Update University Council June

Time really has flown by during the pandemic. Luckily it looks like we’re all going into a well deserved summer break without too many restrictions. Our year is almost at an end and as we will have the transfer council on the 2nd of September, this will be the last update written by us, faction 16. Despite corona we enjoyed this year a lot, we had fun coffee meetings and really enjoyed working with all of you. Our candidates are almost ready to start their year and are looking forward to working with you or your successors! 

For the month of July we will take a break and take a well deserved rest from this busy council year. We will still be reachable via mail and whatsapp, it just might take us longer to respond. From mid-August we will be back in full swing preparing for our last and final council meeting. This is also when the new faction officially takes the reins. We will gladly introduce them to you in the upcoming months. 

Kind regards,
Faction 16
Rozemarijn, Freddy, Eoin, Lisa, Naila, Nirva, Arne and Dion 

This is the update of the June Council and some other updates. Enjoy reading, and as always don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions and/or remarks!

University Council updates
As we know that some of you already had the board transfer, we added a small quick explanation of who we are and what the University Council is. We are Lijst Calimero, the biggest student party in the University Council. Together with 3 other student parties and 2 personal parties we have monthly meetings with the Board of the University (BoU) to discuss different topics, give our advice or consent on documents like the budget of the University, and give input on policies within the university. As we are here to represent the students, we try to keep close contact with all of you so we know what is going on and what needs to be changed.

UGCE
The board presented an updated proposal for the repositioning of UGCE from its current place in the University College Groningen to the Faculty of Economics and Business. Although the Council was broadly in favour of the plan’s direction, we lacked crucial budgetary details to allow us to properly assess the plan. There were also significant ambiguities around the Venture Lab’s reorganisation and its financing. Following the council expressing its intention to vote against the plan, the board and the council came up with a compromise. Under a new arrangement, teaching and research activities of UGCE will continue as planned in September while a more detailed reorganisation plan for the Venture Lab will come before the council once again in October.

Graduation Fund
The board also introduced a revised version of the Graduation Fund (also known as the Profileringsfonds). Part of the revision concerned non-EU students access to the fund under equal conditions to that of EU/Dutch students. Lijst Calimero made a strong case to the board that non-EU students who wish to undertake a tuition free year should be able to avail of this under equitable conditions compared to that of EU/Dutch students. The revised Gradutation Fund now allows non-EU students to have their statutory fees (€2043) waived, but not their institutional fee (which ranges from eight to thirty thousand euro). We pointed out that this does not incentivise non-EU students enough to undertake a full-time board year and thus negatively impacts diversity in our decision-making system. More importantly, it means that non-EU students lack representatives in full-time study association boards or co-governance bodies. Lijst Calimero, therefore, suggested that the board look at how other universities such as Utrecht and Eindhoven approached this issue. These universities use a compensation system that allows both non-EU and EU/Dutch students to have their entire tuition fees waived. The Board agreed to investigate this and return to the matter during the August council. We also joined calls from other council members to allow students who transfer from other Dutch universities to be treated equally in access to the funds as those who obtained ECTS at the UG. 

Roadmap Sustainability
We had to vote on the long expected Sustainability Roadmap. This document contains goals for the next 5 years concerning sustainability. We voted in favour, but also mentioned that we had some concerns. We are of course in favour of making our University more sustainable and will work together closely with the involved parties to help achieve the goals 

Memo University-wide Research Platform
A little while back, we worked on a memo that suggested incorporating a university-wide research platform. The idea of this platform was to have a place where all staff could upload any open projects that they were working on, so that everything would be placed together in one online space. This should enable anybody of the UG who is interested in the research done at our University to have a clear overview and find the specifics they want to know. Through this platform, students would be able to easily see what possibilities there were for their thesis, PhD or simply developing their interests. Last Council, the memo was approved, and the Board of the University is currently looking into what the possibilities are for making such a platform a reality. You can read our full memo here. 

Accreditation student associations
There is going to be a new system for the accreditation of student associations. We received a document stating that they are working on a plan and that the relevant associations will be involved in the making of this plan. We are in close contact with the associations and if you have any questions you can send a message to Lisa! 

Year report data protection and reaction management
This document showed that during a year of online antics, our data did not get more protection than in previous years. There was very little improvement to speak of in a year where this became increasingly more important. The board has had a wake-up call with the new Google scandal and will be looking into different providers of online services, although due to the timing that has not been taken into this document. Nor has the new Multi-factor Authentication changes they are introducing. Hopefully this year our data will be safer than last year. 

Integrale Veiligheid and Report of Amnesty International
During the council we also discussed the report about Integral Safety. The report shows the current and desired situation regarding safety and the different kinds of integral safety such as crisis management, cybersecurity and social safety. This tied in together with the report of Amnesty International about sexual intimidation that came out earlier this month. The reports showed that 11 percent of female students and 1 percent of male students have been raped during their student time. Numbers that shocked us all, and therefore we and SOG urged the BoU to investigate the situation in Groningen and work together with the Hanze for a safer place. The BoU will write a proposal for this, and we will do everything possible to make sure this issue stays high on the agenda.

Finalising election results
For students the election excitement has cooled down. For the personnel, however, the results are still uncertain. Personnel of the Language Centre that had 0 hour contracts couldn’t vote, resulting in the candidate of the Language Centre not getting into the Faculty of Arts by two votes. Therefore complaints have been filed against the results, which means that the results for the personnel sections of the Faculty of Arts and the University Council are not made official yet. We are in close contact with the candidate in question about this, as the way this mistake happened also concerns students. You can read more about it in this article. 

Additional study costs
Next to your tuition fee you also have to pay costs for for example excursions or study books. To make sure these costs don’t become too high the UG sets a maximum amount of money for studies to ask of students. Next year this amount will be €789. We are glad the UG sets a limit as one of the only universities in the Netherlands for these costs, however, we also do think this amount is quite high and could harm the accessibility of education. As this discussion has flared up nationally as well we will see if the UG can make any improvements here in comparison to the rest of the Netherlands and communicate more clearly about these costs.

Law change & Articles of Constitution
In the last few weeks, Lijst Calimero has been contacted by study associations concerned about the new law, the WBTR, which imposes additional duties on the board members of associations and foundations. This law also means that some student organisations will need to change their statutes via a notary. Because these are expensive changes to make, especially for smaller associations operating on a limited budget, Lijst Calimero asked the board to create a fund for these associations to access in case the impact of this law change on their annual budget is significant. The board is now going to look into this matter with CUOS.  Does your organisation need to change your statutes, or do you need financial support in doing so? Then you should contact the CUOS via cuos.secretaris@rug.nl.

Housing situation next academic year
It is expected that the university will grow at around 15 percent again next year. The chances are high that there will be a housing crisis again. Therefore the University and municipality are working on organizing emergency housing for students that would otherwise be homeless. We are afraid that they are not organizing enough housing, therefore we are preparing with a group consisting of different organizations to help these students. More information will follow later!