It’s late September. Thirteen first-year European Studies students have barely settled into their seats when their tutor, Greta Carlevaro, pulls on a salmon-pink T-shirt over her clothes. The slogan on the shirt reads, “I am old and blocking your promotion.” The classroom stays silent; none of the students react, despite the obvious mismatch between the slogan and their tutor’s young age.
At the end of class, Carlevaro draws attention to the T-shirt. Had the students noticed it? Yes, they had. “Are you trying to provoke us?” one asks. “Is this about older people’s prejudice against young people, like how they don’t treat young people as their equals because they’re more experienced?” “Or is it a call for more young people at UM?”
Carlevaro, intent on getting her students to recognise ageism, changes tack. “Imagine the shirt said, ‘I am a woman and I am blocking your career.’ How would you respond?” That’s sexist, the students immediately say; it’s discrimination. “And if I changed ‘woman’ to ‘Black’?” the tutor asks. The answer comes without hesitation: “Provocative and racist.”
She presses on. “How about, ‘I am old and afraid of computers’?” The students laugh. “OK”, says Carlevaro, “and ‘I am a woman and afraid of computers’?” More laughter, but then: “The first is a joke; the second is an offensive joke.” “So it’s less offensive if it’s about age?” the tutor asks.
Young and innovative
Age discrimination is deeply ingrained in our society, explains Aagje Swinnen, professor of Aging Studies. Few people are aware of this, even at Maastricht University. “We’ve internalised it. That’s why this campaign makes it visible by putting stereotypes on T-shirts.” The slogans include “I am old and waiting to retire”, “I am old and afraid of computers” and “I am young and innovative”.
Over the coming weeks, students and staff – campaign ambassadors – will wear these T-shirts for two days. A key feature is the “visual contradiction” between the ambassador’s age and the slogan on the shirt, explains Swinnen. Picture someone in their sixties wearing a shirt that says, “I’m young and tech-savvy.”
The project aims to spark conversations about ageism, “age-based stereotypes, discriminatory practices and institutional policies; how we think and feel about ourselves and others based on age”. Not just with students in tutorials, but also with colleagues during coffee breaks, for example. “We’re not here to lecture”, says Swinnen, “but to encourage reflection and work towards a more age-friendly university together.”
Abandoned
In March 2018, then-rector Rianne Letschert signed the Ten Principles of an Age-Friendly University, making UM the first continental European institution to join the Age-Friendly University (UFA) Global Network. Age-friendly universities aim to be sensitive to the needs of older and retired employees and promote intergenerational collaboration, encouraging students and staff of all ages to appreciate the value of each life stage. However, it’s unclear how much progress UM has made towards these well-intended goals.
Take Swinnen’s 2019 study “Care is what you miss from the organisation”, exploring the experiences of nearly and newly retired academic staff at UM. The findings were startling. Participants in the study said they felt abandoned by the university – particularly on their first day of retirement, when they found their email account terminated, their UM card deactivated and even their list of academic publications removed from the university website. One participant described it as “an administrative death”. Alumni, by contrast, do get to keep their university email accounts. Several participants also complained about arbitrary treatment: some retirees were given warm send-offs and remained involved in their departments, while others slipped quietly into retirement.
Inquiries reveal that retired employees can apply for a new UM card to retain access to the university library. The situation is different for email accounts: under current UM policy, employee accounts – including email – are still deactivated immediately upon retirement. Exceptions are made for those who continue to work for UM, such as PhD supervisors. Whether this will change in the near future remains unclear. According to policy advisor Manon Duchateau, the university is currently working on an “offboarding policy”. She explains that the People & Development department (formerly HR) previously focused on onboarding – recruiting and selecting new employees. This focus has been broadened to include those leaving UM, whether due to retirement or to pursue work elsewhere: offboarding. However, this policy is still in its early stages and will take time to develop.
Duchateau is currently identifying “areas for improvement” that, with input from a working group, should lead to concrete actions. The first changes are expected by spring 2025, including a “warm send-off for anyone who is leaving, acknowledging and honouring their contributions to UM”. Employees approaching retirement will also receive better information and guidance, “not at the last minute, but up to several years in advance.” To implement this initiative, UM now has six certified pension ambassadors working alongside People & Organisation Advisors or POAs (formerly HR advisors). Duchateau anticipates that the working group will also look into the options for allowing retired employees to keep their email accounts.
Worried
One conclusion of Swinnen’s 2019 study was the need for a change in UM’s “institutional retirement culture” to better support nearly and newly retired academic staff members. That’s where the current study comes in.
Recruiting enough ambassadors for the anti-ageism campaign wasn’t easy. Some established UM researchers were hesitant, or initially agreed enthusiastically only to back out later. Swinnen can only speculate on their reasons: “I suspect some were worried that the provocative slogans on their T-shirts might be taken as criticism of the university – that’s not the aim of the project at all. Others might have worried about being labelled as ‘woke’.”
The campaign’s 25 ambassadors are tasked with documenting the conversations sparked by their T-shirts. Their notes will be analysed by Swinnen and her team, consisting of lya Malafei, Greta Carlevaro, Sara De Vuyst and Emma Hizette. “I expect we’ll have collected all data by the end of 2024. We aim to complete the study by mid-2025.”
Old and wise
Ageism thrives in a world where youth is seen as the norm – just look at advertising – and people in their fifties and sixties are flattered to be told, “You look great for your age.” This comes with all kinds of stereotypes, explains Swinnen, which are either too negative or too positive. “They’re based on unproven assumptions about careers, ambitions, productivity, technology, experience, mentality and cognitive abilities. Youth is equated with creativity, open-mindedness, adaptability, productivity and tech-savviness; being older is equated with being resistant to change, out of touch with social and technological progress, and cognitively and physically less able. The only positive stereotype about age is that it comes with wisdom – and that’s not always true either.” Moreover, such stereotypes treat entire age groups as monoliths, as if all twenty-somethings, fifty-somethings or eighty-somethings are the same. “We forget that there’s great diversity within each age group. And the category of ‘older people’ is the most diverse of all.”
OK boomer
What is her first impression, based on the notes they have already received? “People are even less aware of age discrimination than we thought. They don’t recognise it; even when it’s explained to them, they don’t see why saying ‘You still look young’ to a person in their sixties is problematic. But comments like these take youth as the norm and imply that successful ageing means not ageing at all. If you’re no longer youthful, you’re no longer relevant. Take the phrase, ‘OK boomer’ – it reduces you to someone not worth listening to, someone stuffy and old-fashioned.
“And we all reach that point eventually, as youth is a ‘moveable marker’. You start out in the privileged position of being young, but age inevitably catches up with you. We need to treat people as individuals, not put them into categories like ‘old’ and ‘young’ or ‘boomer’ and ‘Gen Z’. Age is just one factor among many that make up who you are at a given moment in time.”
We are young
Back to the classroom – the international classroom, which Swinnen hopes will one day become an intergenerational classroom. The conversation has taken various turns. One student’s father wanted to go back to university but was unable to attend daytime classes; in Italy, young people struggle to find jobs, while older generations call the shots. Wrapping up, Carlevaro tells her students, “You easily recognise issues of racism or sexism, but not age discrimination.” A pause follows. Then, one student voices the group’s thoughts: “We never talk about it. We are young – it’s not something we think about.”