A small shift in the Student Council: Lijst Bèta has pinched a seat from Oras. The division of seats is now six for Oras and four for Lijst Bèta.
Lijst Bèta and Oras campaigned for two weeks. (Photo: Justyna Botor)
“We are extremely happy,” says an elated Lijst Bèta Chair Saraf Nawar on the telephone. “We went for an additional seat this year and we did it.” Nawar believes that the Lijst Bèta campaign was successful because of the mix of offline and online visibility and the fact that they campaigned with five instead of four potential student council members. “We went for the best of both worlds. We had a clear presence on campus and talked to all sorts of students. We were also visible online with videos in which we explained what we were doing as a Student Council party and what we stand for.”
In previous elections the seat division seemed to be carved in stone: between 2013 and 2021, Oras always had seven seats and Lijst Béta three. Only in the 2012 result (in Dutch) did Lijst Bèta have four and Oras six seats. Lijst Bèta was founded in 2011 and Oras in 1973. Oras was then still called the Studenten Centrum Groep (central students group, SCG).
‘Fortunately Oras still has the majority’
Oras Chair Maarten de Nooijer is disappointed that his party will have to make do with one less seat in the Student Council. “But fortunately we still have the large majority. This is positive for us. This year too we will work hard on behalf of students.”
At 29.8%, the turnout for the elections this year was higher than in the last two years (27.6% in 2021 and 27.9% in 2020), but lower than in the years before that (35.4% in 2019, 38.1% in 2018 en 44.2% in 2017). Both De Nooijer and Nawar believe that the fallout of the Covid crisis affected the turnout figures. “It is good that more students voted than in the two previous years,” says Nawar, “but the percentage is still lower than in 2019, 2018 and 2017. I think it is because not every student is back on campus full time.”
During the Covid years of 2020 and 2021, the parties only ran online campaigns. “We are so glad that we can now have a presence on campus,” says De Nooijer. “It was fabulous being able to have meetings on campus again and being able to explain to students what we do and what we stand for.”
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