How many students and staff are even aware that the university elections are taking place from Monday 19 May? And how many can say what the various councils have discussed over the past year? For a large part of the UM community, it seems like a distant concern – and that’s hardly surprising. Even for those who are interested, it’s practically impossible to find out what’s on the council agendas, or when and where meetings are held. First, you have to track down the relevant page on the UM website. Most faculty and service councils don’t even publish their meeting schedules, let alone their agendas. Sure, everything is available on iBabs, an online meeting portal, but let’s be honest – that’s for the truly persistent. (Quick note: this series doesn’t cover the service councils, as no outsiders are present at their meetings.)
Minutes no one can find
This is the heart of the matter. Call it a lack of awareness, clarity, access or visibility – it all amounts to the same problem. “What issues are on the table? What are they discussing?” This information isn’t being clearly communicated, noted one academic staff member of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS) in 2023, when Observant asked the UM community to respond to several statements in the run-up to that year’s university elections. “That inevitably leads to less engagement”, he concluded. A second-year bachelor’s student of Law agreed: “A lot of students think it’s unimportant or irrelevant to them.” This is due to the lack of visibility, he said. “Minutes are hard to find, and you don’t hear much from council members themselves. There’s no link between your vote and what happens next in the councils.”
“There should be stricter rules about keeping things confidential or not"
Even if you do manage to track down the minutes, they’re often quite limited, as pointed out in Observant last year by a staff member of the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences (FHML). “There should be stricter rules about keeping things confidential or not. Right now, chairs or councils can keep a lot hidden from public view. The published minutes give a very limited picture of what’s really going on.”
No clear idea
And the lack of clarity runs deep. It turns out that even candidates standing for election don’t always have a clear idea of what council members actually do. “At the start of my term, I kept hearing, ‘That’s not up to the council; we don’t decide that here.’ It took me several months to figure out how it all works”, said a student representative on the Law Faculty Council last year. For example, some of the decisions students would like to be involved in are actually up to the programme committees or boards of examiners.
Illustration: Simone Golob
This lack of awareness of what the role entails can have serious consequences. It’s reportedly the reason why the student party NovUM failed to fill either of the two seats it won on the FASoS Faculty Council last year. One student switched parties; the other resigned his seat. The party hadn’t had enough time to guide candidates that year, NovUM chair Olga Kosjakova explained to Observant, adding, “We’ve learnt our lesson.”
Complex issues
Let’s take a little detour. While this isn’t directly related to the lack of accessibility or visibility, the complexity of the issues themselves can be a major barrier for student representatives in particular. Students are elected for one-year terms, while staff serve for two years. Despite the training available for council members, one year is often not enough to get a firm grasp of complex issues like university funding, quality agreements, digitalisation, research infrastructure (scanners, microscopes, ETpathfinder, etc.) and people strategy (HR). What’s more, these issues tend to be quite boring, dry and technical.
“I just kept wondering: what does it mean when we do this?"
Two years ago, several student members of the University Council abstained from voting on the university budget because they felt unqualified to make an informed decision. “I just kept wondering: what does it mean when we do this? Does spending money here mean cutting back elsewhere? Are we spending more on this than we did last year? I wanted more context – like how this compares to spending at other universities – and more concrete examples”, one of them said afterwards.
No time
The lack of awareness of what the role entails, combined with the complexity of the issues, can discourage not just students but also staff from standing for election. But staff face an even more significant obstacle: a lack of time. Many councils don’t even hold elections for academic and support staff – they’re just relieved to have enough candidates come forward. “We simply don’t have time for anything outside of our core responsibilities”, said one member of the University Council in a previous interview with Observant. “Everyone’s too busy with their own work”, another added.
“Why do people have so little interest in joining the Faculty Council?”
The same people tend to keep serving term after term, which causes frustration. “Why do people have so little interest in joining the Faculty Council?” asked Huub Mudde – the current chair of the School of Business and Economics (SBE) Faculty Council, who is once again standing for election – in this year’s election paper. Just like two years ago, there are only five candidates to fill six staff seats on the SBE Faculty Council. “Are you just fine with the way things are? Or are you too overwhelmed with work to take this on?”
Low voter turnout
Lack of time is also an issue for students, though to a lesser extent. Moreover, a lot of students simply don’t read their emails, complaining to Observant about receiving too much communication from the university and their faculties. And while there are always plenty of student candidates, this still translates into low voter turnout. Many students miss the call to vote, contributing to persistently low turnout rates.
Wendy Degens and Cleo Freriks