Activistenpartij Candidate for Faculty of Social Sciences.
For a campus where our voice is heard!
I am a third year Political Science student planning to take on a Master’s in Political Theory. I work part-time, and most of my political activities so far have taken place within the organisation ROSA. In high school I have been the chair of the school board and I’ve been described as a natural teamworker, which is crucial for the board to function smoothly.
As a working student from a disprivileged background who experienced housing insecurity, I know firsthand the systemic barriers at the UVA. For example, a study advisor cannot take financial issues/stress as a valid reason for extensions/lecture recordings/tutorial absences and so on; it is just treated like a non-issue. It does become an issue when one is forced to skip classes to pick up any extra shift available to not end up on the street next month. The university’s failure to house its students is, likewise, intolerable. The notion that the university takes in more students than it can house only for some of them to stay homeless for months and sometimes even go back to their home countries is ridiculous. Both of the aforementioned problems are closely connected to the issue of a lack of democratization of our university structures; the model of education for profit is anything but conducive to debate, student power in policy-making, or making disprivileged voices be heard. I believe that students, who are the beating heart of the UVA, should have far more power to decide upon the actions that the university takes in relation to both its internal functioning, and external actors, such as Israeli universities or fossil fuel companies. To do that, we need a broad cooperation of activist movements to put pressure on the power of capital that is stripping us of our rights.
Activistenpartij UvA 