News in Brief

The reason for this stem’s from the 3mE faculty’s re-evaluation plan ‘Performance and Critical Mass’, which has been sitting with the Works Council since May 30. According to the taskforce’s chairperson, Anka Mulder, this leads to lots of irritation

within the departments involved. Dineke Heersma, chairperson of the Works Council, responded by saying that she also does not want to encounter delays. “But before we decide, we want our questions to be answered,” she added. “That’s why it’s difficult to set a deadline.”

Woliday

This week the 22 students participating in the National Thinktank presented 22 solutions for the labor market of the future. The students considered the challenges and strong points of the current labor market, as well as the most important trends. Three TU students, including Maaike Zwart, an architecture student, brainstormed to come up with creative solutions. Zwart found the ‘Woliday’ one of the funniest ideas presented. “The divide between work and private life is increasing being eroded. With the Woliday, you can also work during your vacations, thus extending it. You then no longer have to worry about your vacation days. It involves a bond of trust between employers and employees, and they both help to ensure that work is delivered on time.”

Outline agreement

State Secretary Halbe Zijlstra and the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) entered into an outline agreement on Friday, 9 December 2011. This agreement is intended to lead to an improvement in study success rates and the quality of education, more profiling and differentiation in education, a sharper research profile and better use of research results. The agreements will be further elaborated into achievement targets for each individual university before the summer of 2012. TU Delft is content with the agreement, because it provides greater freedom for making individual agreements with the government.

Rent

TU Delft’s real estate department expects to end the 2011 financial year with a negative balance of more than 8 million euros. The financial result would be positive if the department charged the faculties higher rents, however. Chairman of the Executive Board, Dirk Jan van den Berg, says that, in not doing so, the real estate department subsidizes the faculties. “If the rents were higher,” he added, “the faculties would have less money to spend.” In the past TU Delft opted for the faculties to pay rent for TU properties, in order that faculty administrators would understand that their buildings cost money.

Internet

Duwo and Ziggo have proposed making 32,000 IP addresses available for the new internet service in student housing complexes while offering a maximum internet speed of 50 Mbit/s. This proposal was sent to the various renter associations on December 9. Previously proposed new internet services had met fierce opposition from renter association members, such as those of WijWonen. Is this new proposal good enough? Marlies Bouman, of the WijWonen internet commission, isn’t saying yet: “It seems a bit more positive, but we need to thoroughly look through it and consult with our consultation committee and partner organizations in Amsterdam and Amstelveen.”

Every guy has a perfect dream girl, also known as ‘the one’. This is the kind of girl you would spontaneously ask to marry you at first sight. The search for the one is very unpredictable; sometimes it takes a hundred girls to find her, sometimes the first try is a perfect match. The duration of the search for the one is very much dependent though on the kind of demands a guy puts on her. In order to be the one a girl namely has to possess certain characteristics. Usual characteristics of the one could be something like: blond hair, blue eyes, cup size C, longs legs, smart and funny. More unusual characteristics could be things like: she has to be of foreign descent, a huge Star Wars fan or she needs to have a boyfriend (more challenging). When it comes to the one, the more unreal she seems, the better.
All guys in Delft probably had a clear picture of their one in mind when they came to study here. What better place to meet the one than in university? The reality is hard. Due to the lack of girls in Delft the one is subjected to gradual process of decay. Over time one by one you start to let go of your demands when it comes to the one. Did I say she has needs to have a C-cup? Anything above A will do. Blond hair? A ginger with her hair dyed blond is also ok. And what about her being smart and funny? The ability to speak is already more than enough.
As the years pass the one gradually looses al her beauty and charm, like a tree looses all her beautiful coloured leafs during autumn. After five years of studying in Delft the one has degraded to the bare minimum: anything female will do.