Participation council agrees to abolish Romanian

The abolition of the Romanian programme has been a long-running issue. The programme attracts very few students, but it is the only Romanian programme at Master's level in the Benelux. Humanities students therefore wanted to keep the programme, but the faculty board and the Executive Board have a very different opinion. Nevertheless, the abolition of a programme must be submitted to the joint meeting (GV) of the Central Student Council (CSR) and the Central Works Council (COR).

At this afternoon’s GV, it became clear that there is no majority in favour of maintaining the programme, which means that the way is now clear for it to be scrapped. With six votes against five, there was a majority in favour of abolition. The rest of the GV members present abstained from voting or were absent.

Shocking

“I find that really shocking,” says Esther Crabbendam, chair of the FGw student council. “I find it incomprehensible that people would abstain from voting on such an important issue, when we have been fighting to keep Romanian for so long. I find it truly scandalous that people apparently don't even bother to use their mandate to prevent the abolition of an entire programme.”

The arguments used by the GV to agree by a majority to abolish the programme have also caused bad blood among humanities students. Crabbendam: “Although the GV did not agree with the procedure used to kill off the programme, they just want to get rid of this long-running issue and therefore agreed by a majority instead of taking the dispute to the national higher education disputes committee. This is really not acceptable.”

Protracted process

“After twice previously refusing to agree to the abolition of Romanian due to unanswered questions and procedural problems, we have now decided to agree,” says GV chair Lucie Gooskens. “This has enabled us to put an end to a protracted process that the FGw was unable to resolve. Mistakes were made in the procedure surrounding the abolition of the programme, but apart from these procedural problems, the GV saw no reason to further delay the abolition of Romanian.”

“Romanian has made it clear that the procedure for discontinuing programmes needs to be improved, and we are working on that, but we do not believe that insisting on maintaining a very small programme such as Romanian is the way to prove your point about the university-wide procedure for discontinuing programmes.”