Our university keeps up the appearance of democracy, but in reality operates in fundamentally undemocratic ways. In the article before you, Knokpartij’s list leader Koen de Kooter explains how this came about, what the situation is like now and how we can move forward.
The university is a very undemocratic institution. From the first origins of the modern university in the Middle Ages to every university today, students and university workers have had little to no say about the way their universities are run. Power has always resided with unelected and unaccountable boards of higher-ups. Students and workers have had no authority at all in matters concerning curriculum, university structures, social safety or even things as banal as the food the canteen serves.
How did we get here?
The frustration with the way the university world turns has been growing since at least the 1960’s, when the share of working class students increased dramatically. Before the Second World War, the student population consisted mostly of students with bourgeois or even aristocratic backgrounds. As the 20th century progressed, more and more working class youth got the means and opportunities to attend university. These students no longer accepted the thoroughly anti-student and anti-worker environment on university campuses. They first started organising themselves in student unions and setting up actions aimed at forcing through democratic reforms. The well-known height of this democratic student movement are the student uprisings that started in 1968. All around the world, in Nijmegen, Amsterdam, Mexico City, Chicago, Berlin, Paris and many more cities, students and workers joined together to take control of their universities. They occupied buildings and whole campuses, organised their own courses and lectures and, in many cases, forced the university boards to beg on their knees. In the Netherlands, the 1970 Wet universitaire besluitvorming (‘Law on University Decision-Making’) granted an incredibly high degree of determination to students and university workers as a direct response to the recent uprising. The tragedy lies in the partial reversal of these policies by the neoliberal governments of the 90’s and 00’s. This history resulted in what we at Radboud University know today as the University Student Council (USC), the Faculty Student Councils (FSCs), the Programme Committees (PCs) and the Works Council (WC). Collectively, these councils are known as co-determination.
The situation at Radboud University
Such is the situation as we know it today at our own university. The elected USC, FSCs, PCs and WC have a little bit of nominal influence on their respective, well-defined policy terrains. In practice, however, they wield no influence over the university. Co-determination is bound to so many bureaucratic rules that it has become virtually impossible to undertake anything. The USC, for example, has no right to initiate votes on their own proposals and also lacks the right to amend other proposals. The only voting rights they get is approval voting rights on a very small range of topics. They could, hypothetically, use these rights to vote against proposals which they are in favour of, but which they deem not radical or far-reaching enough. However, since they can only vote in favour or against a proposal as a whole, this would mean that the positive aspects of the proposal in question would also not be implemented. In this way, it is difficult for co-determination to demand radical change. A good example of this is the proposal to provide toilets with menstrual hygiene products. If the USC were of the opinion that this is good, but that menstrual hygiene products should become available in all toilets and that all toilets should become gender-neutral, they could still not initiate an amendment to add that policy, since their vote can only be formally expressed as a disapproval or approval of the whole document in question. Therefore, voting against the policy could mean that there would be no free menstrual products anywhere, as the Executive Board can refuse the demands of co-determination. This means that in practice, the USC is forced to smile and nod to EB proposals unless they want the university to get bogged down. In this way, the USC is completely beholden to the whims of the EB.
So what exactly is the function of co-determination? The answer is no fun: to keep students and employees at the university cowed. By keeping up the appearance of democracy, the university administration can suss out dissatisfaction with social insecurity, the presence of fascist groups on campus, colonial education or complicity in genocide. Indeed, as soon as someone comes up with these kinds of complaints, administrators can refer them to co-determination or rigged 'dialogue sessions', the outcome of which the administration has to worry about even less than about the average fart of a USC councillor. When it comes to co-determination, one inevitably runs into the bureaucratic wall: if co-determination councillors are at all willing to do something about the problem, their options are so limited that they are practically rendered toothless. It causes councillors to place more value on a 'good negotiating position' and 'friendly relations' than putting pressure on the board, because co-determination is not given any tools to channel that pressure properly. Thus, the council acts as a lightning rod, so to speak, for critical students.
When students take action
Another example that demonstrates quite well how deeply ingrained the administration's aversion to democracy is is the recent demand to sever ties with Israeli universities. After all, these universities are complicit in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. When students who are fed up with the problems at the university take action themselves in the form of a sit-in in which a large crowd of students and teachers participate or a petition signed by over 900 students and staff, the EB opts for silence or even threatens students with suspensions and police brutality. And the rest of co-determination? It stays silent.
Sometimes, however, co-determination miraculously does manage to make it clear that they disagree with something. In such rare cases, like when a fascist group appeared at the introduction market, the most radical action the EB dares to take is a previously mentioned 'dialogue session', this time between rector magnificus Han van Krieken (who turned out to be a frequent offender of transgressive behaviour) and political philosopher (and participant in the Situating Palestine collective) Mathijs van de Sande. In response to a question from the audience about indications and utterances making it clear that the group in question posed a danger to the safety of many students and employees, Van Krieken, on behalf of the EB, could only stammer out that the group had put a scribble under a piece of paper stating that they would not do mean things. As if!
The terror of hierarchy
There is an obvious hierarchy on campus: students and workers are at all times subordinate to the Executive Board and its lackeys in the university bureaucracy. This has very negative consequences for everyone at the university. As explained elsewhere in this booklet, the university thus becomes nothing more than a diploma factory that shouldn’t cost too much money. Doing research and actually learning are secondary to simple reproduction. The university hierarchy is also detrimental to social safety on campus. People in high positions at Radboud University abuse their power time and again. There seems to be an endless stream of teachers and professors at the RU who are accused of (sexually) transgressive behaviour and verbal abuse of their co-workers. In fact, the situation is so dire that the ombudsperson, appointed to prevent and remedy such abuses, left, disillusioned. She reported being thwarted at every step she took by the university hierarchy.
Democratising higher education
The solution is simple: we must no longer be satisfied with a seat at the table; we must demand the whole table. The university must be run by the students and university workers. There must come a definitive end to the era of bureaucrats in blue suits constantly reaching out to protect one another. All power must be transferred from the unelected boards to the councils of students and workers. Those councils must be radically expanded and all councillors must become revocable at any time. For major decisions or as soon as a significant part of the student and worker population wants it, students and workers should be consulted through university referendums. In this way, the university can be transformed from a hierarchical, socially unsafe institution where learning is secondary to making money, to a fully democratic university for and by students and workers, where we can actually conduct research and education in safety and peace.