VU + UvA = ?

Beide instellingen willen ‘een klassieke, brede, internationaal toonaangevende research universiteit’ blijven, schrijven ze in een persbericht. Daarvoor is samenwerking nodig; door de internationale concurrentiestrijd verwachten de twee universiteiten dat ze anders aan kwaliteit zullen inboeten. Ook de commissie-Veerman gaf in haar vorig jaar verschenen rapport aan dat instellingen meer regionaal moeten samenwerken.

Werkgroepen van de universiteiten gaan nu bekijken of samenwerking daadwerkelijk de kwaliteit van het onderwijs en onderzoek kan verbeteren en op welke manier dat moet gebeuren.

“Every TU student has had this experience: sneaking coffee into ‘no-coffee’ zones, inconspicuously holding the cup under a desk while avoiding eye-contact with guards making their rounds, taking hurried gulps and then finally relaxing to enjoy the last few sips after the guards have left and lecture has begun.
Students are aware of the no-coffee rule, yet we constantly break it. Why? Because it’s ridiculous and seemingly arbitrary: while practical rules – like where not to park your bike or toss your trash – arise from necessity, the ‘no-coffee’ rule seemingly manifests itself randomly on campus, based solely on the whims of some secret coffee council that meets annually in a stuffy room, and where clad in ankle-length, scholarly robes the presiding members decide where on campus coffee will be banned or allowed.
Anyway, that’s how I imagine it, since the rule keeps changing year to year. At the aerospace faculty, for instance, coffee was initially allowed in lecture halls and project rooms, but is now banned. Meanwhile, food and drinks were long banned at the central library, until suddenly this year they were allowed!
When this subject comes up, the TU caretakers’ first argument is that it’s a hygiene issue: coffee attracts ants, food causes unpleasant smells, and since students are generally pigs, drops and crumbs get stuck in places they shouldn’t and future generations of TU students will suffer the consequences: smelly, dirty, ant-infested project rooms! But is this really true? Take the central library for example: once drinks and snacks were allowed in the study cone, did the place become a disgusting, smelly swamp of bacteria? No it did not, because, ‘shockingly’, students turned out to be respectful enough to treat TU property with care. Moreover, after months of hearing how important it was to keep food out of project rooms, we were surprised one day to find a catering service inside one of the project rooms serving warm snacks to participants of TU-hosted seminars and workshops. When the TU’s caretakers witnessed this horrible breach of holy TU rules, they…joined in to have some snacks! Hypocritical much?
The second argument supporting the ‘no-coffee rule’ is to prevent damage to TU computer hardware. This rule is particularly confusing, as coffee was allowed in the old project rooms, where there was one computer per student, yet coffee isn’t allowed in new project rooms, where new TU policy requires each student to have his/her own laptop and there is only one PC per five students.
Strange, no? Like if I spill coffee all over my laptop, the TU will care? Further, when sitting at home having a cup of coffee while working, how often do you spill it all over yourself or your computer? Rarely, unless you’re five-years-old or have some sort of motion disorder. And if it does happen, do you simply let the puddle seep into the carpet or dry into a moldy black crust on your desk, or do you, like a civilized person, get a napkin and clean up the mess? In my opinion at least, university students are civilized persons.
When making such rules, the TU should also think about the productivity levels of coffee-deprived students. In a coffee-loving country like the Netherlands, saying ‘no coffee in project rooms’ is like saying ‘no water in the swimming pool’: you can breast-stroke or back-paddle all you want, but you won’t get very far.”

Olga Motsyk, from Ukraine, is a BSc aerospace engineering student