For a year now, University College has been housed onthe grounds of the Kromhout Kazerne Barracks in East Utrecht.Instead of military personnel international students live in thebuildings around the former parade-ground. How do their neighboursfeel about that? What do the inhabitants of Utrecht know about theCollege? And does the University see the College as a prestigeobject?

In August 1998, however, the University Board agreed to theestablishment of the College in the form it has had for the pastyear. Certainly prestige played a part in the decision making. Thepresident of the University Board J. Veldhuis made that clear atthe Council meeting when he said: "University College allows us tomake an important contribution to the national debate on courseduration and supplementing the curriculum with academic skills.More pretentious yet: its international allure makes thisinitiative rather unique for the European continent as a whole. Itis our contribution to the European cause, furthering the unity ofand fraternization within Europe."

The University public relations officer, J. Kessels, agrees andthinks the College contributes to the University's prestige: "It isone of the most outstanding educational innovations in theNetherlands. The large number of bodies cooperating to get theCollege off the ground is ample proof, in my view. The University,the City Council, the Ministry of Defence, and the Ministry ofEducation all worked together to realize the College."

What does the College mean to the University? Kessels: "TheCollege contributes to the University's national and internationalprofile. Because of the additional courses it offers, itcontributes to the educational differentiation. Its form attracts anew target group: students with international ambitions, who arewilling to work hard in a campus setting and choose a major thatoffers them a wide range of opportunities. The College graduateswill be highly employable in any business environment."

Kessels claims to receive numerous inquiries about UniversityCollege: "Most of the inquiries are made by the press and secondaryeducation student counsellors. They want to know things like: whatare the possibilities after graduation, what is the curriculum likeand what exactly is University College?"

Rietveld house

In spite of huge media attention the College is notreally verywell-known in Utrecht. The Vredenburg municipal Information Centercannot provide any documentation on University College. What thedesk employee can provide, is a CD-rom containing information onthe military history of the Kromhout grounds: 'The PerfectPicture'. It also contains an item, mainly pictures, on the futureof the former military barracks, but not a word is said about theUniversity College campus, even though it now occupies a quarter ofthe grounds.

At the next desk, the Utrecht Tourist Information cannot provedinformation on University College or the Kromhout grounds either.Staff member F. van Tiel: "We know it's there, but nobody everasks. The people who come here want information on the Rietveldhouse, canal rides, and the Dom tower, the usual touristattractions." Van Tiel is pleased with the existence of aninternational campus in Utrecht, but does not believe it will everbe a tourist attraction. A comparison between Utrecht and Cambridgeis too far-fetched: "Cambridge IS that University, Utrecht isfamous for other things."

The manager of the East Utrecht Community Center, H. Versnel,agrees that a comparison with Cambridge would be too far-fetched,but he believes that the Kromhout grounds have been put to good useby locating the College there. "At least the former militarybuildings are still intact. Initially, the first solution that cameto mind was demolition and rebuilding. I like this better." Versnelthinks the College nicely enhances Utrecht's international allure."This city usually shows no international orientation at all. Thereis the Jaarbeurs, the University has a number of internationalcontacts with other University cities, and the City Council, forinstance, cooperates with the Czech city of Brno, but that's aboutit. I think this is a useful addition."

What image does the College have in the neighbourhood of theKromhout Barracks? L. Kramer, who owns the pub called Jan Primus,hardly ever sees any of the College students. "Now and againthere's a bunch of them here, but I think they haven't got the timeor the money to go out. And they have a bar of their own overthere", Kramer says while pulling a beer. "I do like the studentsbetter than the military who used to be here. They were very loudcoming back from the city drunk."

P. Kroes, of Prins Hendriklaan, lives across the street fromUniversity College. He does not mind at all having the College athis doorstep. "Who knows what effect the College's positive imagemay have on the neighbourhood. It hasn't had much effect yet,though, for it is only known around here. I see the odd studentcoming or going through the gate." Kroes thinks student are justordinary young people growing up. "Perhaps they are a bit smarterthan other 'feuten' (freshers)."

Joke van der Glas

9 Courses have an absolute quality score of 4.0 and higher

12 Courses have an absolute quality score between 3.5 and3.9

15 Courses have a score between 3.0 and 3.4

2 Courses have a score under 3.0

All in all the results are very good for this semester, takinginto account that instructors had to develop the courses for atotally new curriculum and an `unknown' student population.

Nine courses already have an absolute quality score of 4.0 andhigher. The 12 courses that score between 3.5 and 3.9 will probablygrow to the 4.0 as a result of the improvements instructors alreadyplanned to make. We thus have 15 courses passing the criteria, withscores between 3.0 and 3.4. Redesigning parts of the course may benecesary to get those courses to the 4.0 level next year. Thequality of the two courses, Science and Academic Core, that fallbeneath the 3.0 limit, is unacceptable at this moment. Redesigningthe course as a whole might be necessary.

The quality of the course especially depends on the content ofthe course and how much the students' interest is aroused, theteaching methods, the assignments and the assessment of thecourse.

Taken from the course evaluation by the `IVLOS',january 1999.

Why did you come to University College?

I believe that UC gives you a good start in terms of futurefinancial and social perspectives. I want to explore the world someday, and you need an international education for that. I want toexperience the best part of life, have it all, and UC is a means toachieve that. Besides, I just feel like playing around a little bitbefore I start with a professional career.

What is the worst aspect of yourpersonality?

Materialism. I want to possess things; I mean trendy, goodquality ones. In that sense money is important to me.

What character trait annoys you most inothers?

Arrogance.

What is your favorite movie?

`Reservoir dogs'. Although it shows a lot of brutality andanimalism, there are some very realistic aspects to it. Besides, itproves that you can make a good movie on a very low budget. Whenyou consider the standard expenses in the movie industry nowadays,it is a remarkable achievement.

What do you want to be in 25 years?

I want to be happy. I'd like to feel good about myself in 25years, however, I don't know now what happiness will mean to me atthat age.

What do you dislike most about UC?

The gossiping. When so many people live so close to each other,they start telling stories. I am also dissatisfied with the food atUC. I think the vegetarian menu is not varied enough, and that thatshould be taken into consideration in a place where a number ofpeople from different backgrounds are gathered.

Who is your favorite writer?

Leon de Winter. He writes about the glamour of life, and thetragedies and intrigues behind it. With their Eastern Europeansettings, his stories are usually pretty exciting. I think thatentertainment is not appreciated enough in Dutch literature.

What is the event you're least looking forwardto?

Death. I believe there's life after death, but it must bedifferent from what we have here. People tend to fear things theydo not know. Our society is so proud of its so-called civilizationand progress, but we can't even explain our own creation.

Anna Cieslik

"Next year we expect two hundred students more than there arenow, so we're going to be busy", Van Oosten says. "We'll be dealingwith 380 students then, and again there will be a large group ofEastern European students. They were granted a Fortis scholarshipby the VSB bank, which enabled them to come over. There will alsobe exchange students, which is new and for which we made a contractwith California University. Ten of our students will go there,among others to Berkeley and to Smith College in Northampton."

Most strikingly, the future incoming students - that is, thosewho have had intake interviews - are conspicuous for their interestin the Dutch

language and literature. "We'll be offering them a full track ofDutch

next year", Van Oosten says. "In addition, the English languagecourses

will undergo major changes. Under the heading 'English forAcademic

Purposes' they will be combined with the Writing and Compositioncourses and so gain a more skills-like character."

In order to provide housing and teaching accommodation for allthese

student at the Kromhout campus, a number of building activitieshas been planned. "For teaching purposes we already had theVoltaire Hall for Humanities and the Descartes Hall for 'AcademicCore'. As from September 1st, the Newton Hall for Sciences and theLocke Hall for Social Sciences will become available", Van Oostenanticipates. "The teaching facilities will be completed then, whichis much more practical. There is no need any longer to squeeze alanguage lab or a computer instruction room into a Sciencebuilding. Each building will have its own disciplinarycharacter."

Petanque

There will also be a special place for socializing: the DiningHall will undergo some adjustments, as a drama practice room willbe created, as well as some rooms for student activities, such as aroom for the Boomerang editorial staff, a board room for theUniversity College Student Association, a reading room, etc. "Andthere will be a College Bar", Ineke tells us. "A real pub, which issponsored by the Grolsch Brewery." Next to the Dining Hall outdoorsports facilities are planned where students can play football,basketball, petanque, or tennis in between or after classes.

Ineke van Oosten: "As for the student housing accommodation: thelastnewly built houses are finished, providing 234 rooms. Togetherwith the rooms in three of the four teaching buildings, and therooms in two more 'barracks', that should be enough to accommodatethe large number of students starting in September. A further 121rooms will be built; a sensational design by architect Koen vanVelzen, integrating a noise barrier into a block of houses."

The grounds themselves will be cleaned up as well. Part of thegigantic

parade-ground right behind the front entrance will remain intactfor

historic and cultural reasons, but seating units will be added."And for

the rest it will be much greener", Van Oosten predicts. "Therewill be lots of grass, and the buildings will be connected by'elephant tracks' (paths following the natural connecting lines).And there will be a new lighting system, a kind of spot lights onthe buildings. For University College should be much more 'open',much more accessible to the public", Van Oosten thinks. "Because ofthe continuous renovations and the unsuitable grounds we have keptthings a little secluded up till now, but later on it will be muchmore open in character. Especially if there are going to be anannex of the Cultural Center Parnassos and an Auditorium, which arepossibilities we are exploring at the moment."

Armand Heijnen

arranged. However, the figures, giving theexpenditure per month from September until July, show that expensesfor University and College students are not the same.

Shopping 300 guilders

College fee 275 guilders College fee 275 guilders

Insurance 50 guilders Insurance 50

guilders

Telephone: 25 guilders Telephone 25 guilders

Transport 30 guilders Transport 25

guilders

Clothing 80 guilders Clothing 75

guilders

Going out 75 guilders Going out 50

guilders

Contributions 40 guilders Contributions 25 guilders

Total 1350 guilders* Total 1825 guilders

Dirkjan Koch

* NIBUD, Student op kamers komt moeilijker rond,persbericht 31 augustus

1998

Next year a new group of students will attendUniversity College. Wies Steur is one of them. Wies is 18 years oldand spends this year in Chile. She replied to some questionsconcerning her activities and her motivation to attend UniversityCollege.

What have you been doing the last 18 years?

You can do quite a lot in 18 years and I guess I did. I was bornin Pasto, Colombia. When I was about one year old I came to live atmy grandparent's in Weert for some time. At the age of three Ilived in Syria for one year. Afterwards I lived in the Philippinesfor five years. At the age of nine I moved back to the Netherlands:Ede, then Gameren (a little spot near Zaltbommel), and eventuallyHeeswijk-Dinther (a spot almost just as little, near Veghel), wheremy mother settled as a General Practitioner.

I finished High School over there. Of that school I have somegood memories especially of the international projects that wereorganized and in which I participated, and, of course, the timethat I was a member of the party committee and chairman of thepupils' council. Right now I am in Chile attending classes at theUniversity of Concepcìon. My main goal is learning Spanish andgetting to know the Chilean culture and country.

Why are you going to attend University College?

I would like to know a lot about many things. At secondaryschool I really hated to drop subjects in tenth grade. At UC I cando many different things and I like that very much. Furthermore,the international atmosphere appeals to me. I am quite interestedin other countries and cultures, that's why I am in Chile rightnow, and I expect to encounter some at UC.

What was the procedure you had to go through before you wereadmitted?

First I had to send in an application form together with aletter of recommendation by my principal and a personal letter ofmotivation. This was followed by an interview; I was very nervous.But, it turned out to be a relaxed talk and two weeks later Ireceived a letter saying I was admitted: Hurrah!

How much time are you planning to spend on yourstudies?

That is hard to say. I am planning to join a studentsociety andto do sports. Maybe I will become an active member of Groen Linksand of course I would also like to spend time on my social life. Ithink I will manage and since I can choose the courses I like, Iwon't mind if it turns out that I will have to study a lot.

Do you think University College is an elitistinstitute?

It's something I am afraid of. I mean its quite expensive andbeside that, it is a group of people selected on the basis ofcertain traits. Next, the fact that you all live together on acampus does not stimulate contact with other students, does it? Butthen, I think that's something you yourself can control.

Dirkjan Koch

Study Pressure or the Experimental Phase of a TopInstitution?

In September 1998, a UC student was expected to studyapproximately 55 hours per week. It was a high target, but backthen everybody aimed high: students, professors, tutors. That wasjust the beginning. Seven weeks later, complaints on the part ofthe students overwhelmed the tutors and the Board of Studies. Alast-minute decision made by the Dean and the Board of Studiesbrought about an extra week off, in addition to the week off the UCstudents had been entitled to in the very beginning.

In an interview in Boomerang, Maarten Prak, the chairman of theBoard of Studies, justified this decision: "We had to take thatdecision because the fall break was coming up and we felt that itwould be a serious problem for most of the students to go home fora holiday with that amount of work in front of them. This pile ofwork was a problem for two reasons: first, they would not have hadthe holiday that they were entitled to, and second, we were afraidthat some of the students would go home, feeling under pressure andthinking that, if the study was going to go on like that for threemore years, then they did not want to be part of it. We felt thatthe huge amount of work was a mistake, one that we were responsiblefor."

Week off

Students' reactions towards the decision of the Board of Studieswere split, but approximately 30 percent of the UC studentsdisliked the idea of being privileged with an extra week off. Theirmain argument was that such a last minute decision would have anegative influence on the image of University College. Otherarguments they used: there was no need for a catch-up week, itwould be even more difficult to catch up with classes skipped, andan extra week off was not going to solve the workload problem. Theissue was to be dealt with in other terms, later on in thesemester. The teaching staff had to reduce the pile of work theyset the students, so that, as as consequence, the number of hoursstudents spent on their studies would be reduced as well. UCstudents were now able to cope with high-level courses, and stillhave time for a social life as well. This was more like the life ofa UC student as it had been meant to be in the beginning.

The second semester brought about even more changes. Teachingtimewas reduced from four hours to two hours per course. Theworkload was far more acceptable to students. Annelies Blom, afirst year UC student expresses her point of view regarding theworkload last semester: "I think the workload is much less thissemester. This is due to the new structure of the courses, I guess.Teachers now have to stick to their two hours of teaching, andcannot exceed this amount of time. Now we no longer find ourselvesin the situation where we had classes from nine in the morning tillfive in the afternoon. The workload was reduced, but I don't thinkit lowers the prestige of University College. It is always betterto start with a higher workload, and know you can reduce it. Whenyou start at a lower level of study, and then try to lift it, it ismuch more difficult. And besides, I think they've only reduced theworkload in some courses, because in others that really wasn'tnecessary."

Dana Mustata

That gives the University College students a headstartin comparison to other first year students, of whom about 90percent reaches the same amount of study points, but not before theend of the academic year. The University College students -withmany foreigners among them- have been especially selected on thebasis of, among other things, motivation and secondary educationmarks. They are offered a varied programme in English. After threeyears they gain a Bachelor's degree, which gives them access toother universities, either in the Netherlands orabroad.

University College has started nearly a year ago and hasstirred many pens and tongues into motion, in positive and innegative ways: it is said to be too elitist, too expensive, theworkload would be too heavy ... But some have called it an'interesting experiment', a fresh element in the realm of highereducation. Where lies the truth in all these stories? What is theopinion of the students and their teachers? U-blad and Boomerang -the University College campus magazine - combined forces toevaluate the situation after one year of University Collegeexperience. And they take a cautious glance at the future of thisOxford at the Dom.

This Boomerang, as centre spread of the U-blad's 3 June 1999issue, was co-produced by the editorial staffs of the UniversityPaper U-blad and the UC Paper Boomerang.

Coordination: Joke van der Glas, Armand Heijnen, Ineke vanOosten, Laura van Veenendaal

Editorial staff: Xander Bronkhorst, Anna Cieslik, Hilla Dotan,Jeannette van Gels, Joke van der Glas, Erik Hardeman, ArmandHeijnen, Dirkjan Koch, Daniela Mustata, Laura van Veenendaal, JuliaZamorska

Column: Maarten Prak

Photography: Manon van Geitenbeek, Maarten Hartman, AngeligueMeyer, Marilien Mogendorff, Wilfred van Schie, Joost van Waert

Illustrations: Joost van Waert

Language assistance: Renée Hamelinck, AnneliesKruijshoop

Final editing: Joke van der Glas, Armand Heijnen, Laura vanVeenendaal

As a UC student, I can easily tell you: we do enjoy it. Livingon campus is really not that bad and it certainly is not the waysome of the students at Universiteit Utrecht might think it is. Weare not trapped here, isolated completely from the outer world anddevoting all the time available to studying. Oh no, we do leavecampus.

The University College campus is situated very nicely andconveniently between the centre of Utrecht and the Uithof, whichmakes it really easy for us to get there.

We are allowed to leave campus any time we want to and get in atany time of the night, thanks to our electronic keys which enableus also to enter all the academic buildings and get our meals. So,having such facilities, we do leave campus quite often. Of coursethere is not always enough time to make long trips to the cafes inthe town, so then we just stay in our own College Bar. But normallywe do shopping in the city centre, go to Olympus and the library orsimply go out to pubs, restaurants and cafes. We do the things allthe normal students do.

The campus has four main academic buildings, an administrativecentre, several halls of residence and the dining hall whichprovides breakfast, lunch and dinner for students and faculty.Since all the academic buildings and computer facilities arelocated on the grounds of the campus, they are within our easyreach. In order to get to the lectures we do not have to bike forhalf an hour in the rain, we just walk out of our rooms and in 2minutes we are in class. Everything we need can be found on those 3acres, so even if we do not take advantage of the freedom to leavecampus, we still survive. The students live in single rooms inunits of 6 to 10 people. Each unit has bathrooms and a living roomwith a telephone, kitchenette, and television outlet. Once we moveinto our rooms, we can do whatever we want with and in them. It isup to us, but it is also our reponsibility to keep the units androoms in good condition for the next students.

Living together in the units is not an annoying experience. Wedo not get irritated by the same faces seen every morning and weget along with each other pretty well. We even manage to arrangesome reasonable cleaning schedules for the units, whichunfortunately do not always work the way they should. Livingtogether with our unit mates gives usunique opportunities to get toknow each other better and to develop close bonds. The randomlyassigned unit mates become your family for a whole year, until youhave to change your unit to explore new people, their habits andcharacters.

Parties

The pace and style of campus life varies from person to personand from time to time. There are moments of great activity andmovement, as well as periods of quiet and concentrated study. Everysemester starts in a really active way with lots of parties,meetings and going out. The closer the end of semester and thefinal papers and exams are, the quieter the campus becomes and theatmosphere of studying starts to prevail. This is simply the way anormal student life goes, also at UC. However, unlike otherstudents, we have quite many assignments and exams within thesemester itself. Nevertheless, we try to relax and have fun oncampus. We have our own College Bar, and a special Party Committeewhich takes care of all the big parties, like the welcome partiesat the beginning of the semesters or some other big events. LastFebruary we even had our first Prom.

The students have also their own initiative and organise manyparties by themselves without all the official committees. Therehave been numerous birthday parties, wine parties, dance parties,cooking parties. It is even hard to enumerate all of them. Livingtogether on three acres has also other advantages. We become greatfriends with other people, but sometimes there is also somethingmore. Because we meet each other almost every day and night, manycouples form among the students. Thus the student life on campusbecomes much more vivid and interesting than the normal studentlife at university.

Being such a close-knit community as we are, of course we havesome problems, but we cope with them quite well and the generalimpression of life on campus is really positive. If you still donot believe us, just come to the College Bar on any Wednesday nightand you will meet half of us there, enjoying our time and notworrying all that much about the excessive work load.

Julia Zamorska

liabilities:

teaching fee to faculties

.