IndyMedia - Vrij Media Centrum Nederland

With the Festival of Sciences and Humanities approaching this weekend, and lots of great people lining up to visit the Maagdenhuis once more, it seems at last we are rounding up an incredible period of time that will shape our lives for years if not decades to come. Our appropriation will transform into it’s subsequent phase and with this transformation questions arise automatically. What has happened over the last weeks? What have we gained? Will leaving the Maagdenhuis be a victory, or should we call it a defeat? And although some people within the Maagdenhuis are not inclined to this type of efficiency thinking there are some tentative answers to be pointed at.

Politically speaking our gains have been hard fought, but although they are not to be diminished, these gains alone will not satisfy us. Our political gains can be summed up in the two committees: One committee will research the University’s finances, but rumor has it that the private holding will not be part of these investigations. Another committee will look in to democratization, but its mandate is still unclear. We are not sure yet this will become clearer in the future and we all know that in the Netherlands the work of committees tends to take very long. Besides these issues we have seen our other demands unaddressed. How about Flex-contracts? How about funding based on quantitative output? How about speculation with public money? All these issues have not yet been properly addressed although some of them are mentioned in the 10-point plan of the board.

But however meager our political gains may seem to some, they are gains nonetheless. Furthermore, they are not the only gains that we have gracefully accepted over the last weeks. The unity we have experienced with Humanities Rally and Rethink UvA has been heart-warming at times, and the constant solidarity from bakers, supermarkets, musicians, speakers, artists, workers and most importantly ordinary people coming to the Maagdenhuis has marked a very special moment in time.

From the night of entering the Maagdenhuis until the Science and Humanities Festival this weekend, it has been an amazing ride with an incredible group of people. Who could have thought that entering this administration building would cause such a thrilling experience? We have seen Jacques Rancière speak to a jam-packed Maagdenhuis, we drafted a new education law with a left wing politician and we have even seen The New World Symphony being performed by a student orchestra with the entire Maagdenhuis silent as can be. A constant flow of lectures, bands, dinners, workshops, laughter, pictures, meetings and dancing has kept the Maagdenhuis more alive than it has ever been and it might ever be. Students from all around the world have asked for skype conversations about this remarkable adventure and journalists from Norway to Italy, from London to New York, Hong Kong to South Africa, have expressed their interest in what is happening here. Thousands have set foot inside our building to greet our initiative, to satisfy their curiosity, to debate and argue, to enjoy and share, to contribute and donate, to hate and to love the public space that we’ve created almost by accident. And now it seems time to say goodbye to this moment, not because we are forced by the rule of law, but because we are ready, we are willing to let go.

We find that we can keep on stressing the importance of our political wishes with greater force from another position over the coming months. The Maagdenhuis has become a symbol that is not clearly associated anymore with what we were fighting for to begin with. After all the enticing times in the political and cultural centre that we established temporary in the city centre of Amsterdam, the time has come to look each other in the eye and ask whether the means is still serving the goal. We’ve concluded that it is time to move forward to a new and unknown phase after this weekend. Outside the Maagdenhuis we will keep the committees awake, we will criticize them and pressure them if needed. Although we have reasons to distrust the board because of all the lawsuits that have been directed towards us, we are noting that the board is asking for trust in order to move forward. A question we can only answer with a skeptical frown for now.

So as we are about to jump in this unknown future we stand still and reflect on what has happened, and on what is to come. Most of us will continue fighting on a faculty level, others might leave our movement or have left already to pick up their studies or research. We will be happy to greet them when they join our ranks again and hope we can tempt them in doing so. But although we don’t know whether we are saying goodbye forever, or seeing each other first thing Tuesday morning, whether we will fight or retreat, whether we will win or lose, we are fully aware of the fact that what happened in the Maagdenhuis is never to be taken from us again.

In February 2015 a group of people decided to stand up against budget cuts, fetishism of performance targets, top-down management and that the university is increasingly being run as a corporation. They addressed their issues first in the Bungehuis, got sued for 100.000 euros for every day they would remain and found themselves together in the Maagdenhuis to live one of the weirdest most, vibrant periods in the recent history of Amsterdam. They saw renowned speakers, they held endless discussions, they met an incredible amount of new people who they learned to trust, they reached out to the world, they shared wonderful dinners, heard wonderful music, danced wonderful dances. They carried the fire of the youth in them which never is extinguished nor ever ignited fully, as one generation gives it to the other rejuvenating society. They had the unshakable feeling that what they were doing was right and were keeping imaginations alive all around the globe. They inspired and shared, they were hated and loved but above all they catched a glimpse of what a New education and another society could look like in the overwhelmingly beautiful disorder that for 7 weeks was called the Maagdenhuis.

Could the University be an accessible place to all again? Could the University be a place one does not leave with a 40 K student debt? Could the University be a place where non-white people are not only taken up in marketing but also abundantly present in the student population, the staff and the board as a normality which the University of Colour is striving towards? And could the world inside and outside the University be less focused on efficiency and more focused on softer, human values that keep resisting quantification no matter what. These are just some of the vital questions that have come to us apart from the dozens of other questions, the hundreds of articles and the thousands of new experiences, lessons and moments of pure, uncompromised beauty that we were granted.

We are grateful, we are tired. We are determined, we are moving on.

Please join us for the Sciences and Humanities Festival this weekend or some other time over the coming weeks.