ASVA chairman Tijmen (22): ‘I want to focus on quality of education’

You still have seven months to go. What will you focus on?

‘Quality of education. I want to focus on the budget cuts at the FMG (Faculty of  Social and Behavioural Sciences). When there’s a drop in student numbers, the university tends to cut back on education so there's more money for research, but we need to uphold the quality of teaching and support. We will also respond to current events such as the discussion about the Turnitin plagiarism tool.’

So monitoring the quality of education will become the ASVA’s most important task?

‘Well, the ASVA has several tasks. We provide several student services such as selling bicycles and renting out bakfietsen for moving, but we also contribute to things like the discussions about the housing shortage, internationalisation and the facilitation of training courses for student associations. So we have many different goals — and this is also what I find so interesting. I’m looking forward to it!’

The former chairman, Tammie Schoots, left due to the high workload. How will you manage it?

‘If you want to fill 24 hours a day working at the ASVA, you could. There is always another coffee meeting or protest to plan and the latest goings-on to read up on. But it’s important to realise that when the clock strikes 7, the day is over.’