{"id":110309,"date":"2020-03-06T11:20:26","date_gmt":"2020-03-06T10:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=110309"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:24:44","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:24:44","slug":"university-council-wants-to-avoid-new-election-drama-with-pr-offensive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2020\/03\/06\/university-council-wants-to-avoid-new-election-drama-with-pr-offensive\/","title":{"rendered":"University Council wants to avoid new election drama with PR offensive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every year, Dutch universities hold new elections for their university councils. In Rotterdam, however, it has proven difficult to get students to cast their vote. For quite a few years now, EUR has had the lowest turnout percentages in the country (see sidebar). This year, Council Chair Hans van den Berg and his fellow council members will be taking a different approach to put the representative body back on the map. They hope that this will allow the Council to avoid entering a negative spiral.<\/p>\n

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Over the past few years, the relative turnout in Rotterdam was generally lower than at other universities: usually between 10 and 15 percent<\/a>\u00a0at EUR faculties where voters actually had a choice \u2013 but often enough, there were so few candidates that they were automatically assigned a seat. To boost turnout, last year the University Council launched a two-year experiment<\/a>: students no longer stand as candidates for individual faculties but for the entire university. But the plan backfired almost immediately: in May 2019, there were only 8 student candidates for 12 seats, meaning that there was\u00a0no need to hold elections for the student members<\/a>. The staff did continue to vote for council candidates on a faculty basis.<\/p>\n\n\t<\/div>\n

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Why did things go south last year?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThere weren\u2019t enough candidates during the May elections. That\u2019s why the elections were called off altogether. After we organised a second round in June, we suddenly had 16 candidates for 4 seats. We believe the first round may have been scheduled too early. In March, students don\u2019t exactly know yet what they\u2019ll be doing in September \u2013 which makes it difficult for them to commit to a candidacy at that time. On top of this, a lot of people aren\u2019t familiar with the University Council. Council members regularly have to explain what it is they do exactly. My impression is that the faculty councils are slightly better known because they work closer to the students. This is a decentralised university, which makes it hard for us to raise our profile at the central level.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does the University Council plan to do about this problem?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOn behalf of the Council, I have brought in an outside firm that will help us improve our name awareness. This firm told us: \u2018Before you start communicating, you first need to have a clear idea of your identity.\u2019 Every expression must have a relationship with that identity. So we defined that first. This year, we\u2019ll be focusing on three themes: community building<\/em>,\u00a0sustainability<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0policy<\/em>. In the context of community building, for example, we will be inviting a speaker who can tell us a bit more about stress. This is a subject that concerns a lot of students. And we plan to publicise all these activities as much as possible via social media and our website. This way we hope to increase our name awareness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year marked the first time students could vote university-wide rather than exclusively for candidates from their own faculties. This was part of a two-year experiment. Unfortunately, these elections had to be cancelled due to a lack of interest. Will the elections still be organised along the same lines this year?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThis experiment will be entering its second year, so we\u2019ll be sticking to the same format. We have tried to move the registration date forward though. However, the elections will be held during the same period as last year: 18 to 25 May \u2013 otherwise it messes up the holidays for the staff members who will be processing the results. We\u2019ll be announcing the elections on 30 March, after which the candidates can register from 3 to 11 May. In contrast with previous years, candidates don\u2019t need to collect signatures beforehand. If there are serious objections to a specific candidacy, people are allowed to lodge an appeal.\u201d<\/p>

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Over the next few months, the University Council will be organising various events that focus on the themes community building, sustainability<\/em>\u00a0and policy,\u00a0<\/em>explains Council member Dolly Vellanki<\/strong>, who concerns herself with the council\u2019s PR. \u201cIn recent years, we often set up information stalls and gave away goodies, asking people for feedback on our activities. But a lot of them had no idea of what we were actually up to. That\u2019s why we will be organising a lot more activities that highlight what we do as a Council. We will also be inviting specific groups, such as members of the faculty councils and programme committees: students who have already shown an above-average interest in participation. And we\u2019ll also be training potential candidates how to organise their campaign \u2013 because a lot of students find this prospect very daunting. They often find it very \u2018American\u2019 to talk about yourself that way; they\u2019re not used to that kind of thing.\u201d The substantive workshops haven\u2019t all been planned yet, but Vellanki expects the programme will include events about personal leadership, greenwashing and mindfulness.<\/p>\n\n\t<\/div>\n

What happens if someone appeals against a specific candidate?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIn that case, the Central Electoral Commission will refer to the university council regulations to determine whether the candidature needs to be withdrawn. The establishment of an appeals procedure was a precondition for cancelling the signature requirement.\u201d<\/p>\n

On which grounds could this commission establish that an objection is well-founded? What are legitimate reasons for rejecting someone\u2019s candidacy?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThese regulations still need to be drawn up \u2013 which is something of a problem. We believed our first priority was to clear the obstacle of students having to collect signatures before registering as a candidate. This tended to be very time-consuming, and the signatures furthermore had to be checked by the electoral commission. Nevertheless, the university insisted that we needed to keep some sort of fail-safe mechanism in place that could be used to stave off unsuitable candidates \u2013 which became this appeals procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n

In previous years, even finding out who the candidates were was difficult enough: voters had to track down a scanned PDF on the university\u2019s intranet. Will this be improved too?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly. We\u2019ll be organising a Campaigning workshop for the candidates. And from 12 May on, we\u2019ll be presenting them one by one via our social media channels. Nowadays, we can also make changes to the page dealing with the Council on the university website \u2013 until recently, this wasn\u2019t an option. This page will feature blogs by Council members, as well as \u2018one-pagers\u2019: documents that explain specific Council subjects in the space of a single page.<\/p>\n

How will you be measuring whether all your efforts have paid off?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cTo start, we can check whether the number of visitors to our web page and social media channels has increased of course. But the key indicators will be the number of people who register as a Council candidate and the turnout during the elections.<\/p>\n\t

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Upcoming University Council events:<\/strong><\/p>\n

31 March \u2013 Announcement of elections
\n6 April \u2013 \u2018Personal Leadership\u2019 workshop
\n14 April \u2013 Council meeting at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague
\n30 April and 7 May \u2013 Campaigning trainings
\n18-25 May \u2013 Elections
\n29 May \u2013 Election party<\/p>\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t

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