Why are we treated differently?

Unfortunately, being a buitenlander (foreigner) can be challenging, because for mystifying reasons we’re often treated very differently from Dutch students (or sometimes it’s EU students being treated differently than non-EU students). Sometimes Dutch bureaucracy is just trying to catch up with increased numbers of foreign students, but sometimes we are flat-out taken advantage of. Here are a few examples.



Housing: you’re probably being hosted by Duwo. They will probably try and exploit you somehow. Don’t let them. For example, Duwo used to charge students in short-stay housing 10 euro a month for plates. Thanks to hard work by the Delft International Student Society (Diss), these dish sets are now being offered for a flat fee at cost, or about €35. I guess Duwo thought that if they could get away with charging a student €200 over two years for dishes which cost €35, they may as well. So when they inevitably try something else like this, watch out!



Work: restrictions will vary, but buitenlanders are allowed to work as students, typically for up to 10 hours a week if you’re from outside the EU. Unfortunately, the student employment office Stud will not help you in any way if you’re not from the EU. I have no idea why this is, but when I went in they couldn’t even recommend any additional resources. Fortunately some other international students have done some homework on this, and one place you can go for freelance jobs is the ZZP-10 agency.



I understand that there will be some differences in treatment between international and Dutch students, and sometimes this difference makes sense. For example, international students have their own orientation week, geared towards their unique needs. But most of this disparate treatment is wrong. When a friend of mine who just graduated from the Sustainable Energy Technologies program told me that his graduation ceremony was separate from the Dutch students in his program, I was a little shocked. But I’ll tell you what I told him: if you find yourself being treated like this, speak up. Tell Diss, which works to address the concerns of international students on campus. Also tell the rector magnificus, the International Office, and your academic program coordinator. Remind them that the tuition for international students was raised by 50% this year, and tell them why you think something is wrong or unfair. If your friends agree with you, tell them to speak up, too. Maybe you don’t understand why Duwo charges you for something, or you think the university should help non-EU students find part-time work (it’s the least they can do after raising our tuition €4,000). This actually works: for example, thanks to student complaints to Diss, Duwo recently stopped entering student residences without notice or authorization (as if that policy ever made sense to begin with. In fact, it was illegal). You can find out more about recent victories and continuing efforts at the Diss website, but their actions are driven by student input. There is some momentum to affect change right now, so let’s not lose it. Let your voice be heard!



Diss: www.diss-online.nl or board@diss-online.nl

Rector magnificus: rector@tudelft.nl

International office: internationaloffice@tudelft.nl

ZZP-10 agency: www.zzp10.nl

How to establish if the print of an etching by Rembrandt dates from say 1640, during his lifetime, or from hundred years later, if, as is the case for most of his prints, the paper doesn’t carry a watermark?
A new technology presented this week in a PhD thesis by Mark van Staalduinen offers an alternative identification method for handmade or ‘laid’ paper. The technique works by analyzing the pattern of the horizontal and vertical wires that form the imprint from the sieve that the paper was made in. This pattern is so unique that it can be regarded as the paper’s fingerprint: it links the sheet to a certain manufacturer during a relatively short time period (because the sieves became progressively deformed in the paper-making process, they were not used for long periods of time).

Van Staalduinen describes the technique he developed at the faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Sciences. First, a piece of paper is scanned, either by backlighting or subjecting it to soft x-ray radiation (more expensive, higher quality). Image analysis then identifies the orthogonal lines and orientates the image with the chain lines running vertically. Van Staalduinen has shown that the combination of the distance between the chain lines (typically between 2 to 3 centimetres) and the average density of the horizontal laid lines is sufficient for making a unique identification.
There is a glitch however: the identification requires a large reference database. “The technology is very powerful”, says Dr Chris Stolwijk, of the Van Gogh Museum. “However, building up a database of tens of thousands of paper sheets costs time and money. And we don’t know yet where to get that from.” 

Mark van Staalduinen, ‘Content-based Paper Retrieval Towards Reconstruction of Art History’, 7 October 2010. PhD supervisor Professor Jan Biemond.