Thursday 2 April. A group of pro-Palestinian activists has occupied the university building at Oxfordlaan 55. The Executive Board has ordered them to leave, but that order has been ignored. At about five o’clock, the police sent in a team to end the occupation. Our regular news photographer Joey Roberts captured a group of police officers, armed with batons and shields, walking past a wall.
Are we going to win the photo prize?
A beautiful and striking facade with giant pictures of squashed faces. It’s the editorial team’s favourite picture in recent months and we are (almost) unanimous in our decision: this will be our entry to the annual photo prize for higher education media outlets.
More about the prize in a moment, but first let me tell you about that facade. Did you know it is an artwork? Scans by Florentijn Hofman. A few years ago, I spoke to former conservator Mieke Dericks, who was retiring at the time. She chose this wall art, made specially for UM, as one of the three artworks closest to her heart. She told me that there had been a lot of brainstorming beforehand, that it should be something to do with MRI scans, as it is where the scanner facility is housed. It should be placed outside, against the grey concrete facade, because “that would create more openness”. Together with a photographer, Hofman created portraits of a number of volunteers, placing their hands and face on a photocopier.
Naturally, we hope to beat the twenty competitors to the top prize in 2026, although we do have to remember that we have never won first prize, not for the journalistic awards either (best background article, best column). For some reason, there is always something at the other universities that the professional judges are drawn to more. Delta from Delft always does well; in recent years, they have won prizes for stories about social insecurity, an article about the culture of suppression at a university centre, and multiple articles about ties between TU Delft and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
Back to the photo prize. The good thing is that, in a week’s time, we’re organising the Kring conference for higher education media outlets where the winners will be announced. And whoever organises the event is also in charge of the photograph award. All the pictures are currently on our desktop, we then combine them into a document and send them round, so that over a hundred of our colleagues can cast their vote. A sneak peek: there are a lot of protest signs (against a merger between art academies, budget cuts, the right-wing ‘Vrijmoedige Studentenpartij’), but also remarkable and amusing student portraits.
I can tell you that I am now utterly convinced of our chances of winning – a little optimism never hurt anyone.
The editor-in-chief gives a look behind the scenes at the editorial office