were restored last March. Tragos had convinced the Executive Board of their good intentions, having drawn up a cultural change plan on the basis of an external investigation. This means that they can again apply for financial compensation for the next academic year. Tragos wants to claim 84 board months, twelve per student board member. The advisory committee, however, decided to allocate only 42 months. According to their report, which was discussed in a University Council committee meeting last week, they recognise the efforts to set in motion the cultural changes but some committee members feel that the “re-integration” of Tragos is “premature”.
Strict
Why did the Executive Board set aside the advice about the 42 months? According to rector Pamela Habibović, as she explained to the University Council members, the student association was punished, “and for a long time too”, but they have recently shown how things can be better. And with that, Tragos has met the conditions. According to the rector, it is not the committee’s role to give an opinion about the culture change.
She was clearly not happy that some committee members seem to have doubts about the decision to lift the sanctions. “You know how strict we were after the hazing incident. If we even had an inkling of Tragos not adhering to the conditions, the sanctions would not have been lifted.”
Signals
Furthermore, Habibović wonders out loud why the committee took into consideration signals from the University Council that some student members did not want to assign board months to Tragos. It is student party NovUM, with five students members in the University Council, which recently posted an announcement on Instagram that it was not in agreement. They are extremely worried about the safety within Tragos and want more transparency about their improvement plan. The rector acknowledges that it is indeed up to the University Council to ultimately give their vote of agreement or not, but if the committee takes the wishes of the University Council members into consideration at such an early stage, this creates “an undesirable precedent for other student associations”.
According to the rules, the advisory committee cannot only take into consideration workload and study delay, but also social safety, states Amien Abid, University Council member on behalf of NovUM and also a member of the committee.
Distribution of the board months is on next week’s agenda for the University Council as a whole. Students have right of approval; employees only have an advisory role.