‘Why can’t the twats just following courses simply keep out of the UL? Even if you aren’t serious about your own future, you could at least try not to disturb other people who are.’ In the film clip, the students chuckle at this, but the Facebook page EUR Confessions, where EUR students can anonymously pour out their feelings, is full of such statements: complaints and irritations about HR students who make use of the study facilities available on the Woudestein campus.
“You recognise them by their ‘frikandel’ buns [a sort of minced-meat hot dog] and Red Bulls,” said one of the students. But not all the students feel that their neighbours from the University of Applied Sciences are the cause of the problem. “It’s mainly because the university library’s being renovated and there’s no suitable replacement,” another student commented.
Now that the university library has been shut for a year and a half, the competition for study places is certainly fiercer than ever. The question increasingly being posed is: shouldn’t HR students be excluded (whether or not temporarily) from the campus, so that the few available study places are kept free for EUR students?
No checking of student cards
No, was the emphatic response from an Erasmus University spokesperson. “We have no plans to actively exclude HR students. To do so, we would have to introduce control measures, such as checking student cards. And this would impact negatively on our own students as well, nor does it fit in with the way we want to interact with one another.”
Despite the fact that no measures are to be introduced, Erasmus and Rotterdam’s University of Applied Sciences are definitely in contact about the influx of HR students. “There is contact with HR about improving the study facilities on both sides. If these were of the same standard, the HR students would have less cause to come to EUR.”
If these were of the same standard, the HR students would have less cause to come to EUR.
The Polak building
At Rotterdam’s University of Applied Sciences, they are well aware of the sentiments prevailing on the Erasmus campus. “EUR students notice the HR students and we know HR students make use of EUR facilities,” said Martijn Baarendse, a policy advisor for HR’s FIT department [Facilities and Information Technology]. “However, we don’t know how many. Why do they go there? On the one hand because there is less space here due to the new building, on the other because the facilities in the Polak building meet the students’ needs.”
Baarendse expects the ‘problems’ will be solved in the near future. Currently, HR is having a new building constructed next to the campus. “Our own new building will cater for our students’ needs. It’ll provide more spaces where students can work on their laptops. Moreover, the Wi-Fi will work efficiently and there’ll be sufficient power points.” The building is expected to be ready by September.
