{"id":106103,"date":"2019-11-15T14:03:38","date_gmt":"2019-11-15T13:03:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=106103"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:24:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:24:34","slug":"whats-beautiful-is-not-always-acknowledged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2019\/11\/15\/whats-beautiful-is-not-always-acknowledged\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s beautiful is not always acknowledged"},"content":{"rendered":"

A university that does not nurture is a contraction in terms, an ideological delusion that only has power of expression if you think that something like a value-free university exists. The opinion article from Chief Editor Wieneke Gunneweg<\/a> does not only demonstrate an uninformed cynicism about students\u2019 intentions, but is particularly a banal vision about the tasks of a university.<\/p>\n

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Eddie Adelmund<\/span><\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>

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Florian Wijker<\/span><\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>

Gunneweg recognises that students\u2019 mental well-being is under pressure. However, she wonders whether EUR\u2019s current measures are effective. She mainly seemed to have a problem with the university\u2019s willingness to satisfy certain student initiatives and demands (The Living Room, table football, funding for events, additional study spaces and the sustainable allotment). Gunneweg appreciates the attempt to handle the human dimension but suggests that students generally are no longer capable, because of an excess of stimuli, to commit to the most basic agreements or even to recognise an unpeeled potato as such.<\/p>\n

We actually spend the whole day on our mobile phones and leave our meal-making to those people who have trained for this. The university needs to stop pampering these desensitised, over-stimulated millennials and make clear that anything that\u2019s beautiful, takes effort.<\/p>\n

The opportunistic whiner and the over-stimulated drifter<\/span><\/p>\n

That most of the examples she mentioned are initiated and implemented by students who \u2018are really making an effort\u2019 here, seems to have passed her by. Instead of encouraging these students, Gunneweg pushes them aside as ill-mannered and undisciplined complainants who want something for nothing.<\/p>\n

In Gunneweg\u2019s universe, there are two types of students. The opportunistic whiner. This is the whingey student who milks dry the goodwill of the university by appealing for resources and a voice to achieve trivial projects. And the over-stimulated drifter. The stress of choices and impulses mean that this student is everywhere and nowhere. In the end, he does nothing because he wants too much and therefore can\u2019t do much. Both archetypes lack commitment to what they\u2019re doing. It demands the utmost in uniformed cynicism to conceive the group of student initiatives and participation in decision-making bodies as having a lack of commitment.<\/p>\n\n\t

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Lees meer<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t