Short news
The organisers of Westerpop have decided to discontinue the free pop festival in Delft. After 35 successful editions, it seems that keeping the event going is no longer financially viable.
According to the organisation, persistent inflation and the upcoming VAT increase in 2026 make it impossible to organise the festival ‘in its current form’. The risk of bankruptcy, mainly due to disappointing revenues due to bad weather, has become too high. An application for a guarantee from the Municipality of Delft to support the festival in case of bad weather was rejected.
The option of ticket sales was also considered. But that, according to the organisation, is not in line with ‘the original vision of an accessible and free festival’. As a result, last year’s anniversary edition unexpectedly became the very last edition of the event.
Professor Aukje Hassoldt will step down as dean at the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management (TPM) from 1 December 2024. She will continue her career as dean at the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Hassoldt studied physics at VU University Amsterdam and then gained board experience at Rijkswaterstaat, TNO and RIVM, among others, before taking office as dean at TU Delft in October 2019. At the time, she found a Faculty that had had four different (interim) deans in four years.
‘I leave behind a wonderful faculty and look back on a great period at TU Delft, during which I was able to work with many fantastic people,’ she reflects in a message on the university website.
Despite an earlier decision to stop cooperating with the fossil industry, Utrecht University receives €1.5 million from oil company BP for research into renewable energy. This causes confusion: is the university ignoring its own rules?
After all kinds of student protests and discussion groups, the university decided in July 2023 not to establish any more ties with fossil companies. Unless they demonstrably contribute to the energy transition, in line with the climate goals of the Paris Agreement.
This poses a problem: to meet the Paris goals, oil and gas companies will have to take less fossil energy out of the ground in the coming years, and BP wants more. Nevertheless, the collaboration with BP, which was agreed in as early as 2022, fits within the energy transition, says professor of catalysts and energy materials for sustainable energy Petra de Jongh. She stresses that the research is aimed at converting waste into circular fuels.
Criticism
But according to Linda Knoester of Solid Sustainability Research, a Leiden research firm that studies the influence of the fossil industry on science and education, it seems that the university did not include the Paris goals in assessing the collaboration.
And this despite the university itself writing that there is a climate crisis – an emergency even. So a systemic change is badly needed, Knoester notes. “The IPCC notes that rapid and far-reaching transitions are needed for a liveable future. But research on liquid fuels aligns well with oil industry interests and actually perpetuates them.” (HOP, OL)
How can you set up a reliable energy system on the road to 2050 whose sources – solar and wind power – are variable? The answer will probably be a combination of market design, grid arrangements and energy policy. But the question remains how to do this. This is also the subject of the extensive MODES (Market Organisation of the Dutch Energy System) research programme that was awarded NWO funding of almost EUR 4 million this July.
The main applicant is Laurens de Vries, Professor of Complex Energy Transitions at the Faculty of Technology, Policy & Management (TPM). Other applicants from TU Delft are Kenneth Bruninx (TPM), Aad Correljé (TPM) and Matthijs de Weerdt (Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science). There are also 17 co-applicants from various universities and universities of applied sciences in addition to more than 50 partners working in government and industry.
MODES will investigate the affordability, sustainability, fairness and transparency of different future energy systems. It will research feasible market designs for electricity and green hydrogen from offshore wind farms. And it will also simulate the impact of policies on the future energy market.
The research into the design of future energy systems is part of the National Science Agenda (NWA), which was put together by Dutch citizens. Believing that knowledge is key to societal impact, the NWA encourages knowledge production through collaboration between government bodies, researchers and civil society organisations.
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.
People with a higher education level are more willing to donate organs after their death. This is according to new figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).
Among the academic educated people, 46 percent consent to organ donation, compared to only 23 percent of the practically trained people. In contrast, 40 percent of the practically trained explicitly refuse organ donation, compared to only 21 percent among the university educated.
Origin also plays a role: 64 percent of people with parents not born in the Netherlands refuse organ donation, compared to 34 percent of people of Dutch descent. This difference could lead to a shortage of donors within certain population groups.
New law
To combat the shortage of donors, a new law has been in force since July 2020: those who do not pass on a choice are registered as ‘no objection’. Since then, many more people have registered their choice. It went from 49 to 72 percent of adults, according to CBS. (HOP, BB)
As tech studies become more popular, this could come at the expense of healthcare and education programmes, acknowledges education minister Eppo Bruins. This is partly why technical programmes continue to bring in students from abroad.
Last spring, chip manufacturer ASML threatened to leave the Netherlands because of restrictions on the influx of foreign students and highly skilled migrants, prompted in particular by the PVV and NSC. In response, the previous cabinet made 450 million euros available, plus 80 million euros a year from 2031, to recruit more students for engineering studies. This plan is called ‘Beethoven’.
Recruitment campaigns
Government party NSC asked written questions about this plan. It wants to know how these funds will ensure more technicians. Bruins has no concrete answer to this, but suggests that companies and educational institutions can develop programmes to attract international students to jobs in the microchip sector and adapt their recruitment campaigns to break ‘gender bias’.
Bruins acknowledged the NSC’s concerns that the potential success of engineering studies could come at the expense of healthcare and education. Therefore, according to the minister, regions are working to ‘enlarge the pool of talent’. He mentions upskilling and retraining of workers, but also ‘the targeted attraction of international talent’.
Other countries are also struggling with a shortage of technicians, he explained. One solution in those countries: once their engineering students have gone abroad, they want them to return to the ‘home country’. (HOP, BB)
In more and more student cities, secondary vocational education students (MBO) take part in the general introduction days. But they are not yet welcome everywhere, or they do not know how to find the introduction days.
The website of the OWee, Delft’s introduction week, talks about a ‘multi-day event for all upcoming first-year students of TU Delft, Inholland University of Applied Sciences and The Hague University of Applied Sciences. That MBO students are also welcome is not clear from the text. Yet that was the case for the 13th year in a row, says liaison community relations Alex Lokhorst. ‘But not a single mbo student ended up participating.’
In Eindhoven, seven hundred MBO students were given access to the joint introduction party for all new students. According to the Eindhovens Dagblad newspaper, this was an ‘empty gesture’, as a total of five thousand tickets were available for college and university students.
Still, Eindhoven is ahead, compared to other cities. At the Eureka week in Rotterdam, MBO students were not welcome. In Maastricht, MBO students were allowed to participate in the introduction days, but did not come. Only five students registered. And Leiden talks about the ‘official introductory week of Leiden University’ on its website, while since 2014, students of the university of applied sciences (HBO) have also participated. And since last year, there is also room for up to 100 MBO students.
More attention
In recent years, more attention has been paid to the position of MBO students. Since 2020, they have been called ‘students’ instead of pupils by law. Since then, they have been fighting for access to student houses and student cafés with greater or lesser success.
(HOP, OL/Delta, MvdV)
According to a university spokesperson, no security guards in plainclothes walk around the campus of TU Delft nor has the university ever considered doing so. “We use two parties who are always recognisable. Our regular campus security is provided by G4S. But event security is also always recognisable,” said the spokesperson.
Commotion arose on Monday when it was revealed that Leiden University hires security guards for its The Hague branch who do not wear uniforms, but civilian clothes. A number of TU Delft students have classes in Hague buildings at Leiden University. For example, the Engineering and Policy Analysis master’s is located on the fifth floor of the Wijnhaven building. When asked if plainclothes security guards are also active here, a spokesperson for Leiden University answered that ‘security is custom work’ and that this ‘can apply in any building, including Wijnhaven.’
In the Dutch newspaper AD (in Dutch) student representatives expressed fierce criticism of the plainclothes guards hired for Campus The Hague. Human rights organisation Amnesty International reacted indignantly, as did the Haagse Stadspartij. This local political party has asked written questions about the security guards.
The Leiden educational institution calls them “proactive security guards. These “qualified security guards” would be “recognisable to everyone after being deployed a few times. According to the university, they are there to ensure the safety of students and staff, but in the AD, students dispute that reading.
Photographs
For example, the newspaper has student representative Esma talking about how some of her fellow students avoid the The Hague education buildings because they feel spied on. She has been conducting research for months, according to the newspaper, which would show that black students and people from the Middle East in particular are being closely watched. Furthermore, the guards would photograph students on campus, including at events and demonstrations.
According to a spokesperson of the Dutch organisation Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (Personal Data Authority), “surreptitious monitoring of people is certainly not allowed just like that. In general, rules apply to, for example, security and surveillance at universities. Exactly which rules apply depends on the exact circumstances.”
The spokesperson cannot say whether the authority is investigating this particular situation. “That is confidential.”
(HOP, BB/Delta, AdB)
The Students and Staff for Safety and the Executive Board will meet on 29 August. It is the first time the two parties are going to get together since the action group was formed in March this year.
Since its formation, the Students and Staff for Safety have anonymously called on the Executive Board (cvb) several times to adjust its policies. The first time, a few days after TU Delft published the Education Inspectorate’s report on social safety on 1 March, involved a petition.
In it, the group called on the cvb not to take the inspectorate to court, something the cvb and the supervisory board (rvt) were considering at the time. Despite the cvb and rvt subsequently refraining from taking legal action, a month later the action group launched a poll on the functioning of the cvb, followed by a statement in which it wrote that it would be better for the cvb to resign.
Input wanted
Initially, the people behind the action group did not want to make their names public because they feared for their positions. The cvb already invited them for an interview on 18 April, but for the sake of their anonymity they did not accept at that time.
Under their last letter, the immediate reason for the upcoming appointment, however, there were 41 names. In the letter, they called on the cvb and rvt to restore the lost trust. As for Students and Staff for Safety, the conversation with the cvb on 29 August will include self-reflection and accountability, as well as ongoing issues of social unsafety and democracy. A TU Delft spokesperson informs that the cvb will soon contact them ‘to discuss expectations’ and agree on the approach of the meeting.
There will also be a meeting with the rvt. On the Change.org website, the action group has a form where other students and employees can provide input for both talks.
- 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.
