the bell #8: april 2015 - problems/solutions

UCM & UCMSA Universalis magazine Issue #8 April 2015

theBell

2 theBell University College Maastricht

UCMSA UniversalisIssue #8 April 2015

3theBellUniversity College Maastricht UCMSA Universalis Issue #8 April 2015

editorial» issue #8

colophon

ABOUT:The Bell is an independent

student magazine by the UCMSA Universalis Magazine Committee for University College Maastricht

(UCM). The Bell is free for students and staff of UCM.

The content of The Bell does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the committee board, the board of UCMSA Universalis or UCM.

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CIRCULATION: 150 copies and online

COMMITTEE BOARD:

Finn O’Neill (chair)

Sarah Kunze (secretary)

Dominik Leusder (treasurer)

Lea Schaefer (PR/editor)

Lisette Reuvers (editor)

Eivind H Bratterud (layout editor)

CONTRIBUTORS: Sergio Calderon-harker

nina dikker

laura goldBerg

niklaS elSenBruCh

heidrun kerl

elena klaaS

laurenS kymmell

kriShma laBiB

maren leBSanfT

finn o’neill

riChard nimuBona

niCk PaPaConSTanTinou

Xavier SaleT

Clea SamSon

SoPhie SilverSTein

henry SkeweS

Pine uCmSvea windwehr

Svenja woiTT

COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMERAll content © respective authors

contact usQuestions, concerns, wish to send in a letter (max. 100 words) or want to advertise? email: [email protected]: www.ucm-univer-salis.nlcommittees/thebellfacebook: facebook.com/thebellmagazine

We bloody love a problem don’t we? I mean, we are taught through the lens of problems here - Problem Based Learning. The New University movement as well - found a problem there, didn’t they? We obsess over prob-lems (and ever-so-rarely solutions) because it is in our make-up as humans. We seek what’s wrong and like to discuss what’s wrong and sometime build on this dis-cussion to progress ourselves and progress society by finding alter-native or even solutions.

To pay homage to our undying love for problems we have ded-icated this entire issue to Prob-lems and, perhaps radically, Solu-tions as well. This issue covers many topics; from journalism to meditation, via the Colombian peace talks. We hope this edition of the magazine will trigger you to think about solutions to prob-

lems, whilst also creating some debate about problems which are already part of our daily diet.

Additionally, we are very excited to use this issue to launch the start of our magazine partnership with University College Freiburg. This collaboration will see some of their students contributing to our issue, and UCM helping them launch their own writing platform and consequently con-tribute in the future.

Happy Reading,Finn O’Neill

Untitled, Alexandra Lazar

Relativity, M. C. Escher. Litho-graph, 1953.

Copyright © M. C. Escher 1953. Image not used for com-mercial purposes and strictly under “fair use”policy.

Sweet UCM,

Other illustrations throughout the magazine:

Laura Goldberg, p.5, 6 & 8

All illustrations used for non-commercial purposes and strictly under “fair use”pol-icy.



overview»editorial

3EDITORIAL - SWEET UCM...BOARD

problems/solutions5MINDFULNESSFINN O’NEILL

7EAST IS EAST AND WEST IS WESTCLEA SAMSON

10STOP ANIMAL RESEARCH, STOP MEDICINEKRISHMA LABIB

12CLOTHING THE POORheidrun kerl

13GREECE: THE LACK OF EASY SOLUTIONSNICK PAPACONSTANTINOU

15CHEERS TO LIVING IN THE MOMENTNINA DIKKER

17DEATH OF JOURNALISM?SOPHIE SILVERSTEIN

features

19DUM DUM DOODLEDUM DUM DOODLE

20UCF-COLLABORATIONUCF VISITNG UCM - HAGELSLAG, HARM, OPEN MIC AND IRANMAREN LEBSANFT

21INTERVIEW WITH MR. RICHARD NIMUBONALAURENS KYMMELL

23UCF-COLLABORATIONBOYAN SLAT: MAKING IT PERSONALSVENJA WOITT

25BY A THREAD: REPAIRING COLOMBIA’S BLOOD-SPATTERED HISTORYSERGIO CALDERON-HARKER

27THE MARKETISATION OF THE UNIVERSITY AND SOCIETY’S COMPLICITYSVEA WINDWEHR

29WHY WE NEED PLURALISM

IN ECONOMICS AT UCM PINE UCM

semester abroad30ALL TALKHENRY SKEWES

creative31PASSING THE EXPIRY DATEXAVIER SALET

33STANDING ON TWO SOLEMN FEETNIKLAS ELSEBRUCH

34CLOSED EYES.SERGIO CALDERON-HARKER

34MAYBE.SERGIO CALDERON-HARKER

OH NO, WE RAN OUT OF BUDGETED PAGES AGAIN! OR DID WE RUN OUT OF CONTRIBUTIONS?


It was six years ago. I was a generally frustrated, prob-ably over-confident teen-ager. I was quite confident that I knew the right way – whatever that meant. I always had a double-edged relationship with teachers; either they liked me and we got on or I made it my task to wage a person-al vendetta against them. I don’t think that it was necessarily the teacher I disliked; it may have been the course they taught, or generally the whole institu-tionalised-teaching-thing. I walked in to my Religious Studies class (compulso-ry for the first two years of senior school) and felt that all-to-common feeling which I experienced dur-ing that class…‘why am I here?’ This time it was dif-ferent though – I was aware that we would be taking a

break from ‘traditional’ RS in order to embark on an eight week ‘mindfulness programme’. Now, imagine an over-confident, testos-terone-fuelled teenager being told that ‘breathing is the key to life’, or words to that effect. It was des-tined to be a car crash of conflicting world views; on the one side there was a holistic, peaceful, life-driv-en view from the mindful-ness programme and on the other side there was, well, me. I said that I was quite confident I knew what the right way was… this was not the right way! I never even tried to en-gage; we had a breathing exercise that we practiced whilst lying on the floor, I was more interested in us-ing that time to take my catnap. This has nothing to do with the fact that my

school tried to teach mind-fulness to fourteen year-olds – I have no complaints about that, and if I did you probably wouldn’t care much! Essentially I want to show that I was as an-ti-mindfulness, anti-peace-fulness, anti-Buddhism, ant i -be ing- to ld -what -might-help, as one could be.Fast forward six years and I have to sheepishly admit that I quite possibly was…err, wrong? I’m about five weeks into a guided eight-week mindfulness pro-gramme assisted by the eye-opening book ‘’Mind-fulness: A practical guide to finding peace in a fran-tic world’’ and it’s good – I mean really good. For those of you who aren’t aware of what mindfulness is, it is a form of medita-tion which places its entire emphasis on breathing and ‘the breath’ as a way to fully engage with ‘the now’. It is as far from being that altogether ridiculous

solutions

P: LIFE;S: MINDFULNESS

«problems/



idea which I envisaged it to be six years ago; it is in fact exactly ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ is! I got onto the idea of mindfulness on the rec-ommendation of a good friend, but also as a direct sequel to The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying which I was reading before. The two books together lead to my revelation that spiritual practice (I hate that word, ‘spiritual’. It has so much unnec-essary and mislead-ing baggage. ‘’I went to Bhutan and found spirituality…’’) is in fact wholly reward-ing and it should, if not must, play some role in everyone’s life. What I mean by spiritual practice is really anything which dis-connects ‘the self’ from the ‘real world’ and en-gages with the spirit, or that ‘transcendental thing’, whatever it may be! Since embarking on the course I’ve noticed how I imple-ment, or try to implement, certain practices which I’ve learned along the way in times which I deem it nec-essary. These range from a quick sixty second ‘ground-ing’ exercise which can be done anywhere to a longer exercise which focuses on

each separate joint of the body and is best carried out lying down. What they do for me, and this will in-evitably differ for different people, is slow everything down and bring some fo-cus back into my life. I see it as a photographer may approach a picture – it is much better to have a small object in complete focus

than trying to take a vast panoramic picture which is entirely unfocused. The course provides such an ac-cessible way into mindful-ness as it somewhat forces you to incorporate it into your daily life to the extent that even half way through I can hardly see it as forcibly existing in my life, rather it just is part of my daily life. Whilst this is great it can also feel a bit imposing at times but this will only be the case during the course when one is trying to learn

as many of these different practices as possible. In the title I suggest mindfulness to be a solu-tion to the problem of life. This may be a bit mislead-ing… Mindfulness certainly can be a solution to some of the problems of life, namely the taming of that wild beast we call our mind. The extent to which mind-

fulness will be a solution to whatever problem you may subscribe it to is to-tally dependent on your openness to it. Don’t be me from six years ago – approach it with an open mind and the possibilities that you will gain some benefits from it will grow rapidly. I’m actually taking a bit longer than the rec-ommended eight weeks

to complete the course as I spend longer on certain practices, thus delaying the whole schedule. This is not a problem and it is com-pletely dependent on the person; at what pace they approach the notion of mindfulness and for what purpose they do it. All I can say is that if it benefitted a previously narrow-minded, anti-most-things person, it probably has the ability to benefit many of you!

Finn O’Neill


I have a problem. With you. Why does everyone always have to be so neg-ative, all the time? I mean, I get it. We are educated to be critical thinkers, to never accept any-thing easily and with-out questioning. And most of the times, this is a good thing, and very valuable.

But then there’s other times; other situations where it would be nice to dis-regard all negative sides, for once. Take some examples that I do not even dare to talk about at UCM.

Yes, Emma Wat-son’s (in)famous speech was very mainstream. And yes, she used the hashtag #heforshe. And yes, I am sure not everything she said can be seen as groundbreaking and em-powering. But it was a great speech! Because she achieved exactly what

she wanted to achieve: get feminism to be a topic everyone talks about - not only over-educated Liberal Arts students.

Yes, Patricia Arquette’s comments in an interview after winning her Oscar were terrible, and vastly inappropriate. But, she still

talked about the gender pay gap on stage, during her acceptance speech at the Academy Awards and thus reached billions of people around the world.

Yes, the Ice Bucket Chal-lenge turned into publicity stunts and people present-ing themselves as much as possible on social media. And yes, you could even claim they wasted valuable drinking water. But it did

manage to raise tre-mendous awareness for ALS all around the globe.

I could go into countless other exam-ples. But that’s not the point. The point is that UCM is supposed to help us become critical thinkers. But it is not supposed to help us become cynical or ar-rogant.

The solution? I don’t know. But can we not, briefly, just for once, close our eyes and think about all the good things that have happened - to us and

to others? Think about all the positive develop-

ments this world has seen in the recent years?

Thank you!

Elena Klaas

DEARESTUCM’ers

UCM students seemingly have much in com-mon with Diogenes, a Greek Cynic



I first heard this verse by Rudyard Kipling during a high school English class, while watching A Passage to India. The movie being about British colonialism in India, one could say that the verse in itself summaris-es pretty well the core con-cepts of E.M. Forster’s nov-el. Although the book was written almost a hundred years ago, the problem of an unbridgeable dis-tance between two cultures is still predominant in today’s society. Media and mass communication have brought the world closer to-gether, in the sense that we know more of each other, and we have more contact with each other, than dur-ing the times of the British Raj. However, this seem-ingly beneficial proximity might not be as solid as it is portrayed. Yes, the world’s nations communicate and use, to some extent, this newfound propinquity as to further develop and help each other. But this me-

dia-based proximity is not always profitable to our means, especially when referring to the portrayal of other members through the use of charities.

Nowadays, we know a lot about other places and other people and other sit-uations happening in the

world. This knowledge, or awareness, is mostly due to the increase of mass me-dia communication. And it is a good thing. When looking at how media plays a role in the developing and growing of charities all around the world, one cannot deny the important and beneficial power of this increasing proximity. By being able to create a sense of solidarity, through the

educating and informing of people about whatever causes charities fight for, media, as a tool to increase proximity, is useful. Howev-er, one must acknowledge that the majority of the me-dia in the “Western World” offers us information through a Western lens, a

bias perspective. And what we are presented with, what we are told to sup-port, what we are told to fear, is very much cre-ated, or at least greatly modified by the West-ern paradigm (which, I agree, is a big yet great-

ly needed generalisation for the purpose of this article). Indeed, escaping from such a Westernised way of look-ing at things can be quite the challenge, which is why we must make an effort to see past the stereotyped victims of non-Western countries, and understand how the portrayal of the white, mighty, rich, devel-oped, smart and free help-ing hand of the West fur-

EAST IS EAST &


ther imprison the non-west rest into their unchangea-ble, hermetic image of the poor, weak victims.

There is an on-going battle against this name-less greater evil, whose shape changes constantly, and whose name sounds different each time it is pronounced. Poverty, HIV, homelessness, orphans, starvation, education, clothing, these are all issues that have been the sub-jects of numerous charities all around the world. But helping others is not the issue. The issue is how this aid is portrayed, and how the Western lens affects our perception of others. Charities make us support them by feeling bad for whatever it is they fight against. Usually, we feel bad because the subjects they wish to support have been highly edited through the Western filter of the world’s let-us-help-each-other –Instagram, and have been turned into pure vic-tims. Victims who do not know the joys of the West-ern life, victims who are

less developed, less educat-ed, less independent and less free than us. And sure, there are people and plac-es and things in the world that deserve and need charities to support them. But the constant Western filter that gives a tint of pity to any mass-media cover-age of the external world (external to the West, that is) only further accentuate false ideas about that ex-ternal world.

In all, we have seen an increase in proximity be-tween nations and cultures of the world. But this new-found closeness, greatly produced by the expansion of mass media, is quite su-perficial. Because media mainly shapes our perspec-tives on the world, we are still looking at the rest of it through a Western lens. And because of this blind-ness, we see solutions in what constitutes the prob-lem (or the portrayal of the problem) in the first place. This last statement is what I wished to voice through the writing of this article. But by reflecting upon the

topic of charities as solu-tions for the people, caus-es or places they support, and by trying to see how the Western lens encour-ages a false portrayal of the world’s non-Western nations (which in itself be-comes part of the problem), I somehow lost my train of thoughts, and found my-self once again split be-tween feeling extremely witty and critical, or feeling like a Negative Nancy. But a realistic Negative Nancy nonetheless.

Albeit it has been nine-ty-one years since E.M. Forster’s novel, and despite our ever-growing “proxim-ity”, it seems to me that East is still East, and West remains West, and unless you are referring to some mainstream, superficial so-cio-cultural mix and mingle such as a Nepalese Big Mac or Bollywood, “East” and West have yet to meet.

Clea Samson

WEST IS WESTand never the twain shall meet...



“Free the Labradors”: how many of you have heard about this movement? Last August, Maastricht Univer-sity suspended a research project involving Labrador testing after 130,000 peo-ple signed a petition called “Free the Labradors”. Due to the large outcry, the university sus-pended this research and banned test-ing of all large dogs. As an aspiring scien-tist, after hear-ing friends talk about the peti-tion and the “poor dogs”, my first reaction was to look up the aims of the research. These had been conveniently left out of the page where the petitions could be signed. A few but-tons away was the expla-nation on the UM site: that the research was for heart failure and the correct us-age of pacemakers. The reason that Labradors were

to be used was that the only two animals that had hearts that resembled hu-man hearts closely enough to elicit reliable results were rabbits and dogs. Af-ter seeing this, I knew my decision: I would not sign a petition that prevented

millions of lives from being potentially saved.

This incident is an ex-ample of a more general phenomenon in Western society, the Netherlands being no exemption: well intentioned, yet ill-in-formed individuals taking a stand against animal test-ing without knowing the implications of such ac-tions. My aim in this article

is not to start a discussion about animal worth. This is a complex ethical issue, but in my opinion, although we have a moral obligation to treat animals as well as we can, human lives still weigh more than animal lives. Some of you may disagree, but I urge you to not fight animal research until ac-quainting yourself with the

full story. Every med-

ical advance-ment that has occurred is in part thanks to animal test-ing. 71 of the Nobel Prizes for Medicine in the last century have been given to

scientists based on their an-imal research. Every med-ical drug that is currently on the market is in place thanks to animal testing. Human life expectancy has increased by over 20 years thanks to animal research. In addition, animal welfare itself has increased over the years, due to new knowl-edge about animals based

STOP ANIMALRESEARCH,


on animal research. The fact is that before a drug can be tested on humans in clinical studies, EU law mandates that it is tested on animals first. To those that disagree with this law, the implications of stop-ping it would mean that humans would have be ad-ministered with such drugs directly. Who of you would agree to be the subject of such an experiment?

Despite the necessity of using animals for medical purposes – whereby it is essential to test the effects of drugs on whole organ-isms after they have elicited successful results in numer-ous other study types (such as cell cultures and tissue models)– the European Union’s policy, adopted by all Dutch research institu-tions in the Netherlands, regarding animal research is Reduce, Replace and Re-fine. Notice how only one of these 3Rs is about the actual welfare of the ani-mals: Refine. The other two are about replacing and reducing the number of animal studies. Although it seems attractive to find

alternative solutions to testing compounds, it is in-evitable that at some point in the research process it is necessary to use whole or-ganisms to see the effect of the drug on the whole body. For such studies, there are no alternatives to animal testing (other than human testing). As for re-duction, it is true that the policy has been successful. At UM alone, animal test-ing has been decreasing over the past 10 years by around 5% each year. And yet, it appeared that animal testing was crucial for med-ical research: how is it that despite the declining num-bers, research is still mov-ing forward? The key word here is “outsourcing”. As the number of animal stud-ies are decreasing in the EU, these studies are being outsourced to countries without any animal welfare concerns. Isn’t that ironic? It is exactly those people protesting against the test-ing of animals to improve their well-being, thereby encouraging policies to stop animal research, that are actually the cause of

these animals being tested in a distant country under harsh conditions which could have been avoided in the first place by keep-ing the research at home. And yet, the job of univer-sities and the government is to think about what the citizens want: if no one is aware that these animals are sent to China where they are maltreated, it doesn’t matter since there will be no complaints here.

So I now ask you, the UCM community, to think about this matter the next time a similar incident such as the one with the Labra-dors occurs, and to make a better informed decision. Do you really want to stop research that could poten-tially save those you love the most? Do you really think that by stopping the research at UM, you will ensure that animals are not maltreated? As the text on the above poster says: animal research has given you extra years, you decide what to do with them.

Krishma Labib

STOP MEDICINE



“Oregon State University, Senior Year of 1999”, said the T-shirt of the Guate-malan ayudante who just passed by to collect our fare in the crowded, ful-ly colored old American school bus, also known as chick-en busses. During my travels through Central America it was very common to see people sell-ing second-hand clothes in bunches on popular mar-kets. There, you would be able to get any brand, any style, any size and quality you wanted. And the low prices, in compari-son with new clothes, espe-cially attracted poor people to buy so called ropa amer-icana (American Clothing). And so did our ayudante on the bus. Doing devel-opment studies at UCM, I first thought selling sec-ond hand clothing in “third world countries” might be a sustainable way to reuse

old clothes without throw-ing them away. It also pro-vides a good alternative for poor people to purchase clothing while freeing up some money for other pur-poses. Above that, clothes

are given a second chance, a new life, enlarging the lifespan of someone’s fa-vorite piece while sup-porting someone with low resources. That is a great thing I thought, it’s bene-fiting all of us. But is it ac-tually? I could not let go of the image of the ayudante in the bus. It seemed so clear to me that he was not very aware of his clothing,

while struggling to get all the fares of all passengers. But it was so obvious that the initial t-shirt owner did not want this t-shirt any-more. It was probably one of the many T-shirts you get for any situation and circumstance – an event, a group work or tourna-ment. One of those t-shirt that have the purpose of stating “ I was here” or “ I did so and so” but not the initial purpose to cloth someone. One of those t-shirts that are worn once,

or twice and then face the eternal life of a dust catcher un-til being sorted out and given away be-cause we wouldn’t like to wear it an-ymore. But these t-shirts, jeans, dress-es, and backpacks end up every day in tons at the harbors of Central America and Africa. “Char-

ity clothing for the poor”, unwanted clothes of indus-trial state, of people who love to go shopping – buy-ing cheap Chinese clothes at Primark, H&M or other well-known stores, wear-ing them once of twice and giving them away with a good feeling that someone would wear them again. Most common practice of charity shops is to pick out the best clothes and have

CLOTHINGTHE POORTHE COMPLEXITIES OF THE GLOBAL SECOND-HAND MARKET


them in their stores for 4 weeks. If unsold, they are bundled and given away to sorting companies, which sell them in A, B, C quali-ty-bales to wholesalers in the developing countries (anything else will go to landfills). This billion-dollar business is creating many jobs on the way and ben-efiting tradesmen, but it is also destroying the local textile industry. It leaves

traditional weaving culture to vanish and thus hinders any possibilities for coun-tries to strengthen their own textile industry. It’s a very complex problem, and tackling it must incorporate a post-colonial thinking of dependency theory and a harsh critique of consum-erism and free trade agree-ments. But there are some simple solutions we can incorporate into our daily

lives. Think twice when you buy something new. Buy Second Hand. Don’t make a t-shirt for every event or circumstance. When you give clothes away: Ask the charity shop what they are doing with your clothes. Prefer local shelters and projects. And tell a friend about it.

Heidrun Kerl

Greece has been in the news a lot lately, and sadly not because of its beautiful beaches and amazing food. As many of my friends like to remind me, it is because of Greece’s new govern-ment and its methods of dealing with the struggling economy. The reason there is so much discussion about the new Greek govern-ment (a coalition between a far left party and a far right party) is because it seems to reflect the illusion which many Greek people have that there is an easy and painless solution to the Greek crisis.

To understand the na-ture of the Greek economic crisis you need to first un-derstand that it is a deep-

ly-rooted problem caused by bad policies over many years. First, the Greek state has been running a budget deficit (i.e spending more money than it makes) since the 1980s when the Greek welfare state was created. To be able to fund this defi-cit, Greece has continually borrowed money, a pattern which has never stopped, without ever actually deal-ing with the inefficiencies of the state. Those in-clude (but are not limited to): rampant tax evasion, a public sector which only hires people and never lays people off, an unnecessar-ily large bureaucracy, etc. Add to this an economy that has never become tru-ly internationally compet-

itive, with a large external deficit, and you have an ex-plosive mix.

Anyone with some knowledge of economics would then say “Well, just print more money then, and pay back your debts. Sure it will lose its value a bit since there will be more Euros circulating in the economy, but it will solve all your problems!” Then the second, and otherwise unproblematic, circum-stance comes into play: the common currency. Because Greece shares a common currency with the rest of Europe, it can’t just print more money – monetary policy is in the hands of the European Central Bank.

Since printing more money is not an option, the remaining option is to im-pose austerity measures in order to control the deficit, and at the same time try to reform the economy to

GREECE:THE LACK OF EASY SOLUTIONS



make it more competitive. This is where the biggest problem of all arises: the global recession. In simple terms: economies expe-rience periods of growth and periods in which they shrink in a wave-like pat-tern. Since recessions are not quite so desirable, gov-ernments need to keep the fluctuations in both growth and recession periods small. To do so, in periods of growth, austerity measures are im-posed, and in reces-sions, policies which increase spending need to be applied. So the issue is that Greece has been ex-periencing a reces-sion and a debt cri-sis at the same time, both of which re-quire spending, with money that Greece doesn’t have. “So how do you get money?”

Well if you try to get money by imposing auster-ity measures you make the recession even worse, not to mention you make the Greek citizens very angry, as many of them lose their jobs. If you borrow more money you are only putting on a band aid on the prob-lem – and in Greece’s case, no-one was willing to lend it much any more anyway! What is needed are re-

forms, which the state has been spectacularly good at not doing enough of. These reforms should be reducing the money that is essen-tially wasted and fixing tax evasion, which also don’t make many people happy. But reforms take time, and are disruptive, and are op-posed by many entrenched interests.

Now, enter the new gov-ernment, elected on the

promise that there is a mag-ic solution that will make all problems go away. “We just won’t pay back the debts.” If your first thought was “how?” you are on the right track. Because, as much as we would like to not pay back the debts, we still need money to run the state and the welfare system, and it is hard to picture someone willing to lend money to someone

you know probably won’t pay it back. Aside from the dubious requests for WW2 reparations from Germa-ny, the Greek government doesn’t really have many options other than to keep relying on the EU and the IMF to lend them money, with the reforms that they ask for in exchange.

The new government and the new finance min-ister of Greece, instead

walked into ne-gotiations with a bold strategy which has been compared to holding a gun to your own head and asking for a ransom. They argued that if Greece defaults because it is not given money to deal with the debt it will af-fect everyone in Europe, and so

tried to negotiate with the idea that Europe has just as much to lose as Greece. Sadly, Europe called the government’s bluff. Be-cause while the risk for Europe is huge if Greece defaults, the risk of encour-aging other countries to do the same (such as Spain) by succumbing to this behav-iour is, for the rest of Eu-rope, even worse.

So what is the result of


this whole mess so far? For the time being Greece has got a four-month extension of the current austerity pro-gramme until a new deal is negotiated. By renaming a few ‘hot potatoes’ (such as no-longer calling the hated “troika” of the EU, the IMF and the ECB by its name and instead relabelling them as “the institutions”) the Greek government has

tried to play it off as a vic-tory at home. This keeps feeding the Greek illusion that difficult problems have easy and painless solutions. The fact, however, is that a lot of Greek people don’t seem to be willing to face the reality that some prob-lems are not easy to fix - a danger that might be the downfall of Greece in the coming months. This is be-

cause, as long as the new government continues to be evasive with its Europe-an partners, the economy suffers, cash runs out, and an accident leading to what everyone wants to avoid – Greece’s exit from the Euro - becomes all too real.

Nick Papaconstantinou

A couple of months ago, someone I barely knew made a nasty comment to me. Even though that person has no value to me whatsoever, it continued to stay in my head for a day. I want to compare this bad feeling I got with the last time someone gave me a compliment. The sad thing is, I am not even able to re-member when that was, or what the compliment was about. I know, I probably sound like a very unloved person, who never gets a compliment, but I want to assure you that this not the case. There is an alternative explanation for my selective memory, namely: negativity sticks. It keeps replaying in your head, much more than positive events. When

you let your mind drift off to your problems, struggles or setbacks, it can even be-come a self-defeating cycle; the more you obsess about your worries, annoyances, or another piece of nega-tivity, the more these neg-ative thoughts are being reinforced each time you think of them. At a certain point, it becomes too much of an issue in your head, compared to what it actu-ally entails, or compared to what you can do about it.

Studies suggest that we drift off with our thoughts, almost fifty percent of the time. The type of activity we engage in when our minds wander generally does not matter, although making love is an excep-tion. But this daydreaming

comes with an emotional cost. Even if we do not end up regretting things from the past, or are not worry-ing about the future, but thinking for example about our dream vacation, this does not make us happier than when we are just liv-ing in the present.

I have to admit, all this talk about wandering neg-ative thoughts and self-de-feating cycles sounds dev-astating, as if you will end up in bed at the end of the day, crying yourself to sleep, while laying in the fetal position. However, this is clearly not the case. We might blow things out of proportion on a bad day, and make things worse than they are, but luckily we also have a lot of men-

CHEERS TO LIVING IN THE MOMENT



tal protection mechanisms to make sure we do not get overwhelmed by setbacks.

These mental protection mechanisms, such as trivial-ising, or rationalising, occur often in daily life, some-times without you even noticing it. For example, you bought a new t-shirt on sale, but it takes you a week to realise that it is in fact a really ugly t-shirt and that you cannot return it. There are two things you can do in this case. You can forever whine about your bad purchase, or you can change your attitude about it. Most people go for the last option, which is why your closet contains at least five items of which you can say: ‘yeah I never wore it, but it was only fifteen euro, so who cares’.

Captain Jack Sparrow once ex-plained this really well: ‘’The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the prob-lem. Do you understand?’’

How stressfully or neg-atively you perceive cer-tain situations is greatly up to you. Of course, with all our obligations and all of

the norms we have to ad-here to in life, we clearly do not have the ability to live as freely and carelessly as a pirate, but Jack Sparrow (CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow!) has a point. The perspec-tive from which you look at your problems can make all the difference. I am not talking about major prob-lems, traumas or losses, but about the smaller struggles and worries in life.

So let’s change our per-spective. First of all, start off by embracing the UCM motto that ‘everything will be okay’, and then second-ly, avoid striving for perfec-tion. Of course, perfection-

ism can lead to many great achievements, and a little pressure can enhance per-formance. But it also has a downside. Things never are perfect, as we are trained to be critical thinkers, we will always be able to find that one point we could improve on.

Try after an exam, or a sports competition, or any other event , maybe even a date with the person you

like, to not ask yourself: ‘’did I do well?’’ but in-stead to ask your-self: ‘’did I do well enough?’’ Even though we would really like to excel in every aspect in life, we have to admit to ourselves that most people do not have this abil-ity, due to limited amount of time, money, or maybe even talent. This may sound a bit harsh, but luckily there are so many

things we can do well enough. So, there is also a lot of potential.

Therefore, try to live in the moment, and remember: if you don’t like something, just lower your expecta-tions.

Nina Dikker

According to the author, we can all learn something from Captain Jack Sparrow’s careless and free life-

style as a pirate


Despite a recent de-crease in print media, I do not believe that journalism is nearing the end of its life. It is true that we live in a world that is constantly evolving, and it may also be true that the journalism of our parents no longer exists. Clearly, change is upon us. To stay relevant, contemporary journalism might just have to – shock-ingly – change with the times. The question is if this is possible without under-mining the core values of journalism.

INFORM AND INVESTI-GATE

Traditional print media, especially publications that don’t appear daily, have a history of taking a step back from society, holding a mir-ror up to it and attempting to shine a light on the uni-lluminated. When done ef-fectively this confrontation does not seem alienating to readers because the jour-nalist is not commenting as an outsider, but from a position of familiarity. Mag-azines like The New Yorker

have always fascinated me in the way they address is-sues that might lie back a couple of months with a clarity that only chrono-logical distance and, most vitally, extensive research could have provided. Natu-rally, this does not address the need for information updates closer to an actual event. In a time where an-yone with an internet con-nection can access informa-tion from numerous official and unofficial sources, the news printed on the front page of, say, The New York Times, is literally yesterday’s news. At the same time, the way this information is accessible grows more informal and the emphasis on writing and style dwin-dles. This division between quick and easy access to in-formation and long, more reflective, well-written ar-ticles showcases the dual nature of journalism, both of which are equally impor-tant.

The former traits address journalism’s role to inform people and is covered by short, informal news up-

dates while longer, investi-gative pieces will continue to serve journalism’s second purpose. If we take investi-gative journalism to be so-ciety’s mirror, then we need the 140-character length news updates to constitute its frame.

MULTIMEDIA DIALOGUE INSTEAD OF SINGLE-ME-DIA MONOLOGUE

Because this shift is oc-curring – and it would be naïve to deny that it is al-ready in full swing – jour-nalism does not only need to adapt its content but also its medium of expres-sion. While printed papers have great merit (they lend themselves excellently to lengthy Sunday morning reading at the breakfast table, even if you do get egg on the Culture Sec-tion) their interaction with their audience is decidedly one-sided. The future of journalism, however, lies in mobility and dialogue, characteristics that are ex-emplified by the internet.

Before we skip cheer-fully into the sunset of

THE DEATH OFJOURNALISM?



free access to any content posted online, a caveat is in order: while the near-uni-versal and usually free ac-cess that the internet has provided to information from all across the globe is a positive development, it is the belief that 21st cen-tury journalists can do their jobs without being paid that has undermined the industry the most. If we be-lieve that journalists, who are educated professionals, can make a living while re-ducing their profession to a mere unpaid hobby, we are equating ‘free of charge’ with ‘freedom’. While I am staunchly in favour of

broad availability of infor-mation, I believe it is wrong to hold an entire industry to the same standards of free availability that we hold for the content posted on social media. A picture tweeted live from protests in Ferguson is valuable and important, but it does not stem from the same source as a lengthy analysis of po-lice brutality towards citi-zens, or a similar analytical article, written a few days later. To address this prob-lem, newspapers (how long will the word ‘paper’ still be relevant to describe such publications?) have begun to raise paywalls on

their websites. It is a step in the right direction, towards balancing online availabil-ity and financial support for the journalist industry. Much more still needs to be done; the industry can lead the way but people need to learn to value the work that goes into keeping one of society’s vital organs, the free press, alive. Will it be enough to balance our need for progress with maintaining a mechanism to comment on it? Only time will tell.

Sophie Silverstein


«features

You humans are a crea-tive bunch. I myself being a case in point, and along with me all the things that surround me, here in the museum. Artefacts, crea-tions: I make, therefore I am. I adore your ability to create. Sometimes I wish I could make things, but all I make is wishes: as I can’t create, I have to be pragmatic.

Enough about me. You, humans, make so much. Things you can touch, use, eat, wear. And all kinds of things you cannot touch or see. You make decisions (un-less you’re lazy, and just take them) and you wor-ship those who seem to be good at it. And you make problems. You love making problems!

Sometimes making problems seems to be en-joyable for you, and then you call it science. And even though they may

not be anybody’s prob-lems in particular, you find no greater fulfilment than in solving them.

But more often than seeking fulfilment, you make a fuss. And fusses aren’t for fun. As a matter of fact, you veritably excel at making a fuss about things. And since you make so many things, you find so much to make a fuss about: bad hair, pov-erty, hunger, love, money, work, time, tenure tracks, cars, fashion, war. And I admit, these things cause great pain. They are real. But as a problem, they are not. They are in your head. And no matter how many heads they occupy, problems are never real. Not like hunger that bites and war that devours. To see a problem is to make one. Yet while you are so proud of what you make, only few ever claim to be the author of a problem.

Or even a fuss. Those credits are often magnan-imously given to someone else. Their fault! Their do-ing!

But why? Don’t be so modest!

As you let your prob-lems wander off into the real world, proudly an-nounce them to be yours. I made this problem! It’s mine, and mine alone – but I want to share it with you. Chances are you will find a solution together. Or make one.

every issue

DUM DUM DOODLEshares his thoughts!



From February 28th to the 4th of March eighteen of the LAS [Liberal Arts and Sciences] students from Freiburg visited UCM. We had decided to hitchhike the almost 500km as a race. The winning team had a lift from Freiburg to Cologne and thus arrived at Café Zondag first. But all teams managed somehow, even the one with three people. With a little help from Laura, who organised a lot, we got to meet our lovely hosts and later had the amazing opportunity to go to Harm´s Goodbye par-ty. All of us were stunned by the location and the ef-fort put into the party. So it was smart to only meet at 3pm the next day for the city tour, guided by Emilie. She led us through this beautiful city and told us something about its buildings, places and his-tory. Later in the day, we had dinner in a nice pizza place and of course, closed the day in a bar with some of the UCM students. On Monday, there was a won-derful breakfast prepared in the light-flooded Com-

mon Room with toast and delicious hagelslag. On that day and the following day we had the chance to sit-in on some classes. Although we are used to teacher-in-dependent learning in class, the amount of autonomy of the students surprised most of us. Two very interesting events were scheduled for Monday afternoon, a tour through the St. Pieter caves inside the so called “moun-tain” and the lecture of the Dutch ambassador to Iran. Both of the events were very informative but nevertheless entertaining. The lecture was followed by a joint “fish-bowl” dis-cussion the next day. Al-though clearly none of us had expert knowledge of the Arab region, we came up with many arguments to different topics related to Iran and trained our de-bating skills along the way.

Afterwards UCF and UCM students met up to prepare a joint long term project. Among many ide-as we decided to focus for now on the exchange of ar-ticles between the Bell, and the not yet established UCF

magazine about special topics and the experiences of the exchange students. Other projects related to the project period and the themed lecture series were also on the list for further development. Later, some of us came to enjoy a fun dinner and a deep discus-sion with the lovely ladies of the feminist society. Our stay which was full with ex-periences, new friendships, knowledge and fun was topped off by the open mic night on Tuesday evening. We were able to hand over a music book for the UCM common room and two of us even made a musical con-tribution, joining the many brave people giving impres-sive performances and cre-ating a great time. The next day, we said goodbye with a last, huge THANK YOU to all the people organising, participating and hosting and the promise to give back the favor by trying to create an equal experience for those of you guys visit-ing us at the end of May. If that’s even possible!

Maren Lebsanft

HAGELSLAG, HARM, OPEN MIC AND IRANUCF VISITING UCM


Two weeks ago UCM welcomed a new guest: Mr. Richard Nimubona. You might have seen him wandering around UCM, encountered him in one of your tutorials or noticed him smiling brightly on one of the post-ers on the door. Who is this guy? What brings him to Maastricht and how is he settling in?

The first time I met Richard dur-ing the Foodbank at the Landhu-is I had the same questions wander-ing in my mind. It became clear right away that he was very open to share his stories with us and that he was a man with a lot to tell. I was therefore very happy to have the opportunity to interview him and find out more.

Richard is here as part of the Shelter City program, a status that Maastricht has recently acquired along

with a handful of other Dutch cities. This program is aimed at “sheltering” human rights defenders who can currently not safe-ly operate within their own country. This is done on a three month basis, in which

they can continue their work and expand their international network to help curb the human rights

abuses in their country. We begin the interview

with talking about his own work as a human rights de-fender. He tells me that he is currently a lawyer at the Association for Protection of Human Rights and Peo-

ple in Detention, one of the larger Human Rights or-ganisation within Burundi. His initial motivation to en-ter this field stems from his personal experience with injustice during his time as a student at the University of Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi. Here he was un-justly accused of organising a stu-dent protest and therefore stripped from his right to university accom-modation. This all happened without any proof or any legal procedure.

From this smaller injus-tice on university level he started to fight the larger injustices on a structural

INTERVIEW:MR. RICHARD

NIMUBONA



level. His organisation aims at bringing down structur-al injustices by rebuilding the rule of law in a Bu-rundi that is marked by its post-conflict context and serious violations of human rights. He explains that there are especially many issues related to the abuse of power by the police and issues of nepotism within the government.

So what does a human rights defender ac-tually do? It sounds impressive and ad-mirable, but what does it entail? He tells me that his work is mostly fo-cussed on revealing the abuses commit-ted by the govern-ment to the gen-eral public and civil society. This means giving public speeches and using other tools of communica-tion to reveal the abuses and also involves intense reporting on the issues. Moreover, he is very in-volved with prisoner rights, which means he often visits the prisons to check on the conditions and he works with prisoners to provide them with legal aid and so-cial support.

So why he is in Maas-tricht exactly now? With a worried look he tells me that he strongly felt in dan-ger in his country. Burundi is

currently heading towards another national election, in which the current pres-ident wants to unlawfully run for president for his 3rd term. This means that the government in power tries to crush the opposition as much as possible and en-sure that all critics are si-lenced. Richard, as one of the press representatives of his organisation who often gives critical public speech-

es, became a clear target of the government. He says he is genuinely worried for his and his family’s life and that he is even fearful of leaving his house. He has previously been arrest-ed for openly protesting against the arbitrary arrest of the president of his hu-man rights organisation and knew that he needed to leave the country if he wanted to avoid the same fate. He therefore applied to the program and found out only a month ago that he was actually able to go. Many other human rights

activist are still in Burundi and are in danger of being prosecuted and arrested.

So how is he enjoying his stay in Maastricht so far? Even though he says he sometimes feels lonely and of course misses his wife and child, he still feels very welcomed by UCM students and the city of Maastricht. He still needs to get used to some of the bizarre elements of Dutch

culture, but he al-ready has the word “gezellig” down so that is definitely a start. He continues doing his work via Internet, communi-cates with the or-ganisation and fol-lows the day-to-day work. He wants to use his time here to

broaden the international connections of the organ-isation and is soon visiting the International Court of Justice in the Hague. He wants to continue sharing his knowledge of Africa and Burundi especially with the community of UCM. He is always open to meeting new people and interact-ing with both students and staff. So do not be afraid to approach him and let us make him feel welcome in our little UCM community.

Laurens Kymmell


Close-up shot. Zoom on a young man’s face. Pause. His eyes rigidly stare into the camera. They are a re-markable blueish-green and appear bloodshot. His brown hair resembles that of a nerdy surfer who pre-fers to visit his hairdresser as rarely as possible. Behind this inconspicuous appear-ance hides a very special character by the name of Boyan Slat, a 20 year-old environmental revolution-ist from Delft, who has been all over the news. His idea: to clean the oceans from plastic waste in only a decade or less. His idea is not a mere vision, howev-er, it is coming alive under his award-winning Ocean Clean Up initiative. The technique developed by

the young Dutchman and his fast-growing team will be efficient, fast, cheap, and maybe even profita-ble. It will undo what has, to this point, been consid-ered irreversible human ruthlessness toward moth-er nature. While Boyan’s cleverly devised concept is awe-inspiring not only to engineers and scientists, it is the story behind it all which itself is most fasci-nating. The journey began just three years ago when the teenager decided to dedicate himself to the is-sue of plastic pollution in a high school project. As he could not get the problem out of his mind even after graduation and into his first year at university, he kept doing more research to de-

velop a feasible solution. In 2012, over a million people watched Boyan on You-tube giving a slightly clum-sy but persuasive TED talk in Delft on his idea. After a crowdfunding campaign had made the launch of the project possible, the whole enterprise could be taken to a new level. Today, The Ocean Clean Up appears to be a promising start-up in-itiative with highly profes-sional promotion. It seems almost glamorous, but the person behind it does not – even though Boyan’s mother persists that her lit-tle boy has always been a little more curious than the other kids. That is what is truly amazing to people all around the world. How could an ordinary person at such a young age ac-complish such a big thing? But Boyan is not ordinary or normal. What sets him apart is that he has a prob-lem. Or rather that he has accepted a problem – that

BOYAN SLAT MAKING IT PERSONAL



of plastic pollution in the oceans. Play. Fast forward. “I was 16 years old. I was diving in Greece and I came across more plastic bags than fish. Before I did this dive, I certainly heard about the problem. Then I saw it myself: huge garbage dumped under the surface of the ocean. That’s what really upset me. Something was wrong here and I de-cided to focus my time on that,” explains Boyan from the off. It describes the moment when the Dutch teenager did not only ac-knowledge that plastic pollution was an issue, but when he accepted it as his own personal problem. It was no longer a thing – it became his thing. This is a step which only few peo-ple take. But somehow this psychological barrier must be overcome: only if the problem is personal, we are eager to find a solution.

Boyan knows this. Under urgent glances he empha-sises that plastic waste does not only endanger marine life, but also human health. Maybe by making them aware that the issue con-cerns them, he can make people care. While people donating for the cause may have somewhat accept-ed the issue as their own, volunteers and employees, who joint the initiative to work full-time for it, have gone all the way. But the real hero is Boyan Slat, the young man wearing a suit that is a little too big and neon-green sunglasses that just do not quite match the business look. His words on stage: “When there is a complicated problem, people automatically start thinking about a complex solution. But the core idea, I think, is really to have that as simple as possible.” Boy-an went through with this

principle. He saw a huge problem, made it his own and found a simple solu-tion. In the end, perhaps only he could have accom-plished to develop such in-ventive and effective tech-niques. That is a question of fate. However, all of us can accept problems as our own. We can all make it personal.

Svenja Woitt

For more information visit:www.theoceancleanup.

comwww.boyanslat.com

(The video I’m indirectly referring to in the article is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IqsD-HAY-

wk )


It is May 1964. The crick-ets chirp and the birds sing in the humid air. 48 armed fighters find themselves in the mountains of the self-proclaimed Marqueta-lia Republic in the southern region of the department of Tolima. Members of the Colombian Communist Party have sought asylum in this self-defence com-munity. At urgent request of its American ally, the Colombian State storms Marquetalia, a town of merely 1,000 inhabitants, with 16,000 troops. The 48 men try to fight the gov-ernment forces, but finally escape into the misty An-dean mountains. Lead by Manuel Marulanda Vélez, known popularly as Tirofi-jo, they become the Revo-lutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – FARC. In the tropical mountains of cen-tral Colombia, history is written.

It is October 4, 2012. 48 years, over six million vic-tims and four failed peace processes later hope raises from the ashes. After six months of “exploratory conversations,” President

Juan Manuel Santos an-nounces that negotiations with the FARC will take place in Oslo, Norway. As early as November 6, gov-ernment and FARC repre-sentatives move to the Cu-ban capital of La Havana. The agenda is massive, their responsibility is colos-sal and the problems are overwhelming. The peace talks programme consists of five specific discussion points, whose resolution ideally leads to the scenario of a peaceful Colombia.

The first point concerns a major land reform, in-cluding the formalisation of land ownership for the poor, infrastructure and de-velopment improvement, food security, housing, and eradication of rural pover-ty. This is followed by po-litical participation, which seeks to grant demobilised FARC members the right to access the political process and thereby gain direct par-ticipation. The third point relates to the end of the conflict, more specifically a bilateral ceasefire and the putting down of arms. The matter of illegal drugs, the

fourth point, regards the substitution of coca, opi-um and marijuana crops, programmes for addicts and prevention. Finally, the fifth and perhaps most controversial point, is the reparations to the victims, which includes compensa-tion and revealing the truth both from the side of the FARC as well as from the Colombian State. All these five points are then to be followed by a final approv-al mechanism. While the FARC advocate for a Na-tional Constituent Assem-bly á-la-French Revolution to sign off the accords, the Colombian government, and most importantly its people, strongly support the establishment of a democratic referendum to grant legitimacy to the fi-nal agreement. As promis-ing as it all may sound, the complexity of the ongoing conflict must not be under-estimated.

Colombia has the sec-ond highest number of in-

BY A THREAD:REPAIRING COLOMBIA’S BLOOD-SPATTERED HISTORY



ternally displaced people in the world, with over 4.5 million people fleeing their homes due to violence. The World Organisation Against Torture stated that “the practice of torture is sys-tematically and deliberately used in Colombia as a form of political persecution and to sow terror.” According to them, 90 per cent of these cases are attributed to the Colombian State, in the country with the high-est number of forced dis-appearances in the world with approximately 30,000 people believed to still be missing. Public officials, in one way or another, are al-legedly implicated in about 97 per cent of the disap-pearances. The FARC, on the other side, are known to fund their operations by ransom and politically mo-tivated kidnapping, illegal mining, extortion/taxation of various forms of pro-ductive activity, and the production and distribu-tion of illegal drugs, most commonly cocaine, which accounts for approximately 80 per cent of its income. According to Human Rights Watch, the FARC are the largest planters of landmin-es in the world. In addition to this, they have resorted to terrorist acts against the civilian population, such as the infamous bombing of Bogotá’s elite social club El

Nogal in 2003. Finally, the polarisation in the political environment of the country could also not be greater.

Whilst one side supports former President Alvaro Uribe, who advocates for a military solution to the con-flict and has been associat-ed in scandals with right-wing paramilitary groups, the other side supports President Juan Manuel San-tos. Santos is Uribe’s former Defence Minister, and has been accused of corruption in order to propel himself to a second term in the presidential elections of last year. His own vanity and al-leged obsession with the Nobel Prize for Peace blind him into having a over-ly-yielding position towards the FARC who have terror-ised the civilian population for almost half a century. There is light at the end of the tunnel, but it is dim and its bulb is running out of energy.

There is a Colombian proverb that says that “the person who recognises his major mistakes is on the road to wisdom.” Wisdom may seem a far-away des-tiny, but forgiveness is a key element to building a long-lasting, well-deserved peace in a country of beau-tiful landscapes, thriving people and talented art-ists. Colombian society must learn to embrace life

as sacred, as advocated by former Bogotá major and 2010 Presidential candi-date Antanas Mockus, who also proposed a “collective therapy against venge-ance.” This post-conflict society must be built on a basis of mutual respect and a general condemnation of any type of violence. When a society finds a mean to justify war or brutality, its values crumble upon a sea of uncertain, questionable morality. Colombian soci-ety must learn from these mistakes and arrive at a consensus where the lives and decisions of every in-dividual are respected, and where alternative methods are addressed to tackle its ever-occurring problems, such as the legalisation of soft drugs, the decentral-isation of the Colombian State apparatus and the restructuring of the pub-lic educational system, to mention but a few. History, meanwhile, will continue its course.

It is February 2015. The future of a country hangs by a thread.

And its people hold their breath.

Sergio Calderon-Harker


Since the beginning of the occupation of the Bungehuis and the Maa-gdenhuis by students and staff members of the Uni-versity of Amsterdam, a new movement of student activism has swept over the Netherlands. Call-ing their movement The New University, students and educators all over the country continue to voice concerns about the current state of our sys-tem of higher education. While the Maagdenhu-is has been occupied for more than four weeks by now, and the New Uni-versity Maastricht is host-ing debates regarding the structural problems spe-cific to Maastricht, similar groups are being formed in Delft, Groningen, Lei-den, Nijmegen, Rotter-dam, Tilburg and Utrecht. Such widespread support seems to suggest a broad-er national importance of the debate. But really, the problems raised in Am-sterdam (or Maastricht) – to which I will get shortly

– transcend the national level. Neither the issues at the core of the debate nor this currently expand-ing movement of student protest are new or unique phenomena. Rather, both can be traced back to larg-er developments, which I

will explore in the upcom-ing paragraphs.

The demands that lay at the centre of the current movement largely aim at the following issues: the insufficient transparency of the finances of universi-ties, output based funding that puts monetary incen-tives on the production of

university graduates, the lacking security and pro-tection of academic staff (mainly due to temporary contracts), the declining quality of university ed-ucation, the deteriorat-ing support and funding for small scale humani-ties programs as well as the perceived lacking of structures for the demo-cratic representation of students and staff in main decision-making bodies. Yet, while the occupa-tion of the Maagdenhu-is in Amsterdam is often regarded as a popular revolution ready to trail blaze the way for a new kind of university, it really provides momentum to a series of structural prob-

lems that are systemic not only to our universities, but to our society at large.

The issues raised by the New University are main-ly located in the growing marketisation of universi-ties. Universities increas-ingly behave like corpo-rations, interested in high quantities of published

THE MARKETISATION OF THE UNIVERSITY AND SOCIETY’S COMPLICITY



research results, ever in-creasing student num-bers and a sound financial model, providing for sub-stantial profit or surplus. The characteristics of the market economy start to shape the very concept “university”: efficiency and profitability are now at the centre of the workings of a university, leading to the rationalisation of policies aiming to in-crease student num-bers while decreasing staff or sacking of humanities programs, for example. Howev-er, if universities are corporations, offering a product in the mar-ket, we need to think about what the prod-uct is, and who its buyers are. Clearly, the university appears as the provider of the good “education”, and we as students are its consum-ers. In a world that seems to offer fewer and few-er secure job options but more and more competi-tion and uncertainty, we are told that the only way to even have a shot at a secure future is to attain a university degree. Not just any, of course, but one that is as prestigious as possible and offers us the

most opportunities. We are told that dropping out of college borders on in-sanity, and that study pro-grammes are classifiable according to their useful-ness. We accept the nar-rative that studying Scan-dinavian languages does

not yield the same value as studying public policy. Even here at UCM, we are complicit in this: how many times have we con-sidered to take that statis-tics course because of its alleged utility, and how many times have we com-plained that the absence of internships on our cur-riculum renders us utterly unemployable? Even here at UCM, a heaven of liber-al arts education, we are

striving to transform our-selves into something the labour market is willing to employ. But is that really all university education is about? Are we only here to get a degree, or are we here to learn? Is there not a value of universities be-

yond the preparation for future careers?

As long as our so-ciety continues to val-ue education based on the income it will provide in the future, as long as we classi-fy study programmes and disciplines ac-cording to their utility not for society but for the economy, there can be no meaning-ful reformation of our universities. If we want universities

to return to their core business of providing

education and facilitate research, we need to stop incentivising the instru-mentalisation of educa-tion and start valuing it for what it is - a beacon for the scientific and mor-al advancement of society and individual self-devel-opment; a value un-quan-tifiable by methods of util-ity and efficiency.

Svea Windwehr

A red square outside of UM’s headquarters at Mind-erbroedersberg, painted as part of the New University

Maastricht protests


There is a problem with the way economics are currently taught - not only at UCM but in most uni-versity-related institutions. The International Student Initiative for Pluralism in Economics writes: “It is not only the world economy that is in crisis. The teach-ing of economics is in crisis, too”. We believe that this ‘crisis’ is a lack of pluralism in approaching the disci-pline. A pluralist education would acknowledge other schools of thought (e.g. Institutionalist Economics, Marxist Economics, or Eco-logical Economics), would engage in discussions about commonalities and differences among those schools, and would be in-herently interdisciplinary. It would furthermore be high-ly reflective of its own tools and assumptions. One can make several strong argu-ments about why pluralism is necessary for the disci-pline, for example that as a social science, a non-plural-ist approach would be in-sufficient; that 21st century phenomena are too com-plex to approach without a pluralist stance; or that pluralism in any discipline is beneficial for students’ learning processes. Howev-er, in this article we would

like to make an argument about why it is especially necessary at UCM. We will argue that UCM should adopt a pluralist approach to the economic discipline by virtue of being a Liberal Arts program.

As a Liberal Arts College, UCM wants to en-courage critical thinking. There is a number of aca-demic research about the function and value of Lib-eral Arts education. Janek-sela, for example, writes that Liberal Arts represents “an approach to learning that empowers individuals and prepares them to deal with complexity, diversity, and change” (2012, p.2). There is a common under-standing of Liberal Arts as being inherently linked to the skill of critical think-ing. In the words of Albert Einstein: “The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the train-ing of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks”. Furthermore, at the UCM website one can read that “[a]t the College, students are trained in how to think analytically and in scientif-ic methods. Students thus learn to ask fundamen-tal questions about scien-

tific and social issues”. Therefore it is apparent that UCM does not only want to teach tools, but also, and maybe even more impor-tantly, how to think criti-cally about these tools and theories. If this is the case, however, it is of crucial im-portance to approach ac-ademia in a pluralist way, since there is an inherent link between pluralism and critical thinking. Regarding this link, Mason writes that “dialogue with others who are different, who have different world views and cultural backgrounds, is an essential feature of critical thinking. We thus learn to see things from different perspectives, to contextu-alise our world view within the bigger picture” (2008, p.3). In order to approach issues critically, we need to be aware of the bias we are confronted with, and need to be confronted with al-ternatives. Only if this is the case, critical thinking is tru-ly possible.

All in all, therefore, if UCM as a Liberal Arts College wants to encour-age critical thinking, then it is counter-productive to pretend that there is con-sensus in the discipline of economics. Instead, UCM should rather adopt an ap-proach which is more in line with its view on academia- namely a pluralist one.

PINE UCM

WHY WE NEED PLURALISM IN ECONOMICS AT UCM



ALL TALKI, like many others at

UCM, embarked upon a “fall semester abroad” in the 1st half of my third year. In my wish to go out there but obviously not too far out there, I had decid-ed America would be the obvious destination. Failing to obtain a place at Rich-mond, Virginia and all it’s nostalgic Civil War, Robert E. Lee, southern misguided-ness, I plucked for Hobart & William Smith Colleges in Upstate New York. Hobart was simulta-neously small, rural and in America - it ful-filled all the im-portant criteria. Being born and raised in North London, I pre-sumed, had prepared me well for the isolation one may experience in a little college in the vast Ameri-can weirdness. Even more, surely just being English would afford me a degree of reverence in the eyes of my peers. Yet, during my first week of college I real-ized upon a phenomenon that challenged every ro-mantic notion of America I

had. American small talk. Or, as I came to know it, all talk. It is a very basic con-cept and can be explained briefly with an example. You pass by someone you have already met they might say, “whats up” or “how’s it going brah”. Of course you respond right? Wrong. If you say anything in response, you have just become a social pariah. Encounters such as these would leave me hanging in the wind, uttering “good man, yourself?” to the back of someone’s head.

Nothing could have pre-pared me for the nimbus cloud of small talk that floats overhead most tiny conversations in tiny Amer-ican colleges. In the first few weeks of the semester the level did not rise above shit chat. Of course there were many lovely people who could rise above it but I was still shocked by the sheer enormity of the prob-lem, and how it progressed.

All talk did not stop at greetings. As an exchange student there were only two questions that anyone was interested in. Where are you from? And what do you think of America? I answered once by saying I was originally Nigerian and that overall I thought Rus-sia was better, they didn’t even blink. Blatant lies just broke up the monotony a bit. I was on one occasion even asked if I was putting on an English accent. I felt sorrier for my UCM col-league, Felix Dijkstal, who had real trouble convincing people that he was from

the Netherlands and not Den-mark. My descrip-tion of American college life does a disservice to most of the stu-dents at Hobart and I have never been one to jump on the America

equals stupid bandwagon. I suppose you expect me to finish on a glass half full note, I became a citizen of the world, horizons were broadened and so on. But what I really learned from American life is, whenever approaching a potentially awkward encounter, just keep on keepin’ on.

Henry Skewes

semester abrod»


When I am between 70 and 80 years old, I want to be run over by a drunk truck driver who is carrying ex-plosive material. Then I will die when I am quite old, and if everything has gone well, I hope I will have ful-filled what I wanted to ful-fil. The most beautiful part is that I will have no idea that I am dying, since the drunk truck driver will sud-denly collide into me out of nowhere with such an in-sanely rampant speed that I will be annihilated right on the spot. As a bonus to make the whole situation even better, I will be on my way to something very joy-ful, so I will die happily.

Unfortunately, this is an idealised situation. If I reach

this time in my life, the chances are that I will pass 80 years, after which I will grow increasingly incompe-tent in every single aspect of life until I have to be fed, washed and am hated by my family who actually wish I was dead. They are right about this. I should have died at the point when the values of my mind and body had diminished. At this point my family, feeling sad for my painful situa-tion, will say to each oth-er that they never want to get into my situation, and that they would rather be run over by a truck when they are around 70. Maybe my grandson will decide to write some semi-critical ar-ticle in which he tries to be

funny for a free magazine about this.

The previously described situation is becoming more common. People get older and older, until they reach a critical point at which they are actually too old to have a decent life. Since people are chronic self-deceivers too afraid to see the truth, most of them will probably passively stay in their de-creasing situation until they wake up one day covered in their own piss or some other disgusting substance. Right before this moment there was probably a par-ty celebrating how old the person had become, and how strong of a person he/she is to have reached this age.

That is a problem in our society, calling people who endlessly try to escape

PASSING THE EXPIRY DATE

«creative

PASSED



death, strong, or even he-roes. Even at the age of 85. Denying your situation and thereby stealing precious money and time from peo-ple who actually need it (for example someone of 30 who is dying) is seen as an act of utmost heroism. But when one actually thinks about it, the conclusion should arise that it must be way harder to accept the fact that your life is not worth anything anymore, after which you take the decision to stop treatments. It is the difference between running away from some-thing you don’t want to hear with your eyes closed and your ears covered screaming ‘’lalalala, I can’t hear anything’’ and facing the painful truth. The sad part is that people who are strong enough to accept their death, and who are willing to face it are often criticised and seen as losers by society. It seems that we value passivity more than activity.

As long as there are still obituary notes regarding 95 year olds saying ‘’shocked by his/her sudden death’’ I assume that we are collec-tively doing this all the time in order not to think about death, let alone to accept it when it comes at a ridicu-lously old age. If you are ac-tually shocked by a 95 year old dying, you would be

amazed what other equally unexplainable phenomena occur in the world, like rain or ice cream. It is an abuse of the word ‘’shocked’’ to use it in the case of a 95 year old dying. The word might be justified in case you are confused because you find out that the per-son who you thought was already dead for years was actually still alive until a week ago. However, the text ‘’shocked because we thought he was already dead for years, yet we just found out that he died only a few days ago. How remarkable.’’ might come over as rather strange and disrespectful for an obitu-ary note, so I believe this is not the reason why people use such words.

I understand that in a society in which everything is supposed to be control-lable by human beings, it must be hard to accept that a perfectly natural event occurs to a loved one, in which it is not anybody’s fault. You can’t say some-one acted neglectful, you can’t angrily call someone incompetent or a murderer, and the outcome is uncon-trollable. You are left with the painful realisation that your 80 year old mother died because she was old and done. That is hard for everybody, and you need strength for it.

But why bother going through all of that, when you can also just call the doctor a serial killer? In that way, you don’t have to face the fact that there is an end to our influence on the world, and the best of all is that you don’t have to think for a second about the fact that there might be a small fraction of a possi-bility of you dying at some point in time. That might be part of the problem, the fact that the acceptance of someone’s death by nature, is also a defeat for our own illusion of immortality.

As a final note I would like to emphasise that when I am around the age of 80, I am just as likely to be as much of a self-deceiving scared little coward as all of you. This means that I will most probably also rather live in denial, lose all of my dignity by going through an endless package of useless treatments, and eventually end up as a living corpse than to find the strength to die. I also like living by the illusion of immortality more than living with the idea of my own death.

However, it would be best to die while we’re still alive, than to endlessly keep on living while we’re dead. We should become more aware of that.

Xavier Salet


I immediately realized youWhen I first sat down on that bench.A round lawn was centered around youAnd you were standing on two solemn feet.

I remember that your cloak reflectedThe shimmer of the almond blossoms.You seemed to smile and smoked a pipe,Offered your shoulder to a tired dove.

In summer, you were al-ways there,Entwined by flattering scents.No sweat pearled on your shining chest,Not even as the sun stood

highest.

In autumn, it was you, chasing tailsOf leaves in red, brown, or-ange, gold. I waved my hand in diffi-denceAnd smiled at your twin-kled reply.

In winter, then, the snow-flakes stormed – You were still standing on two solemn feet.As the stars hid under the white haze,I asked for warmth under your cloak.

But you just stood on your two solemn feetAnd stared indifferently at the lights

Leaked by warm village housesTo the bitter cold of our park.

I touched your chest, but, oh, how cold it was And adamant; so I laid down at your two feet,Poured my few coins out of my hatAnd placed it sedately on my frozen wisps of hair.

I took a last, deep breath, imagined How you would reflect my memoriesIn summer, autumn, winter, springAbove your two admired, solemn feet,

My one and only friend.

Niklas Elsenbruch

STANDING ON TWO SOLEMN FEET



CLOSED EYES. Thin air. Thick lungs.Breath In. And Out.

Silence fills the room, Dancing fingertips. Sting in the tongue,Shivering lips.

Wet hair. Dry skin.Breath In. And Out.

The floor trembles, The bass alive.Soft touch pulls the strings,In the star-crowded sky.

Closed Eyes. Opened Heart.Breath In. And Out.


MAYBE.Maybe.

Perhaps. We see.Do we?

The mess.The smoke.

The lies.Can we?

How empty.How full.

How true.Should we?

So close.So far.

So clear.May we?

I feel it.I see it.

It comes. I think.

Not them.Not us.But all.

Must be.

Some Peace.Some Hope.

Perhaps.Maybe.


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the bell #8: april 2015 - problems/solutions

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