UU employees made signs together: 'Welcome to the Eppocalypse'

You don't often see academic staff like this: squatting on the floor and working with scissors, markers, and pieces of cardboard. The atmosphere is convivial. Sixteen UU employees are working intently on protest signs.

Ugur Aytac (34), Associate Professor of Political Philosophy, and Ingrid Robeyns (52), Professor of Institutional Ethics, are the organisers. Robeyns is also the coordinator of a WhatsApp group about the protest aimed at Utrecht-based students and staff. In their view, tonight is not only a practical preparation for the protest. Above all, it is a moment to show each other that the academic community can get things done together.

Aytac was going to join the protest because he considers the austerity measures an existential threat to democracy.‘’Well-functioning universities are essential for a thriving society.'’  He does not think one protest will suffice to get the cutbacks off the table. "Our resistance will be more like a marathon than a sprint. To sustain it, you need a movement, and you can build that with something like this."

Robeyns walks by, laughing. "We are being hampered by empty pens," she says. Then she turns to us: "You have to keep the humour or it won't be fun anymore." Meanwhile, Professor Marcel Verweij holds up a bottle of Orangina to ask who wants some. 

Rutger Claassen (46), Professor of Political Philosophy & Economic Ethics, is working on a sign reading "Welcome to the Eppocalypse" (Eppo Bruins is the name of the Dutch Minister of Education, Ed.). However, Claassen's handwriting is too big and does not fit the sign, so he has to start over. 

Sitting at a table next to him, Willemien Sanders (57), Associate Professor of Media & Cultural Studies, says with a laugh: "So this is what you learn in kindergarten. Neat writing and colouring". Cheerfully, she continues with her protest sign. The man with the Orangina pours his colleagues a glass.

Claassen explains that most people present have just had a meeting at the Ethics Institute. After discussing ethics, they all came here to make protest signs together. "It's one of the many things we can do," Claassen says with a wink.

Paula Keller (27) didn't expect to be here. She will only start working as an associate professor at UU next year as she is currently associated with Cambridge. She came to the colloquium while in transit from Hanover and decided to help her colleagues make protest signs afterwards. "Similar things are going on in the UK, where higher education is consistently underfunded. Some Humanities departments are being closed down."

The Orangina man has since switched to pouring red wine. The academics now face a practical problem: there is only one wine glass. Not to be deterred, they decide to switch to plastic cups.

PhD candidate Emma Kopeinigg (25) is helping colour the signs. "This is an important common cause. I have just started my PhD and I don't want to miss the opportunity to speak out against the austerity measures."

"Most people here tonight are from the Ethics Institute, but everyone is welcome," stresses Ingrid Robeyns. "It is much more fun to make protest signs together. Besides, ours is 'a neoliberal university', as they say, where everyone is concerned with their own work and goals. We need to show what it means to be an academic community again. Whatever happens, we have done our best anyway. I believe we will all come out of it stronger!"

On Wednesday, November 13, trade unions FNV and AOb have decided to cancel the protest after the municipality of Utrecht advised the demonstration not to go on. The municipality, the police and the public prosecutor's office say they have "concrete evidence" that pro-Palestine groups were planning to hijack the protest and the use of violence wasn't discarded. "The safety of protesters cannot be sufficiently guaranteed," says Mayor Sharon Dijksma in a letter to the municipal council.