The proposal that was adopted (seventeen votes in favour, five against, one abstention) calls for the elections for student representatives to be held university-wide, rather than by individual faculties. Students will vote for individual candidates, who may stand for office either in their own individual capacity or on behalf of a party. The number of seats on the Council awarded to each party will be calculated on the basis of the number of votes cast for the party’s candidates, divided by the electoral threshold. Independent candidates who get the required percentage of votes can be elected to the Council by means of preferential votes. In other words, the system by which students will be elected to the Council will be very similar to the system used in the elections for the Dutch Lower House. However, staff representatives will continue to be elected by individual faculties.
Lowest turnout in the country
Many university councils in the Netherlands are struggling to get people to vote, but EUR takes the biscuit, its voter turnout having been among the lowest in the country for many years now. Generally, the number of candidates running for election is small, too. At the same time, EUR was different from other Dutch universities for many years in that it adhered to a different system, whereby student representatives were elected by individual faculties, and they were not allowed to unite in parties. Although it has never been proven that there is a correlation between this unusual system and the low voter turnouts recorded in Rotterdam, groups of student representatives on the Council have argued for years that a switch to university-wide elections involving parties running on collective programmes is needed.
That system was nearly introduced in 2018. However, in order to arrive at the required two-thirds majority, a compromise had to be made: elections would be university-wide, rather than faculty-specific, but candidates would not be allowed to join and form groups or parties. Initially, it seemed that informal parties without an official list of candidates would be allowed to run, but when a group of students calling themselves ‘Erasmus Unity” tried to do that in the 2020 elections, the Central Electoral Committee put a stop to it. The compromise did not have the desired result. Although voter turnout was higher in 2020 (possibly because things felt urgent at the time because of the coronavirus pandemic, which had just begun), the recent May 2021 elections had the lowest turnout ever.
Politicisation
Last November, the student representatives on the Council sought to change the system and allow the formation of parties. That proposal did not get the required two-thirds majority. According to the people who voted against the proposal, they mainly did so because quite a few of the consequences of the new system had not been properly considered. They also objected to the politicisation that might result from the introduction of a party-based system. Others feared that the diversity of the Council might suffer – for instance, because certain large faculties or student societies would be overrepresented. Many of these concerns were allayed because there have been many discussions on the subject in recent months. “The new system will be evaluated, too. Maybe we should just try it and see what happens. It was obvious the old system was ready for a change,” councillor John van Wel said, explaining why he changed his mind.
The final proposal will be presented to the Council and subjected to a vote in September.
