Student and HvA chairman open quiet room
Three quiet rooms in the Wibauthuis, Leeuwenborg and Fraijlemaborg have been opened to students. The rooms have been available since June, but were officially inaugurated last week at the Wibauthuis, room 02C25, with a small gathering and a speech by the HvA chairman.
Unlike the HvA’s existing quiet rooms intended as a place where students can study in peace, the new quiet rooms are meant for yoga, introspection and prayer. ‘It’s about providing a space for the individual to withdraw from the world,’ said Achraf el Johari, member of the Central Student Council in an earlier interview with Folia.
Separation of church and state
‘The need for these rooms was clear to me from the beginning,’ says HvA chairman Huib de Jong. The HvA Board, on which De Jong sits, was originally opposed to the quiet rooms. They jeopardise the separation of church and state, the Board had argued, and therefore the neutrality of the HvA. But at the inauguration, De Jong was enthusiastic: ‘I like being able to hole up in this building.’
At the inauguration, invitees enjoyed dates with herbal cheese and wraps: Mediterranean food ‘in light of the diversity’, says Neslihan Özcelik, a Central Student Council member and the coordinator of the group to set up the quiet rooms. She’s studying to be a pedagogy teacher. Recently, she recounts, she was at school till 7:30 P.M. ‘At one point in the day I had some spare time, so I told my fellow students I was going to take a half-hour nap. They were very surprised that it was a possibility.’
This is a video Mark van der Horst made about the quiet rooms:
