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Committee publishes questions for the UvA referendum

Dirk Wolthekker,
17 november 2016 - 15:21

On Wednesday November 23 the UvA will go to the ballot box to vote in a referendum about the future of the UvA. The final questions to be submitted to the academic community will, ‘for technical reasons’ be communicated only a few days in advance, but Rob Hagendijk from the Democratisation and Decentralisation committee (D&D) has already submitted the tentative questions to Folia.

One of the reasons the final questions will be submitted late is due to the pilot that will be conducted by the end of this week by market research office Ruigrok. ‘We are conducting a pilot because we want to be sure that the questions posed in the referendum are free of fraud,’ Hagendijk says. By this Hagendijk means he wants to prevent participants from voting as a student if he/she is a teacher or professor, or from voting as a student or staff member of the Faculty of Humanities if he/she is actually affiliated tot the Faculty of Science.

 

‘For this reason we will link voter’s identities to their vote during the referendum. Once the results have been analysed these will be once again unlinked for reasons of anonymity,’ Hagendijk says. ‘We will test this in the pilot run’. As soon as the tentative questions have been tested, they will be released so that everybody can prepare for the referendum.

 

Tentative questions

The D&D committee has sent the tentative questions to Folia in advance of the publication of the final questions. The questions have either an open or closed character, sometimes with several options varying from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’. Every question will be linked to a relevant page of the final report — called A University of Value(s) — of the D&D committee. So far there are six questions.

 

1. Are you for or against the new Senate as proposed by the committee D&D? (Final report pages 100-103).

 

2. Are you for or against a Charter, an agreement that explicitly registers and prescribes the core-values of the UvA? (Final report, pages 104-105).

 

3. In its final report, the D&D committee describes eight values for the Charter. For each of these values a number of implications are also described. If you are in favour of the Charter, please indicate, for each of these values, how important or unimportant you think they are. (Final report pages 104-123).

 

4. The committee raises six subjects regarding the governance of the UvA on different levels. The committee proposes several possibilities for each of these subjects (final report table 5.2., page 136). Example questions include those regarding the tasks that the administration and participatory bodies should have, and whether this should be conducted on a centralised or decentralised level.

 

5. The D&D committee has identified four models of governance (final report pages 135-142):

 

-      The blue existing model

-      The orange dual model

-      The yellow participatory model

-      The green self organising model

 

You will be asked to either: 1) indicate your preference for one of the four models, 2)  rank each of the proposals in order of preference or, 3) indicate that you do not agree with either of the models. You will be given room to clarify your answer. You can also indicate that you do not wish to give an answer or do not have an opinion regarding the four models.

 

6. Finally we will ask you some general questions. You will also have space to leave remarks.

 

The questions will be e-mailed on November 23 to everyone in possession of a UvAnet ID. Those without an UvAnet ID (since they do not work for the UvA directly but through one of its affiliated foundations or the VU university, e.g. people working at the AMC, Crea or USC) will have to register separately. People without an automatic right to vote should notify the committee and register to vote.

 

Visit UvA's special webpage for more information about the referendum or to find out if you are automatically registered as voter. At this moment it is not clear what the deadline will be for those voters who need to register to vote or how exactly the referendum will be organised.

 

The referendum will run from November 23 until till December 11.