In his opening column in September 2002, Boon’s fellow columnist John Hagedoorn cheerfully set the tone: “Now that we’re starting to lose our own hair, we might as well start ruffling everyone else’s.” Boon took that to heart. The founding father and dean of University College Maastricht, newly energised by welcoming UCM’s first cohort of students, was a born polemicist. University administrators and petty officials alike regularly felt the sting of his pen. And when something annoyed him, he said so in no uncertain terms. Take Premium, the computer program used to create timetables and record exam results. “Not exactly user-friendly”, Boon wrote. “But if you always have a headache, you start thinking it’s normal – so the poor souls forced to use it have resigned themselves to the misery.” When faculties demanded improvements, Boon continued, “our industrious colleagues at ICTS were paid to teach the Premium mastodon some new tricks. Once ICTS started programming, I hear they created something of an electronic Chernobyl.”
Incompetence
His fellow columnist Hagedoorn agreed whole-heartedly, launching into a rant about ICTS’s poor service the following week. In his next column, Boon responded, “The incompetence and sloppiness that characterise this part of UM ensure that anyone with any sense steers well clear of this Soviet-style bureaucracy.”
Then, on 9 January, Observant ran the headline “Criticism of Executive Board leads to columnist’s departure”. ICTS director René Kocken had complained to the Executive Board, prompting Rector Arie Nieuwenhuijzen Kruseman to call Boon to account. The columnist drew his own conclusions: worried that his writings might have repercussions for UCM, he decided to quit. Kocken denied making a complaint but spoke of “three worthless columns” and said it was “quite an honour” to be the catalyst for Boon’s departure. “It’s not my kind of humour, and I’ve got an excellent sense of humour”, he told Observant. “And frankly, I practically had to hold my people back from marching over to confront Louis Boon. If they had, Observant would have been left without a columnist anyway.”
Freedom of expression
Rector Kruseman maintained that he was perfectly within his rights to confront columnists about their writings. “If Boon is free to express his opinion, then so are we.” In his view, freedom of expression wasn’t at stake. “We didn’t forbid him to do anything; he made his own decision.” He denied that Boon’s position at UCM had ever been under threat.
Criticism
The Observant editors at the time expressed regret over Boon’s departure and found the rector’s key role in the affair troubling. “Even if the rector’s remarks were as noncommittal as Kruseman claims, they still came from the university’s highest authority.” This, they wrote, gave them a “hierarchical weight that stifles open debate”. While the editors sympathised with ICTS staff who felt aggrieved by the columns, they asked, “does that mean such criticism should no longer be written?”
Of course it doesn’t. The columnist’s freedom of expression – then as now – is far too valuable.