New list Erasmus International fights to preserve international community

The list comprises thirteen students, and the top three talked to EM via Teams in the run-up to the elections. Borja Ranzinger, an 18-year-old business student from Slovenia, was one of the two initiators. “I am personally really interested in student politics. I heard about the elections just a week and a half ago, when we got an email about them.” Not long after, he and fellow student Egor Fedorov founded Erasmus International.

The budget cuts are one of the reasons they established the list. During the preparations for the relay strike on Tuesday, Borja encountered German Bente Luise Schulz (22, MISOC) and Polish Mikołaj Kaim (20, IBA), who are now number two and three on the list. “The international community at EUR is more threatened by the budget cuts than anyone else. We want to show solidarity with the strikers”, says Borja.

The budget cuts are, of course, not an initiative from the university itself; however, Bente, Mikołaj and Borja believe they can make a difference in the council. “We can vote against any budget that harms the student community”, says Borja. Outside the council, the students want to support and organise protests against the budget cuts. They plan to join the strike on Tuesday with around forty students.

The other key point, as one might expect with this party name, is ‘the preservation of the international community’ at the university. “And we mean that including Dutch students”, emphasises Mikołaj. “We meet people from all over the world here at the university. Friendships are formed that last for years. This is a very unique community that we need to preserve.”

“Currently, the biggest threats to the international community are rising tuition fees for international students and the housing crisis”, says Bente. “This year, there will be an additional one thousand euros in tuition fees (for non-European students, ed.). And the housing costs here are excessively high compared to other cities. It causes a lot of stress and forces people to leave the university.”

The University Council elections begin on 9 April, and students and staff can vote until 16 April via verkiezingen.eur.nl. Five parties with multiple members are participating this year, along with three individual candidates. Staff choose their representative per faculty; whether elections are necessary depends on the number of candidates. This year, this is only the case at the ESL and ESPhil.