Activistenpartij UvA

Despite being endorsed by several student and staff associations, as well as the student unions, Carlos’s application for Chair of the Executive Board of the UvA (CvB) has been rejected. He was not even given the opportunity to interview for the role. This underscores how even when students attempt to enact change from within the current model of governance, we are still not taken seriously.

We see this as but one hurdle in our longer fight for a bottom-up model of university governance. It is time for a radical reckoning of the neoliberal “New Public Management” form of governance which dismisses our education as a diploma factory. We must do away with untransparent and undemocratic selection committees and supervisory boards. All power must return to the hands of the students and staff who comprise this university.

The time has come for us to stand together in solidarity as students, academic staff and non-academic staff to once again put forth the call from our predecessors during the student protests in 1969 and 2015.

In the face of the increased austerity and militarisation that loom ahead of us in national politics, democratisation and decentralisation at this university must go far beyond filling vacant positions in the university leadership. In the past few years, various members of the CvB, past and present, have proved that their bureaucratic and out-of-touch style of management has fallen severely short in dealing with crises on campus, or maintaining a fair and ethical university.

Sign the petition now to democratise the UvA, with the following demands:

1. TRANSPARENT PROCEDURES:

There must be an immediate increase in transparency in policy-making and selection procedures at this university, including but not limited to:

• regular, detailed updates on the progress of cutting ties with Israeli institutions involved in Horizon EU research projects
• no cutting of programs or tracks (such as the English track of Psychology) without consultation with involved students and staff, and consent of participation bodies (the Central Student Council (CSR) and Workers Council (COR))

2. DEMOCRATIC CVB ELECTIONS:

Only a CvB elected by the people can be accountable to the people.

We thus demand that the current non-transparent selection committee and headhunting agency is abolished, and new members of the CvB are elected either via a total public election by all members of the university community, or at least via our elected representatives in the CSR and COR.

3. Transition from “medezeggenschap” to “zeggenschap”:

It is time to move the university governance model from student and staff co-determination (medezeggenschap) to full student and staff determination (zeggenschap). We demand a return of the University Council, where students, academic staff and non-academic staff are all democratically represented and in solidarity with each other. The University Council will be responsible for electing faculty deans as well as the Executive and Supervisory boards. In doing so, we will have a comprehensive right of consent instead of the token advisory right that councils currently have.

We understand that at the UvA, petitions are often purely symbolic and ignored by the CvB. As such, we see this petition as a cry to rally our voices behind. Let it be a show of force and just one of the many tools in our arsenal to pressure the CvB and emphasise that we, the people, make this university.

One way or another, we will rise up and democratise this university, and finish what our predecessors in 1969 and 2015 started.