She has now, she says as she parks her small Toyota close to the Dijkzigt metro station, been married to him for almost 15 years.
Bags on the table The guest lecture is on the 11th floor of the University building. Vorthoren is given a warm welcome by a business administration lecturer in a trendy pinstripe suit, and they discuss last year’s session as they wait for the lift. The group was not particularly receptive, to put it mildly. I ask if she is nervous. ‘No’, she says cheerfully. The students – more than 70 of them, a mixture of Commercial Economics and Management, Economics and Law students – arrive in dribs and drabs with the typical postpubertal combination of boisterousness and moodiness. Bags on the table, coats on, the odd one slouched down, but as Vorthoren invites them to fill in her improvised diversity graph per group they join in enthusiastically. The multi-coloured criss-cross of lines that develops on the board is different from expected, and it is actually a diverse
‘Why would you deliberately offend someone?’ year. However much she may like to believe that diversity is also about income, age, personality and level of education, the discussion centres on culture and religion. It is fierce too. It starts off quietly: ‘Yes, it’s stating the obvious a bit, people.’ But the classroom – unconsciously divided into blond, white ethnic Dutch on the one hand and darkskinned other ethnic groups on the other – almost explodes when she arrives at opinions on religion at work. Should you be allowed to wear a headscarf if you have a public-facing job at the municipality? What about if a colleague wants to talk about Jesus during the whole break? A lad with gelled hair and a hoodie: ‘So you’re allowed to talk about football if you consider it important, but you need to leave your beliefs at home?’ A girl in a blue jacket and a flowery scarf: ‘You should keep those kinds of things to yourself.’ A bald lad with a Vandyck beard and denim jacket: ‘I believe in dancing, but I don’t go pirouetting on my desk, do I?’ She is good at this, say the people who work or have worked with Vorthoren. She is incredibly intelligent, socially too. She makes connections and enters into dialogue. She points to which student can say something next, asks questions, asks for calm if the words become too harsh or it gets