It doesn’t take the Swiss Ines long to answer the question of how old the university is. “50 years old.” She admits it’s a guess, but a well-reasoned one. “Before I came here, I had heard it was a relatively new university. It would be weird to think it’s centuries old.” She’s a first year and says she hasn’t heard much from the university about the upcoming anniversary, but she does remember an email, “about a gala or something? I can’t remember the exact topic, but that stuck with me.”
Fellow student Hannah helps her out: “The King is coming. I rang my grandma immediately; she loves royal families, so I wanted to let her know.” Although she has failed to remember that he will be coming for the fiftieth anniversary, as she thinks UM is 75 years old. “I saw something on social media with a 5. I couldn’t remember where the 5 was, though.”
Relatively young
She’s not the only one who is a few years out, a short investigation by Observant around university buildings in the city centre reveals. Although most do manage to get close to the right answer. All the students are aware that there has not been a university in Maastricht for very long. “When I applied, I read that UM was relatively young. A hundred years wouldn’t make sense,” says the American Sydney, who has just arrived in Limburg as an exchange student. “55 years old?” Not bad for someone who has barely had any time to read up on the subject.
“You never hear stories about the past in Maastricht, about the university and how it was. So you know it can’t have centuries of history. I’ll say 40, because I think he’ll say 50,” says the German Felix, pointing to his table-mate. Who is indeed correct. “My sister studied here too, and two years ago, she told me this anniversary was coming,” explains the Hungarian Balint. His time at Maastricht is almost up, Felix still has a year to go. “I like that everything is a bit more relaxed here. In Germany, education is so rigid. There’s much more contact here, in smaller groups. I like that.”
"There was nothing else?"
“Isn’t this the largest international university of the Netherlands? I read that when I was looking into studying abroad,” says the Australian Grace, after writing the number 75 on a piece of paper. “That feels like a good number. I know it doesn’t have a huge, long history yet – we were told that during our introduction, we were also given a tour of all the university buildings.” Why the university is so young, she can’t say. “Because there was nothing else?” Partly correct – she knows nothing about the story of the closure of the mines in South Limburg , the promised compensation, and the considerable lobby to establish an institution of higher education in the province.
Fellow student and Australian Ellie has also not looked into the history of the place that much, but does know exactly how many candles will be on the cake: 50. “I was at the presentation of Prince Carnaval last weekend, and they were handing out flyers with that number and something about UM. I thought they might have something to do with each other.” Yes, carnival society ‘De Tempeleers’ will also be celebrating the university’s anniversary, and this year, instead of awarding a Prinseorde to people who contribute to vastelaovend, they will award ’t Perfesserke (the Professor), a medal bearing an image of Sjeng Tans, joint-founder of Maastricht University.