TU Delft’s executive board (EB) has cancelled a planned meeting with Students and Staff for Safety. Both parties did not agree on the conditions to hold a ‘safe conversation’ and how to do so transparently, but say they are still open to talk.
The group, which was formed by students and staff in response to the Inspection Report on social safety, and the EB were due to talk to each other for the first time on Thursday 29 August at the EB’s invitation. Students and Staff for Safety wanted to talk about self-reflection and accountability, among other things, as well as ongoing issues of social safety and democracy.
Transparency
The Students and Staff for Safety members preferred to do this in the presence of Delta, according to a statement they posted online on Friday, ‘because the Plan for Change indicates that transparency is important to achieve a socially safe environment’ and because the action group ‘represents a large part of the TU Delft community and wants to inform them through Delta’. The members also wanted the spoken language to be English and for one of them to chair the meeting.
But it did not come to this meeting, as a few hours beforehand, the group received an e-mail with a cancellation. According to Students and Staff for Safety, that e-mail stated that ‘the presence of a Delta reporter did not feel safe’.
Unsafe
The cancellation follows an earlier proposal by the EB to ‘discuss in smaller committee what is needed to have a safe conversation’. ‘The group did not comply to this and the EB therefore decided to cancel the planned conversation with the action group,’ a TU Delft spokesperson said.
‘Such an initial conversation should be able to be held in confidentiality. A conversation in which everyone feels comfortable to speak out freely. The presence of a journalist does not yet fit into a setting where what is needed to make a conversation safe for all involved has yet to be determined.’
According to the spokesperson, the EB has suggested having another objective party present at the conversation, such as an ombuds officer. ‘That does not mean, by the way, that Delta would never be welcome at meetings, or that an open and transparent report cannot be made afterwards.’
Open to conversation
Both the EB and the group are still open to conversation. For Students and Staff for Safety, the presence of an independent, third party publicly reporting on the meeting remains a requirement in this regard. ‘This, according to the group, can also be a person other than a Delta reporter ‘as long as it is a party we both trust and who is allowed to make the minutes of the meeting public,’’ a member of the group says.
- Do you want to know more about the Education Inspectorate’s report and everything related to it? Then check out Delta’s dossier on the matter.
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