{"id":142613,"date":"2022-08-10T10:56:38","date_gmt":"2022-08-10T08:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=142613"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:26:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:26:22","slug":"fifty-eurekaweeks-marjoleine-van-doorn-gave-birth-in-a-eurekaweek-shirt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2022\/08\/10\/fifty-eurekaweeks-marjoleine-van-doorn-gave-birth-in-a-eurekaweek-shirt\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifty Eurekaweeks: Marjoleine van Doorn gave birth in a Eurekaweek shirt"},"content":{"rendered":"

This year marks the fiftieth edition of the Eurekaweek. Reason for EM to talk to various key figures from 49 years of Eureka history. This time: Marjoleine van Doorn oversaw three Eureka committees in the 1990s and even gave birth in a Eurekaweek shirt.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Marjoleine van Doorn dressed in her Eurekaweek shirt.<\/span><\/p>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPrivate photo<\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

In 1989, Marjoleine van Doorn was still organising international scientific conferences on behalf of the academic publisher Elsevier, but the birth of her first daughter made travelling very difficult. This is why she decided to transfer to Erasmus University, where she was to coordinate a wholly different type of event: the Eurekaweek.<\/p>\n

Pissing against the bar<\/h2>\n\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t
\n\t\t\u2018All sorts of things already went wrong with the collection of the participation fees, and then the closing party still had to come\u2019\n\t<\/blockquote>\n\n\t<\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

Chuckling: \u201cAll sorts of things already went wrong with the collection of the participation fees, and then the closing party still had to come.\u201d\u00a0 At that party, in the Engels establishment next to Rotterdam Central Station, things got completely out of hand, according to a contemporary article in the newspaper Het Vrije Volk.<\/em> A member of the introduction committee told the newspaper: \u201cThe carpet in Engels was ruined by burning cigarette butts. At one point, a couple of those frat boys even pissed against the bar.\u201d The damage: thousands of guilders\u2019 worth of damage. Van Doorn: \u201cConsequently, the university had to fill in the gaps, and not for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until then, there was some oversight of the committees that organised Eurekaweek, Van Doorn recounts, but the students basically ran the show. That had to change from 1990 onwards. \u201cThe first thing I did was to put the finances in order, and see to it that it would have some continuity by providing better documentation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tigers <\/h2>

Stricter oversight did not lead to strained relationships by any means. Van Doorn was very fond of the committee, which was already in place in 1990 before she was appointed. \u201cIn that committee, they were all incredibly businesslike types. There was a spirit of entrepreneurship in those people. They understood perfectly well that you can\u2019 t spend more money than you can take in. We had two real tigers<\/em>, who would chase everyone up with their Excel spreadsheets and all kinds of lists. That Eurekaweek ran like clockwork, there were no incidents, and we got loads of compliments. I was extremely grateful for that\u201d, Van Doorn says proudly with a sense of pride thirty years later.<\/p>\n

Sometimes Van Doorn can barely visualise how things were back then. \u201cThe university was always completely closed the weekend before Eurekaweek. So, we had to drag our entire office out of there. In 1990, the committee ended up at the home of Van Doorn during the preparations for the week. \u201cThen they sat in my backyard stuffing hundreds of meal vouchers into envelopes. I was buttering bread for about seventy people who helped us fill the bags.\u201d<\/p>\n

Worried parents<\/h2>

Throughout the actual week, Van Doorn\u2019s main task was that of coach and mentor. \u201cAnd to reassure parents,\u201d she laughs. \u201cThen someone would call me and say: \u2018Yes, ma\u2019am, my daughter is from a small village and she is going to be sleeping in the gym. Is there a separate boys\u2019 and girls\u2019 dormitory? Will you be there too?\u201d Then the whole committee would laugh, because we all knew what that was about, of course. I told them that we were doing our utmost to ensure that everything would be safe. Still, I could certainly understand that parents were sometimes worried that we might lose someone somewhere in the middle of the night. You can never really guarantee that nothing will happen. But that an \u2018adult\u2019 was present was often enough to cheer them up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t

\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t
\n\t\t\u2018Then the whole committee would laugh, because we all knew what that was about, of course\u2019\n\t<\/blockquote>\n\n\t<\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

In the week of 1991, she was heavily pregnant with her second child. \u201cThat\u2019s what I like about students: they never freak out about things like that. We had to go around the pubs and clubs in the middle of the night in a van while I was seven months pregnant. So, I would tell them: if something happens, you have to call this person, my husband is at home, and if things go really wrong, you have to get me to the hospital.\u201d At the closing party, she still stood on stage with her pregnant belly, Lee Towers and the committee. \u201cWe did the polonaise with everyone there. I had so much fun then.\u201d She gave birth eight weeks later, and as a tribute to her committee she did it wearing a Eurekaweek T-shirt.<\/p>\n

Bitter pill<\/h2>

Van Doorn only had to step in once in a while, like the year after that. \u201cMy third committee made a sponsorship deal with a well-known computer brand. It sounded fantastic, and involved thousands of guilders, ultimately too good to be true. And it was -the committee had offered the company a kind of exclusive deal for all computers at the entire EUR. \u201cOf course, that can\u2019t be done at all. The Eurekaweek is only allowed to make deals that relate to the Eurekaweek itself. So, the party ended up being cancelled. That was a really bitter pill for the committee, which desperately needed the sponsorship money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Van Doorn\u2019s position at the municipality brought her into contact with Eurekaweek again in 2017, when the municipality started using civil servants as city guides during the introduction week. She noticed then that the character of the week had also hardly changed in all those years. \u201cThere is still a main opening event, an information market and an introduction to the city. No, nothing much has changed. They still even use the logo that we first introduced in 1990.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t

\n\t\t\n\t\t
\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

More about Eurekaweek<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t