Magazine | Why do we hear so little from student representatives?

Every May, people you’ve never seen in your life roam the UvA hallways, ready to tell you how hard they’ve been working to serve your interests for the past year and how much they would appreciate your vote. The turnout in student council elections nevertheless remains low, and those who get council seats then spend the following academic year struggling to inform the students of their work.
 
Student organizers do wonderful, important work, and the results of their labor permeate through all aspects of our wellbeing at the UvA. I wish I knew this for any other reason than having friends involved in those structures—why does my knowledge about student involvement come from gossip at dinner?
 

Momentum
Building student power requires… students. While our student-led structures have shown an exceptional capacity to mobilize the community—the encampment movement comes to mind here—they often lack the sustained momentum, and proper communication, to make students care consistently. Student leadership remains the responsibility of the already willing few, who become frustrated and burnt out. What’s more, the failure to involve the majority of the student body in university politics makes it so that smaller struggles of less vocal student demographics get swept under the rug.
 
The new academic year marks the arrival of thousands of new students, waiting to be informed about everything this university has to offer. As we continue to fight against long-standing challenges of student life, I wish all our organizers luck and motivation—and iron-clad marketing strategies.
 
Magdalena Styś studies Linguistics at the UvA and is the new columnist for Folia as of September. This column was published before in our magazine.