{"id":128481,"date":"2021-07-01T15:08:57","date_gmt":"2021-07-01T13:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=128481"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:25:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:25:42","slug":"iso-and-lsvb-presidents-step-down-after-a-bizarre-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2021\/07\/01\/iso-and-lsvb-presidents-step-down-after-a-bizarre-year\/","title":{"rendered":"ISO and LSVb presidents step down after a bizarre year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lockdowns, self-tests, webcams, and then the national elections as well. It was a strange and hectic year for student organisations ISO and LSVb.\u00a0 A lot stranger than the two presidents had ever seen coming.<\/p>\n

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Dahran \u00c7oban (ISO \/ Dutch National Student Association) and Lyle Muns (LSVb\/Dutch Student Union) say goodbye. They say that they no longer carry a press telephone around with them. These have been passed on to their successors.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels as if something has been amputated\u201d, says \u00c7oban, but not for Muns: \u201cTo me, it feels like an oasis of calm. I can sleep in now; nobody is calling me out of bed.\u201d \u00c7oban is surprised: \u201cOh, I haven\u2019t managed to sleep in yet. I still wake up at half past six.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two student leaders took office when the first lockdown hit higher education. All lessons suddenly had to be taught via a laptop. In-person education was completely out of the question and suddenly their year on the board was looking pretty different from what they had expected. No trips around student cities; almost everything had to be done from behind a screen.<\/p>\n

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Juggling<\/h2>

Muns: \u201cIt was a totally different year than what we had hoped for, and it was also really complicated. We saw how much impact the crisis had on the well-being of students. We had to plead for more space. On the other hand, we simply couldn\u2019t say: \u2018Let\u2019s leave these measures in place.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u00c7oban: \u201cWe sometimes had to juggle things about a bit: What do students want, and what is good for society as a whole? Students did their very best. The media sometimes said that they were the ones who caused the second wave, while I mainly saw students put their whole house into quarantine or draw up strict house rules. Sometimes students weren\u2019t allowed to enter their own homes because they had left the bubble at Christmas to visit their parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

And students were not given much consideration at first. Roommates were not even allowed to sit together on a grass field because they were not officially a \u2018household\u2019. It led to all kinds of (unjustified) fines<\/a> and recriminations.<\/p>\n\n\t

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Also watch this broadcast of EM TV in which Lyle Muns is a guest.<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t