Campus Columnist winners intend to tell it like it is

DUB announced the winners at its New Year's reception, which took place last Wednesday at Parnassos bar. 

Most of the 17 entries received this year focused on personal stories. The judges chose six nominees, three for each language. 

Bastiaen Huijnen (centre) won the 2025 campus columnist competition for the Dutch page. Photo: DUB

And the winner for the Dutch page is...
The judges chose Bastiaen Huijnen as the winner for the Dutch site. He is pursuing a Master's in Legal Research, focusing on criminal law. His Bachelor's thesis delved into legal stumbling blocks to imposing a ban on the far-right party Forum voor Democratie. He recently wrote an op-ed for the Dutch newspaper Trouw based on his thesis. This experience sparked his interest in journalism and his enthusiasm for writing. 

Some of Bastiaen's op-eds in Dutch media were about long covid, a disease he suffered from. In his opinion pieces for Trouw and NRC, he manifests his disappointment at the Dutch government, which he believes has left long covid patients to their own devices. 

To acquire even more experience in journalism, he joined the weekly magazine De Groene Amsterdammer as an intern in December 2024. "This also explains my desire to become a campus columnist for DUB," he explains. "As a campus columnist, I will take a stand and bring to the fore certain issues happening at the university."

His nominated column, The Romanticised Cigarette shows he has a sharp pen. He describes the cigarette as a cultural icon and recollects how Covid made him put a stop to his short-lived smoking phase. "When you have a cancer stick in your mouth, you don't acknowledge the fragility and finality of your healthy body," he wrote. "Maybe that's what makes it attractive: with a cigarette in your hand, students can show that, at least for now, they can afford a dose of tar and nicotine."

The two other nominees were undergraduates. Merlijn van Leerzem is a first-year History student who was already fond of writing op-eds as a high school student. He has published opinion pieces for the Dutch publications Trouw, Het Parool and Joop among topics like former Prime Minister Mark Rutte's lack of vision, European citizenship and taking pleasure in reading. In his nominated column, he talks about ChatGPT, arguing that human creativity is still required for a good idea. 

Lisa Schüssler is a second-year student at University College Utrecht. The judges found her nominated column, The World at Your Feet, relatable: "Although I enjoy this time full of freedom, this abundance of possibilities can sometimes feel suffocating."
 

Tara Neary (right) is the winner of the 2025 campus columnist competition for the English page. Photo: DUB

And the winner for the English page is...
The winner for the English page had to race to get to the ceremony on time. She went to the reception straight from an exam at the Graduate School of Life Sciences, where she is pursuing a Master's in Environmental Biology. Tara Neary comes from Ireland and has been living in Utrecht since 2019. This is not the first time she has contributed to DUB. She has taken photos and a video for DUB as a freelancer. She is interested in the relationship between people and nature and enjoys travelling and filming.

Her love of travel is evident in her nominated column, Say a Little Prayer: saints, Slavic Gods and a Successful Fieldwork Season, in which she describes a fieldwork trip to the Czech Republic and the obstacles she and her supervisor faced when trying to take pictures with a drone. The weather conditions were far from ideal, so all they could do was pray to local gods. The judges enjoyed how her column manages to be lighthearted and serious at the same time.

As a campus columnist, she aims to keep an eye on what is happening at the university and describe the things that stand out for her. The relationship between international students and their Dutch counterparts is one of the topics she wants to focus on.

Tara was chosen over the finalists Matthew Tan, a junior lecturer in Anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine, and the student Hubert Matuszewski. Tan is no stranger to DUB either. When he was a Liberal Arts & Sciences student, he wrote an op-ed for DUB about how Osiris made it difficult for students to register for courses outside their faculties. In his nominated column, Bring Friends Home Instead of Laundry on the Weekends, he gives an idea of how Dutch students can get closer to international students. He suggests Dutch students not to visit their parents every weekend, but rather stay in Utrecht and hang out with internationals. And if they do travel back to their parents' place, why not bring an international student along instead of just laundry? 

Student Hubert Matuszewski was nominated for his column Op de Fiets in de Winter. He is doing a Master's in Climate Physics after a first Master's degree in Voice Technology and a Bachelor's in Liberal Arts & Sciences, both in Groningen. The student with Polish roots grew up in Ireland but has been in the Netherlands since 2019. Despite the Dutch title, he ran for a position as campus columnist on the English page, writing about the experience of riding a bike in the winter. "The Dutch winter is cold, but never cold enough to be ‘cool.’"
 

Bastiaen Huijnen and Tara Neary will both receive the Erik Hardeman stipend (1,000 euros each). They are succeeding Emma Ravenhorst and Monica van de Ridder. Monica was unable to write columns for most of last year following an accident.

Judges
This year's panel of judges consisted of Beatrice de Graaf, professor of History of International Relations; Nieske Vergunst, communications advisor at the Faculty of Science; Quintijn de Leng, Master's student in Urban & Economic Geography and winner of the 2023 campus columnist competition; Marjorie van Elven, DUB's international editor; and Ries Agterberg, DUB's editor-in-chief.