'They're not official UU students'
Executive Board: pre-master's students not allowed to vote
Photo: DUB's Archive
Every year, UU students can vote for the University Council and the council of their faculty. They can also run for a seat in one of those councils themselves. None of this applies to the approximately 700 pre-master's students, who are not allowed to vote or serve on the councils. Just before the University Council elections of 2025, two pre-master's students wrote an op-ed in DUB, arguing that this made them feel “excluded”.
Dewi van Onselen and Amber Ipenburg, both student members of the University Council from the Vuur party, share the view that it is unfair that pre-master's students are not allowed to participate in the representative councils. They submitted a memorandum to this end (available only to people with a Solis ID, Ed.) in November, asking the Executive Board to amend the Election Regulations to give pre-master's students passive and active voting rights.
According to Van Onselen and Ipenburg, pre-master's students should be considered “full” students. After all, they write in the memo, “pre-master's students receive a UU student number, have access to all university buildings, use sports facilities, participate in study and student associations, access the university library, and follow courses that are equivalent in content and organisation to those of Bachelor's and Master's students.”
Van Onselen and Ipenburg fear that the structural exclusion of pre-master's students from the elections will make the council less representative of the UU community and the pre-master's students feel excluded from the community.
Not a real student
Despite these objections, the Executive Board has decided not to give pre-master's students the right to vote. In a new memorandum (available only to those with a Solis ID, Ed.), the board explains that pre-master's students are not officially considered students because they are not enrolled in an accredited programme. Instead, they are following a transition programme, which means that the university has no legal obligation to give them the right to vote. In its memo, the Executive Board even refrains from calling them "pre-master's students", using only the term “pre-masters” to refer to the group.
According to the Executive Board, pre-masters are “only temporarily or marginally” at the university, as they are “only focused on obtaining a limited number of credits”. The university administration also writes that “pre-masters don't necessarily have the same level of knowledge of the university environment or a comparable connection with the university community as regular students."
In addition, the Executive Board fears a precedent-setting effect on other groups without voting rights, such as professionals enrolled in Continuing Education programmes. The board believes that restricting voting rights to students enrolled in accredited programmes prevents the "fragmentation" of its representative bodies. "Extending voting rights to additional, temporary or differently positioned groups could undermine the clarity and effectiveness of the representation system."
Vuur members react
Van Onselen and Ipenburg say in an email that they are “disappointed” with the Executive Board's decision. "In our view, this was a relatively simple initiative, and we sincerely wondered what arguments they could make against it." They say they have little sympathy for the Executive Board's reasoning. “The argument that granting voting rights to pre-master's students would dilute the representative system is incomprehensible to us. The University Council is supposed to represent the entire UU community. Extending voting rights to an even larger group would therefore strengthen and legitimise the representative system, rather than weaken it.”
The University Council members also feel that the Executive Board is ignoring their arguments. "It feels as though the importance of our memorandum was not fully understood or appreciated, even though we are committed to the same common goal: making UU a better place."
The subject will be discussed on Monday, 9 February, at a University Council committee meeting.
Complimenten aan Dewi van Onselen en Amber Ipenburg voor hun enorme inzet. En wat een wanvertoning van het CvB, waarbij ze kijken naar de letter, in plaats van de geest van de wet. Minimaal vier Nederlandse universiteiten hebben pre-masters al geëmancipeerd betreffende het kiesrecht. Pure onwil.