It was a year of academic achievements, heroes, turbulent education policy in The Hague, and above all, a disastrous report about the lack of social safety. Let’s look back at Delta in 2024. We will be back on 6 January. We wish you a wonderful festive season!
Delta is closing for the Christmas Holidays. (Photo: Marjolein van der Veldt)
January
The year 2024 started with a heroic act. Student Max jumped into an icy cold canal in Delft to rescue a woman whose car had landed in the water. The Mayor later bestowed an award on him for his deed. The most read article of the month was about the proposed preferential policy for women at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering. Two months later, the Inspectorate of Education said that the Faculty could not do this.
February
The discussion about internationalisation arose in national politics this month. The inflow of students from abroad should be limited, it was announced. We wrote that for TU Delft, the greatest impact of this would be on the Aerospace Engineering bachelor. Dap Hartmann, one of Delta’s columnists, also got involved in the discussion. His column on the subject was the most read article this month.
March
When the Inspectorate of Education published a damning report about the work atmosphere at TU Delft, it was all hands on deck at Delta. This was not only because of what was said in the report. The Administrators’ plan to bring the Inspectorate to court (that did not happen in the end) gave us plenty to write about too. We discovered that the greatest fear of TU Delft’s Administrators was reputational damage. Read everything we published about the report in our dossier.
April
April was the month in which one of our articles was taken offline. We published it on the morning of 15 April and, the same evening, were put under legal pressure to take it offline. The Rector Magnificus did offer his apologies, but it was not yet to be published online. It took two months before it could go online.
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May
News from The Hague: the long-term study penalty returns. A blow for students, we wrote in the most read article this month. Other developments outside TU Delft also created much tension. Pro-Palestine activists gathered at the Library on the 23rd to camp there for 23 days. They called on TU Delft to break ties with universities in Israel. Despite several discussions, the Executive Board did not heed them. Delta reported on the events in a liveblog.
June
When the activists left, they did not do so quietly. Their farewell action was to occupy the Aula, which we wrote about in the last posts in our liveblog. We welcomed the summer with a reconstruction of the events around tram 19.
July
Delta did not publish any articles in this summer month. But six TU Delft students won medals at the Olympic Games in Paris. Delta featured them and two other TU Delft Olympians in the En route to Paris series of interviews.
August
With the OWee around the corner, Delta climbed back into action after summer. We published our best read story of the summer about a beer bottles collecting student house facing a crisis. As we do every year, we reported on the OWee in detail. We went on a tour of the campus, looked at secondhand bicycles, and joined the quiet programme. Read everything in our case file about the OWee and IP.
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September
An excavator on its side was the most read article of the month and the second most read of the year. We also published a long interview with the Rector Magnificus about the lack of social safety this month in which he admitted to having the ‘classic engineer’s approach’. Philosophy Professor Ibo van de Poel was awarded the Professor of Excellence Award and told Delta about his virtues. On Prinsjesdag (Budget Day) it became clear how much the Cabinet is planning to cut from higher education budgets.
October
Vice-Rector Magnificus Rob Mudde leaves, and was the reason for a farewell interview. We also showed that victims of social safety at TU Delft end up in a web of hierarchical uncertainty if they file a report on their situation. There was also important scientific news: TU Delft’s nuclear reactor got a new cold source. And talking about the cold, our brief notice about the broken heating system in some TU Delft buildings was avidly shared.
November
November was a successful academic month, with articles about Mechanical Engineering students who built safes and the new QuTech quantum link. We also debunked a viral message about smelly students at EEMCS … umm, a university in Canada. This month TU Delft announced a true hero when Tobias van Oort, a security officer, rescued a man who had fallen in water close to campus. It was also the month in which students and staff in higher education protested several times against the cabinet’s budget cuts, both at TU Delft and beyond.
December
This month, the protests turned out to be somewhat successful: the budget cuts were scaled back. Good news for students followed: the long-term study penalty will not be returning after all. Heading to the end of the year, we published the most read article by far of 2024. Unlucky students will get up to EUR 6,500 EUR back (in Dutch). Another well-read article was about what could be done with discarded solar panels.
The Delta editors will be spending their rest of December around the Christmas tree. We will be back after the Christmas holidays on Monday 6 January 2025 with new background articles, news, interviews and reports. Happy holidays!
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