UUinActie makes its entry in University Council

The formation of UUinActie was a direct result of the national protest movement WOinActie. It’s unusual for a new party to have a candidate list for both the student and the employee elections.

The emphasis in UUinActie’s campaign was on relieving people’s workloads, on giving students and employees more say, and on quality improvement in education. The approach proved successful, as the results of the election were announced in the University Hall on Friday. Professor Annelien de Dijn of Modern Political History and student of Dutch Ashley van Driel will take their seats in the council next year.

Vuur loses

Among the students, De Vrije Student can also be content with the results – it received a ‘residual seat’, which means that next year, they’ll have two instead of one council member representing them. De Partij voor de Utrechtse Student (PvdUS) receives the other leftover ‘residual seat’, and receives four seats, just like last year.

Lijst Vuur remains the largest student party at the UU, but is still the biggest loser of the elections. Next year, Vuur will have to be satisfied with no more than five seats – two less than in the previous elections. This spring, the party also lost a seat because council member Tymen Cobelens left the party to join the PvdUS.

The allocation of the seats is done entirely by the ranking of the submitted candidate lists. None of the lower-placed students received sufficient preference votes to obtain a seat.

Number 3 on the Vuur list, Jesse Wijlhuizen, student of Sociology and Philosophy, received the highest number of votes out of all candidates: 381. In total, 7274 students cast their vote, which is around 23.9 percent of the number of those eligible to vote. The turnout was a little lower than previous years.

PhD party keeps its two seats

As a result of newcomer UUinActie, party Vlam – which has been the biggest employee party for years – loses one seat of their current nine. Among scientific staff, Vlam won two out of four seats in both alpha/gamma and beta sciences. It also received all four of the seats meant for supporting staff.

There was no election for these supporting staff seats, as the only three eligible candidates came from the Vlam party. After calculating the results, the fourth seat was also allocated to Vlam, which meant the number three on the alpha/gamma list among scientific staff, art historian Annemieke Hoogenboom, was elected.

The Utrecht PhD Party (UPP) keeps the two seats it won two years ago, when it first joined the elections. Just like two years ago, it took a residual seat in Beta Sciences to get there. PhD Candidates Lieke Schrijvers and Anne van Veen will join the council for the UPP. Remarkably, UUinActie received two votes more than UPP did, but receives one seat less. This is because UUinActie only joined the elections in the alpha/gamma district.

In the end, only Vlam front man Joop Schippers was elected via preference votes. Of all employees, he received the highest number of votes: 253. However, as Schippers was already the party leader, this didn’t change anything about the candidate list. In total, 2,266 employees cast their vote, around 32.8 percent of the electorate.

The elected students are:

Lijst Vuur

• Vincent de Haes, Geosciences
• Anneke Marien, Humanities
• Jesse Wijlhuizen, Humanities / Social Sciences
• Nienke Prins, Humanities / Law, Economics and Governance  
• Rens van Hoogdalem, Humanities

Partij voor de Utrechtse Student 

• Lars Bakker, Law, Economics and Governance 
• Maartje Lith, Law, Economics and Governance   
• Friso Bouman, Law, Economics and Governance 
• Sarah van Driel, Sciences                     

De Vrije Student

• Eva Klaver, Sciences  
• Job van den Broek, UCR / Law, Economics and Governance       

UUinActie 

• Ashley van Driel, Humanities        

The elected employees are:

Lijst Vlam

• Joop Schippers, Law, Economics and Governance                         
• Toine Minnaert, Humanities 
• Annemieke Hoogenboom, Humanities  
• Gert Folkers, Sciences     
• Mechiel Korte, Sciences     
• Syl Blad, Sciences  
• Wim de Smidt, Law, Economics and Governance
• Liesbeth Potters, Law, Economics and Governance              

Utrechtse Promovendi Partij 

• Lieke Schrijvers, Humanities
• Anne van Veen, Sciences                              

UUinActie 

• Annelien de Dijn, Humanities                       

UMC Utrecht                                                        

• Erna van Wilsem, Medicine