Will you spin or shall I?

Shortly after my extended leave, in which I travelled to Central and South America, I found the invitation to fill out the Participatory Value Evaluation about TU Delft | Rotterdam Campus in my mailbox. Luckily, the deadline had not yet passed so I could still participate. Since then, I have been waiting impatiently for the promised results. While you do hear comments here and there, I also wonder what the TU Delft community thinks of this development. And wonder if the community thinks it is the right direction given the circumstances? Do we think that TU Delft | Campus Rotterdam is worth looking into? And how will any concerns that staff members may have be included in the process?

The results finally arrived in the middle of the spring break. The TU Delft news was catchily entitled Results of the Participatory Value Evaluation (PVE). The news item’s brief summary states that 1,600 people filled in the questionnaire, wow! But is that the answer to the most important question? I wonder if the results are not desirable enough to be stated in the title or the summary.

I wonder if the results are not desirable enough to be stated in the title or the summary.

So I click on ‘Read more’. At last I found a result. ‘About 1/3 do not think Rotterdam Campus is a good idea, 1/3 do think it is, and about 1/3 set conditions.’ A few of the conditions put forth by participants are stated and softened with reassuring words. Not yet satisfied and now with even more questions than results, I read the following words: ‘You can read the whole report here’.

As we academics know, the outcomes of research are unknown

I read on and when I reach the fourth level of communications (you would almost believe that it was designed like this) I find the most important outcome: 35% say ‘No’, 38% say ‘Under certain conditions’, and 27% say ‘Yes’. Apart from the … what should I call it … ‘creative’ rounding off, you can interpret these outcomes in different ways.

• As: 2/3 (a large majority, to be precise 65%) say ‘Yes’ (including ‘Yes, if’), or
• as: 2/3 (a large majority, to be precise 73%, so actually almost three quarters) say ‘No’ (including ‘No, unless’).

I don’t remember the questionnaire clearly anymore and so I looked up what the question was again. It was whether research on the development of TU Delft | Campus Rotterdam was a good idea. Aha! In that case all the ‘Yes’ voters (27%) are also saying ‘Yes, if’. After all, they are saying ‘Yes’ to the ‘research on’. And as we academics know, the outcomes of research are unknown and could still lead to the conclusion that this development it is either not a good idea or that the specified conditions cannot be met.

An alternative title for the news item could have been ‘PVE results show that almost no one is convinced that a campus in Rotterdam is desirable’ with the sentence ‘A majority does think it is worth researching this development’ ,this would have saved me a lot of clicking and reading.