University Council elections kick off with record number of candidates

In a turbulent week with some of the candidates demonstrating on campus because of Gaza, the elections for the University Council commence. From Tuesday 14 May to Wednesday 22 May, students can vote for a record number of 97 candidates, spread across five parties and six individuals.

Remarkably, the largest party in the current council – the Erasmus Alliance – only offers one candidate on this year’s list, current councillor Emre Ulusoy. As a consequence, the party will lose at least three seats of its current four.

New party

Newcomer to the list is OUR Erasmus, whose list leader is current Alliance councillor Timo Zandvliet. According to the party, the list includes representatives of all the largest study associations at Erasmus University. In this way, the party wants to better represent the associations in the council.

Furthermore, Liberi Erasmi (now 4 seats, 20 candidates on the list), Erasmus Student Coalition (2 seats, 30 candidates) and the Progressive Student Party (2 seats, 10 candidates) are also represented on the list again.

Twelve out of 24 seats

A total of twelve seats are up for grabs by students on the council. The council consists of 24 members, the other twelve are staff and they are elected once every two years. The candidate list can be found here and EUR students can vote via verkiezingen.eur.nl until Wednesday 22 May.