I’m a master’s student in International Relations track, and it’s my fourth year at the UvA. I have been part of the Amsterdam student movement since my second year, during which I became interested in activism. This ultimately led to me learning about the CSR and Activistenpartij, culminating in being elected to the CSR last year. Within the council, I focused primarily on the elections, but I also worked on things like house rules and media policy. I also did what I could to make the CSR O&M Committee functional as its only (until recently) AP member.
My main focus in the CSR is using it as a vehicle of politicisation of the student body. This is why I spent so much of my time in the council working to expand the scope of the elections, especially when it comes to voting period and campaign spaces, to make sure that AP is able to reach as many students as possible and get them thinking about the UvA policy and the many issues that we’re currently dealing with. I hope that a strong student participation in university politics will be the base on which we can push for further democratisation and all of our other goals. For the next year, I hope to work on this further by extending the elections to a full two weeks. I also want to look at the financing for student parties to make sure the money isn’t wasted on inactive/joke parties, especially in the era of budget cuts. I also hope to become a chair of the O&M Committee to ensure that it fulfills the role of connecting the CSR to the students, as it was evidently unable to do so so far – there is a reason many people don’t even know we exist. I strongly believe that all of these initiatives together will lead to us fostering a strong democratic and progressive student culture which could stand firm against overreach by the UvA administration.
Activistenpartij UvA 