The
Boomerang September 2020
What Happened in Wall One? by Justus Boesschen Hospers
Ever since all of campus got an apology letter from eight students attending a party, many have wondered what exactly went down that night. We have all seen the videos and pictures of this big mosh pit of people crammed together in a small wall living room. I have also heard plenty of rumours going around about the party. Yet, no one has really been able to tell me what exactly happened that night. I talked to some people that attended the party and think that I am able to give a short overview of the night. Hopefully, it will clear up the confusion and put an end to the rumour mill and the finger-pointing that has been happening lately. The big party at Wall One did not start until 01:00 AM. Before that, however, there were many smaller parties on and off-campus. So far, I have heard about a gathering in the forest near the Kromme Rijn, a first-years meet-up in K, and a small party behind Adam Smith. Knowing campus, I can imagine that there were many more. Some of these were organized by frats, but many others were not. People were getting drunk and wanted to go somewhere. Apparently, a bunch more people showed up at the party in K. The people living in that unit got uncomfortable with it and kicked everyone out. Instead of going home, someone offered to bring the party to their unit in Kromhout. A crowd of people started to form in front of Kromhout.
me that they talked to the officers. They did not attend the party but lived next-door and explained the situation to the police. By this time, everyone had escaped the area and there was no reason for the police to stay. No one got a warning or got arrested. Yet, this was far from the end of the night. When the coast was clear again, many drunk students started popping out of all the different Kromhout units. They were wondering where to go next. From what I heard, someone in Wall One was okay with a few people coming over to their unit to continue the night. As they crossed the quad to the other side of campus, many other small groups of party-craving students started following them. Everyone was let in. Soon, all the furniture was moved to the side of the room to make space for more people. Some students that came from a small-scale frat borrel earlier that day had brought their big speaker. It got plugged in to be able to play music for the whole crowd. More and more people started flocking to the music at Wall One. At the height of the party, there were around 90 people in the unit. While
Illustration Š Lea Litvak
At the same time, the party behind Adam Smith had become busier and louder. Around midnight, security went there to shut it down. That group of students, however, did not go home. They also went to Kromhout. At this point, there were about fifty people there. Police got called and showed up to the party. A police car drove onto the field between Locke and Kromhout. Panic broke out. Everyone scattered and hid in nearby units. Someone (who prefers to remain anonymous) told
there were some members of many different fraternities and sororities, it was not organized by any of them. It was simply the result of many smaller parties that got shut down. Students were drunk and looking for a good time. Weirdly enough, neither security nor police showed up to Wall One. The party went on until at least 4 in the morning. The next day, however, some students would face some serious consequences for their actions. Some pictures and videos of the night, some screen-grabbed from students’ social media posts, had made their way to the UCU Crisis Team. Unitmates emailed administration telling them what their housemates had done. Students that were recognizable in those images were asked to come to College Hall for an urgent meeting. There, some members of the Crisis Team sat on the other side of a table from them and threatened these students with expulsion. They were also asked to name more students who attended. The small group of students refused to do so. Ultimately, they were asked to write an apology letter to all students and all members of staff. Additionally, the group of students also have been asked to ensure that students stick to the safety measures at all times. They helped College Hall come up with new plans and proposals for corona-proof social events. They will also try to stand up to people who are not sticking to the regulations. However, one of them told me that this is very difficult as no one takes them seriously anymore. In the last few weeks, they have received a lot of negative attention and have become the butt of many jokes. Of course, they should be held accountable for their actions. Yet, we should also remember that about 15% of all students on campus attended the party. Well, there you have it. I have tried to write down the events of the night as truthfully as possible. I do not want to blame anyone for the night. As I understand it, the party was the result of many stupid decisions from many very drunk people. I hope that we can all learn from it.
Where's The Apology Letter UCSA?
2
Becoming Hybrid
8
First Impressions of a First Year
4
Sam & Ivan's Summer Experience
8
Bar Brawl: Equal Campus Fees?
7
Emotional Time-Travel
10
2
The Boomerang | September 2020
BUBBLE
Where’s the Apology Letter, UCSA? by Sam Kalmbacher “I do not ask you to forgive me or even understand, but I at least want to tell you myself, instead of hiding behind rumours, that this did happen and I am truly sorry for it.” This is a line taken from the apology letter of an ASC member that attended the infamous, discussed-to-death party at Wall 1 a few weeks ago. Instead of hiding behind rumours, this person wrote an apology letter. As they should have. As others who are currently hiding behind rumours, probably should. Is it still a secret that members of our UCSA board attended the party? It is something that I’ve heard from multiple people now, something that the famed UCU rumour mill has taken up, churned through and is now spreading everywhere like a sprinkler spreads water over a dried-out field; and we’re taking it in, forming our opinions, complaining and complaining yet not truly saying anything. What are we doing? Why are we not demanding an apology, or simply anything at all? Why does ASC send an apology, not wanting to hide behind rumours, yet UCSA remains quiet? Let’s create a few scenarios. In scenario one, perhaps the better out of the two, this letter was truly sent on personal behalf from the ASC member that attended this party. It is likely that the ASC board was informed, but they did not actively tell the person to send a letter nor did they have any influence on its content. In this scenario, it truly is that person’s own personal feelings and thoughts that caused them to write and send this letter to the student body. In this
case, the UCSA members present at the party simply did not make this choice themselves and instead decided to, well, hide behind rumours. Scenario two: the ASC board had reasonable influence on sending this letter, telling the person who sent it to do so. This may make it less personal, and the motivation less ethical, but it makes a fair amount of sense to me that such a board would want to do this in order to not risk losing face. In such a scenario, UCSA faced the same choice and then actively decided not to apologise to the students it claims to represent. Also it does not seem like an ideal scenario to me - I don’t want to say that UCSA is important enough to equate to the Dutch government, but even the Dutch Minister of Justice (now famed for breaking the corona rules he himself made up at his own wedding) has at least apologised. UCSA hasn’t. But I guess UCSA wasn’t there, right? It’s all rumours, right? Everyone makes mistakes. But UCSA has consistently been ‘the face’ of social distancing on campus, organising a strictly socially distanced introweek, limiting committees in their movement in order to preserve the 1.5 meters, promoting rules left and right. And that’s good, and something to be commended - but the sheer hypocrisy of one, or several, UCSA members potentially having been at that party and still choosing to hide behind rumours is almost funny to me. Your socially-distanced poses with face masks on social media have entirely lost their value now. Why should students, who have been limiting everything they do, the people they
see, trust in your leadership? There are people on campus who haven't seen their families for almost a year now. Do you think they're happy doing this? It could very well be that no single UCSA member was at that party, despite the consistent rumours. After all, spreading baseless rumours might be what we as a collective student body
“Your socially-distanced poses with face masks on social media have entirely lost their value now” are best at. But I think it’s very odd that UCSA has not commented on anything regarding this party, neither denying nor confirming their presence there, while ASC has made the choice to no longer hide themselves within the white noise of the rumour mill. No matter what scenario we imagine, what UCSA is doing is at the very least morally questionable and at most simply disrespectful towards all of us and the work we are putting in towards organising events at 1.5 meters distance. None of us are saints - about one in eight people at UCU attended that party, after all, and I don’t think anyone has as strictly kept themselves to the rules as the government is telling them to, me included - but UCSA has a certain responsibility. So where’s the apology letter, UCSA? If I can ask you this at all, of course, without this article being taken out of the Boomerang due to getting too personal. So much for campus journalism.
A Message from the UCSA Board by UCSA Board 2020-2021 Dear fellow students, Over the past few weeks there's been a lot of speculation around campus and we felt like you deserve to know the truth: yes, some of us were at the Wall One party. Attending the party was a foolish, selfish mistake and we are incredibly sorry that this happened. We fully understand why it was wrong to attend, and have agreed with each other that this is something that can never happen again. We recognize our mistakes and apologize if we made you feel like your trust in us has been misplaced. We promise to do better in the future. We also owe you an explanation for why we are only mentioning the party now. We initially chose to not address this, as we attended the party on personal behalf, not as UCSA Board members. After being in the role of a student
representative so intensely during Introweek, we hoped that we could step out of that position and have a moment to just be us, to be Afra, Nadia, Max, Renée, Jet and Loïs. This, of course, does not in any way excuse or justify our behaviour. It was our, maybe naive, belief that we could keep our UCSA position and our personal life separate. We realize that that is not how this works, and that you deserve better from us. We can't take back our actions, but in our role as UCSA Board members, we can try our utmost to improve the current situation on campus by providing places where we can meet each other and enjoy ourselves in a safe manner. We understand that knowing that some of us have not adhered to all regulations in the past can make it feel odd that we are asking you to do so. Therefore, we want to clarify that the restrictions all of our events have to adhere to are not rules the UCSA board came up with. These are regulations
ordered by the government, discussed by the UU and UCU, and approved by the safety region of Utrecht, that we communicate to you because they allow us to safely meet each other and host the variety of events that UCU is known for. We hope that, as a community, we can focus on the future and enjoy the exciting social life that awaits us. After hearing all your corona proof plans for the semester during the budget meetings last week, we have no doubt that together we will make the most of it. We want to thank you for your optimism and creativity. If you want to talk to us about anything we said, you are more than welcome to reach out to any of us personally, or through our anonymous feedback form. Lots of love, Afra, Nadia, Max, Renée, Juliette, and Loïs
A University College Student Association Magazine
BUBBLE
3
Avoidance is Cowardice, You're Better Than This by Anna Korevaar (CAR Board 2019-2020) On the 22nd of August, a trusted national representative of the Dutch government, Minister of Justice and Security Ferdinand Grapperhaus, had organized and attended a large event to celebrate his marriage to journalist Elizabeth Wytzes. The fact that Grapperhaus, a democratically elected representative, organised and attended such an event is highly controversial. Considering the moral obligation of his role as a representative to the Dutch public, Grapperhaus is obliged to keep our best interests at heart, with regard to public safety and wellbeing. Most importantly, he is also obliged to remaining conscientious in representing these needs. Yet, he knowingly broke national corona regulations, set out by the very government he represents. I wonder whether Grapperhaus still remembers what he stood for when he was campaigning for the very position, we considered he earned. Does he still recognize the importance of trying to implement the promises he ran for? The importance of showing good judgement, care and concern for our wellbeing? The Dutch public who trusted Grapperhaus to represent their needs felt betrayed and angered. How can they possibly be expected to trust him to make smart decisions for their futures when his selfishness trumps the wellbeing of the people he had sworn to protect. How can the Dutch public ever be expected to trust such poor judgement and selfishness?
“for those of us who take on a representative role on campus, a “fuck up” has a morally charged meaning and carries heavily weighted consequences” To answer these questions, let’s reel the narrative in a bit. As it’s hard to imagine a grave mistake like this in a national political field, let’s try something a bit closer to home, to our little campus. You know, for perspective? What is it that makes a “fuck up” so different when a representative acts, compared to when a student acts? Well, I myself was a student representative not so long ago, so here’s my personal take on the topic of “fuck ups” and student representation. In my experience, for those of us who take on a representative role on campus, a “fuck up” has a morally charged meaning and carries heavily weighted consequences. When you accept the obligation of student representation, you make an unspoken promise that you will not let your peers down and that you will make sure they feel heard, understood and accepted. Trust between student board and student body is born when one of us is democratically chosen by our peers to represent our shared best interest. Our shared right to a fair living situation, acceptable social life, and representable education. It is not just a “CV flex”, It’s ensuring that people’s needs are being heard and fought for. So, what if someone abuses that position by putting their own needs before everyone else’s? Controversial right? There have been examples of big “fuck ups” in previous years, such as the UCSA board
trip of 2018-2019 to Israel, quite the politically charged destination for a trip by a not-supposed-to-be-politically-charged board. It is assumed that over 100-150 students attended the Wall 1 party on September 4th. To those of you who got caught, truly, it’s a shit one for you, that out of 150 people you got sacked. But good on you, for those of you who came forward, for recognizing the consequences behind breaking national regulations! Here, have a cookie! We’re just so glad that you’re working oh so hard to redeem yourself from your big ‘ol “fuck up”. Your call for action to “come together” and fight corona as one is a little ironic, yet admirable. Not to play a game of odds, but considering how many committee boards and student boards there are on campus, the chances of at least one representative being present at the party on September 4th are pretty high. One teacher cancelled his in-person classes on his calculations that there was a 90% chance that at least one person in his class had attended the Wall 1 party. So, the game is on, as Sherlock says, as this of course remains a game of odds, not of assumption.
Will you come forward? Won’t you? Well, that’s up to you. In the meantime, however, here is a plea from a former student representative. Have the decency to be honest with yourself and the role you took on. The responsibilities you took on are not to yourself, but to your peers; you are representing the needs of others, not your own. To those of you who attended while having promised to represent us, shame on you. I hope that the odds are in our favour, and there were not too many of you. Frankly, you broke our trust and we can no longer expect you to represent us
"the chances of at least one representative being present at the party on September 4th are pretty high" in our best interests. Speaking from experienced observations, it’s hard to redeem the trust your peers once instilled in you when you fuck up as a representative. Every attempt at redemption is like putting a band aid on a much bigger injury. As a campus, we chose the band aid, and this was silently and stupidly accepted by us all. So, let’s not move on from this.
Dearest Campus, It's good to be back. To the first years, welcome. I hope that, despite everything, you’re all settling in and making this campus your home. To our second and third years, our Zoom semester veterans, doesn’t it feel good to be back in the classroom, back to getting Chris’ with our friends, and back to seeing each other’s faces, all outside of the digital realm of pixelated video and constant connection issues? It’s amazing how great simple things can really be. I feel so lucky to be able to be back on campus, mainly because I can welcome our wonderful new Boomerang board members. This semester brings the arrival of Sam, our man on PR and Tech, Khoa on the layout, Sofie who is directing our art, and Justus who is executive editing. It’s been an interesting start to the year; a socially distanced Introweek, one direction routes in our academic buildings, and possibly the most intense and determined Frat/Sorority recruitment seen in recent years. And of course, those super secret Covid parties. It’s the elephant in every unit, and something that we as a community at UCU have had to address. There’s lots of strong feelings going around in relation to the parties, and you can read about them in this edition. But you can read about a lot of other stuff too; teachers going hybrid, Justus handing out cookies to strangers, and of course, what really happened in Wall this summer… I’ve been thinking a lot since our transition into CovidWorld last semester, about how we communicate with each other and ourselves whilst we process the changing and chaotic world around us. I think honesty and openness is gonna be important to our UCU community this semester. And kindness. Mistakes have been made, but I would love to believe that lessons have been learned. And I have faith, in our strange little bubble, perhaps blindly, that the parties were but a blip, an error in the code, and that we can make living in CovidWorld work, despite the circumstances. After stepping off the number 8 bus this introweek and walking through our campus gates, I was genuinely uplifted by the sight of groups of firsties sitting in large circles on seemingly every grassy spot on campus. I had the same feeling as I sat behind a desk, in a classroom for the first time since March. It’s by no means going to be a normal year, but I feel like these little moments make life feel normal-ish. And I don’t know about you, but normal-ish seems pretty decent to me. Beats ZoomLife anyway. It really is good to be back. Yours Always, Stanley Ward Editor-in-Chief
4
The Boomerang | September 2020
BUBBLE
How to Plan an Introweek in CoronaTimes by Afra Peetoom
I was sitting in the middle of a city beach in Berlin, surrounded by screaming toddlers and slightly tipsy middle aged dads, when Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte announced that students were the biggest contributors to the growing number of corona cases in the Netherlands. His solution? Any physical events during introduction periods had to be informative in nature. No more borrels, dinners, or any other type of social gathering would be allowed. Great. Two weeks before introweek and the only physical events on our schedule were exactly that, social gatherings. Since early May, our plan for Introweek had changed roughly every week and a half, whether that be because the staff had different ideas on what Introweek should be, because certain countries stopped handing out visas, or because the government announced new restrictions. Our approach was to not create just one plan for Introweek, but to develop five separate plans so that we would be prepared for
whatever the world threw at us. In the end, we only ended up using about ten percent of that. By having to adapt so often, we got to know the concept of introweek through and through. Each day was extensively thought out to provide the first years with a balance of enough Autonomy, social Belonging, and Competence, so they would feel ready to start the year. We had to defend our plans so often that you could wake us up in the middle of the night and we’d still be able to recite how each event contributed to the ABC-principle, and how our small scale hybrid approach would provide the ultimate balance between adhering to all the corona measures, while also being a warm welcome. But the real stuff? How many people can sit at a beertable at 1.5 meters distance or when to pick up the 100 picture frames from the Ikea, all those things came later. The introweek as it happened is something we could only come up with a week,
if not a day, before. On the first monday evening of introweek, right before dinner, we received an update from the municipality on their approach to corona, which included new guidelines for introduction periods… After a series of calls back and forth with our managing director and the UU contact person which stretched to the following morning, we finally got a confirmation. Where Rutte had preached that students were unable to adhere to the corona measures, the municipality recognized the need for social interaction. We rapidly ordered 70 beertables, and suddenly the previously quiet quad was bubbling with little groups. This Introweek was in no way what we expected, but we are all super happy with how it went and that even the people who had to quarantine were at least able to spend one night together in person. We hope you enjoyed it, even under these circumstances, as much as we did.
First Impressions of a First Year by Ida van Zwetselaar Now that we’ve rubbed the so-called magic of Introweek out of our eyes and are all settling back into an academic routine after months of Covid-19 misadventure and summer holidays, reality seems to be luring us back into stress, social struggles and sleep deprivation. Although I obviously cannot speak on behalf of my entire generation (mostly because i feel like so far i’ve met only a handful of them), I believe summing up my non-academic experiences here into little five points so far may ruffle up some common concerns and shared sentiments. Alrighty, here goes nothing… Campus: From the Kromhout’s paperthin walls to the academic buildings’ identical one-way hallways and classrooms, nightly hidden parties and the quad’s endless, pathless pebbles, exploring UCU requires a nice mix of personal experience and stories from (complaining) peers and family/unit members. The occasional visit of campus cats and curious glares of passers-by is what I’ve loved the most about my ground floor room so far, as well as the Dutch tendency to have enormous windows to catch maximal sunlight. Is anyone else getting a feeling of belonging while biking in through our ageing metal main gates yet? Online everything: Before arriving here, we were aided by Facebook and email, and anything important is still announced there, so our dependence on the internet shouldn’t be a big surprise. However, the fact that much of Introweek and majority of our lessons are virtual is driving me insane; it feels like I keep BlackBoard, Google, Teams, eBooks, WhatsApp groups, Osiris, ZOOM, and dozens of readings permanently open on my laptop! On the one hand, all these appliances optimise education
during a pandemic, but on the other, I’m starting to believe that my mum’s early warnings of my brains melting after we spend too much time in front of a screen (and your eyes turning rectangular) were pretty valid. We live in an increasingly hi-tech world where anything can be achieved on electronic devices, and our generation is expected to be the ones on the front line of it all. Sadly though, I’ve noticed that for most students online learning is a torture that robs us of human connection, which is the pillar that holds up a successful classroom environment. All of that aside though (you can probably tell that my personal difficulties with technology made this point pretty biased and bitter), this doesn’t mean that we don’t recognise and appreciate our college doing anything it can to make courses as engaging as permitted by law, and realise that we are much better off than many university students our age. Who are you?!: Honestly, remembering people’s smiles and the conversations shared with them is so much easier for me than their names, where they come from and what they major in. Sometimes on this campus I feel as lost as a floppy fish in the Sahara, and then *insert angelic singing* out of nowhere I’d see a face I faintly recall talking to before. You guys are my random fishbowl in the desert, and you wouldn’t even notice! In fact, usually this apparition isn’t anyone I know well, but recognising them and exchanging a shy wave, mumbled “hey” or a flash of a smile is enough to reassure me that I’m not as alien as I make myself believe. Food fears: I really hope I’m not the only one surviving on coffee, sandwiches, the occasional ready-meal or take-out and anything on BONUS at the Albert Heijn… If so, I’m glad to
hear you’ve surpassed that awkward ‘learningto-take-care-of-just-me’ stage, and please, keep existing so that I can keep motivating myself to obtain some decent culinary skills. If not, we’re in this together, and please, let’s meet up to try and cook sometime! I’m not here to explain why a healthy lifestyle is important or impose any dietary advice on you, but if you recognise that magnificent feeling of eating a proper, balanced meal after some weeks at UCU, maybe consider prioritising mealtimes while you’re here. The completeness of thinking up, buying, preparing and savouring something I’ve cooked up myself is truly victorious, and above all, it will -hopefully- taste great! Also, this could become a way to impress others or simply to spend time and get to know them through mutual failure/ success. So, from my own history of tricky experiences with food, I’d say eat what you like (in healthy amounts), take your time to cook whenever possible, and try a bite of everything; you never know what hidden flavours end up floating your boat. Stuff to do: Is there a CoCo to keep track of how many committees there are? I feel like we are constantly notified of new fun happenings (remember: there’s a 30-person limit and we need to stay 1.5m apart at all times!) and other than those we get countless USCA emails about, there are plenty of groups on campus that will organise unique social gatherings, even despite the restrictive corona rules. I hope that anyone responsible for having made those events occur or will put in the effort to include, educate, entertain and generally help us in the future that happens to read this has a wonderful day and is greeted with some good karma soon!
A University College Student Association Magazine
BUBBLE
5
Talking to First Years about Their Introweek (without) Parties by Justus Boesschen Hospers For most UCU students, introweek holds a special place in their heart. Whether you loved or hated it, those seven days marked the start of your college time. Throughout the years, some events have become introweek staples: seemingly endless party nights in the bar, awkward conversations with teachers and staff members at formal dinners, and even that weirdly racist Mexican blow-up game at sports day. All of these are all ingrained in the collective memory of UCU students. But not this year. The Dutch Covid-19 regulations were harsh on introduction periods for students. Despite the UCSA board working incredibly hard to make sure an introweek was possible, it looked nothing like it traditionally has. I wanted to find out how first-year students experienced this week. Armed with a full cookie jar, I walked around campus offering a treat to any first year that was willing to answer a few questions. Almost everyone seemed to look back positively on their introweek, many expressing that they were happy that introweek could happen in at least some form. One student noted, “Coming in, I had no expectations, so the week really exceeded my expectations.” Their friend nodded, adding: “I thought everything would be online and I would just have to sit in my room all day.” Yet, many also expressed concerns regarding people’s lax attitudes towards corona regulations. “In the country I came from, we had to wear masks everywhere. I was in shock when I stepped off the train in Utrecht and no one was wearing them,” one student commented. Someone else mentioned that they, “felt like they were on vacation. No one seemed to care about corona-regulations, so I just went along with it.”
You Can Be Optimistic at the End of the World by Elizabeth Moore On a college campus, the beautiful, hormonal haze of concentrated young adulthood will charge you with a daunting task: know your shit, or be good at pretending. Look around. Everyone is quoting facts and half-baked opinions from that podcast they heard once. An important part of the journey towards scholarship is practicing articulation by parroting and trying out opinions. But there are times when a quickly-formulated position can unintentionally detract from the ideology that it concerns. For example, nothing kills a conversation about
Throughout the week, introweek families came together by circles drawn around campus. These were big enough to be able to sit at 1.5 meters distance from each other which many first years found quite awkward at first, “It was very cold and difficult to have a conversation with people on the other side of the circle.” The online events were also less than ideal: “it was hard to keep paying attention during yet another online workshop.”
“I did not expect to be running from the police in my first week at college” The experiences of students really seemed to differ per family: some students stuck to all the rules and went to all the online events. Other introweek families organized numerous in-person events next to UCSA’s schedule. “My family did not really stick to the 1.5 meter rule at all. We had breakfasts and dinners together, which were actually really nice,” one student claimed. A little over half of the people I spoke to also consumed alcohol at some point during the week during the week, which was very much discouraged by the UCSA. No one however indicated that they felt pressure to do so. Quite a lot of the students I talked to told me that their family had to run away from the police at some point. After the official introweek activities were over at 22:00, some families went to Wilhelminapark to have a drink together. On at least two occasions throughout the week, police cars drove around to break up the groups. “I did not expect to be running from the police in my first week at college” a concerned first-year told me. For others it felt like they never left high school sneakily drinking in a park. Another family climate change quicker than a removed resignation. Why is that easier than passionate support of existing activist agendas? I use the term activist loosely. People that bring up climate change and its associated tragedies on a regular basis with friends and family are activists. The everyday work that goes into acknowledging the systematic denial, is weighing too. Learning about the nuances of our climate emergency is challenging and emotional work. The titan subject affects everything down to and including our ethical ability to bring another generation into the world! It’s understandable that much of the population that recognizes climate change avoids thinking about it regularly, and subsequently has a hard time associating with “activism”. When climate change does come up, it may be easier to discuss the massive gray areas that such an interconnected topic presents. Who is to blame? Who are the ‘bad guys’?
hosted an illegal party on campus and everyone had to scatter when police rolled up. However, some families did stick to the regulations. Stories about groups meeting up after 22:00 in a circle at 1.5 meters distance, eating cake, drinking tea and playing some games were told. Other families did not meet up at all after 22:00, leading to some classic UCU FOMO. Some first years expressed that they always felt like they were missing out because other families were doing more. Formal dinner was popularly considered the highlight of the week. At the very last minute, it was announced that formal dinner could be held in person; everyone dressed up nicely and was able to sit at an appropriate distance at beertables around campus. For the quarantined families, who had been online the whole week, this was the first time they saw each other in real life. Although many students enjoyed their evening, others had an opposite experience, “All the online group meetings had been very awkward and I hoped that it would be better when we would see each other in real life. Sadly, it was just as awkward at that beertable as it was in the breakout rooms before,” on student explained. When asked if people are still close to their families, mixed responses were given. Some say that they made a lot of friends, while others mention that they just did not really click with their group. From what I gathered, families that broke the rules and hosted parties were not more likely to still be friends now. It just really depended on the mix of people. Some students loved their family, others didn’t really get along. That’s at least one thing that was no different from other years.
Activism is something borne from hunger. And I am here to tell you: you are allowed to feel hungry without knowing exactly what your next meal needs to be. Better to be an uninformed activist than an uninformed moderate. In carrying out strictly “analytical” conversations about climate change, one can easily avoid confronting the absolute necessity for a global readjustment. Lack of passion in this case can result in resignation, fatalism, and cynicism; enemies of a social movement. Are you interested in discussing climate change because you feel helpless in the face of this global catastrophe? You’re not alone. And doubting the form your voice takes should not stop you from expressing care and support during everyday climate dialogue.
6
The Boomerang | September 2020
WORLD
Make Sure You Do the Readings: Quick Maths with Noud I bet that the majority of us UCU students have heard this sentence, casually spoken by one of our gracious professors during our time here. “Make sure you do the readings.” I wonder whether I am the only one who has ever thought to myself: What if I were to do all of the readings teachers assign us? How much time would it actually take? For this case study I will use a sample week, namely the 19th until the 25th of September, and the to-a-fifth-semester-student-assigned readings for that week. Let’s get started! This semester I am following four 300-courses in social sciences and humanities. I’ve lined them up and calculated their weekly amount of pages to read. - International Organizations: 164 pages - Origins and Crises of the Global Economy: 172 pages - The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers in the Modern World: 117 pages - Systems, Stories and Sustainability: 17 pages
by Arnoud Roelfsema
(+ watch a documentary (1:32 hours) and an online lecture (0:48 hours)) After adding up all the readings together, the total amount of pages for this week is 470. But what exactly does that mean in terms of your time scheduling? Let’s take a look. Yay! A week contains (24h x 7) 168 hours . This is the total amount of hours by which we will divide the number of pages to get an average per hour. But wait a minute… you may also have some other essential other things to do! 1. Sleep 8 hours a day: 56 hours a week =112 hours left for readings 2. Eat 1,3 hours a day: 9,1 hours a week = 102,9 hours left for readings 3. Shower and bathroom visits: 1,8 hours a week = 101,1 hours left for readings 4. Going to classes: 14 hours a week = 87,1 hours left for readings 5. Groceries, laundry and cleaning your
unit: 3 h/ week = 84,1 hours left for readings 6. Sustainability documentary + online lecture: 1,3 h/ week = 82,8 hours left for readings A brief note: I have been working with the average times (for university students) for the above activities, which I found on the internet. I decided not to take into account social contact, sports, having sex, and assignments, papers and presentations (which require further reading) as these are obvuisly not applicable to the average UCU student. So if you’re constantly reading + taking notes leads to 470 pages / 82,8 hours = 5,6 pages per hour. I’ll be honest, not as un-doable as I thought it would be. Obviously ‘weekends’ are no longer part of the equation. So no excuses for you next time the teacher calls you out for not doing the readings!
Why Our Internet Addiction is Problematic by Julia Silveira
I keep having this recurring nightmare where I somehow get hacked and completely lose my identity (it feels a lot scarier than it sounds). I don’t really know what it means, but I think it has something to do with my feeling unsafe in our almost entirely digital era. When everything is online and every website you visit hits you with 50,000 different cookies supposedly intended to ‘optimize your browsing experience’, I think it makes sense to feel a little bit scared. My entire life is on my laptop, and if someone really wanted to, they could probably just take it, leaving me completely helpless. All of my information, passwords, photos, addresses everything. But why would anyone want any of that? Besides granting them access to my bank account, I don’t really see any value in my private information. Maybe the information itself is not what is valuable. I recently watched a very interesting Youtube video, where Professor Shoshana Zuboff discusses her latest book ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’. She talks about how Google and other companies essentially store our information and sell it. The reason companies buy this information is not because they care about our interests, but largely so they can predict our behavior.
They do a lot more than just predict – they are able to influence us without our realizing it. We know all of this, yet we do not seem to care. We think that it can’t be that bad if we’re all relatively okay. Besides, we love the internet, it makes everything a million times easier. So ultimately, we’re okay with internet businesses capitalizing on our personal experiences.
“So ultimately, we’re okay with internet businesses capitalizing on our personal experiences.” In this way, it seems that the internet is kind of like a drug. We indulge and are completely dependent on it, despite our knowing that it may affect us negatively. Zuboff explains that in using the internet, we contribute to an evergrowing gap between what big corporations know about us, what we know about them, and what we know they know about us. It’s wild. If they have all the knowledge, then they have all the power.
anyways. These advertisements effectively fuel the culture of consumerism that has arguably broken our world. I don’t know exactly how applicable all of this is to us, seen as Zuboff talks about people in the US, and Europe has all sorts of regulations intended to protect our information. Still, nowadays, it seems as though everyone has an Alexa, or a Siri listening in on their most private, and intimate moments. Perhaps we should all do a little more research (maybe even read Zuboff’s book) and figure out how all of this affects us moving forward. But then what? Disconnect completely? It almost sounds better to keep on living in blissful ignorance.
They are able to take information about us, and sell it for purposes that are not for us. In practice, I guess what this means is that we’re constantly bombarded with advertisements for things we don’t actually need, because businesses know we’re susceptible to buy them Illustration © Sofie Ryan
A University College Student Association Magazine
BAR BRAWL
7 Illustration © Annelise van den Akker
Should Campus Fees be Equal in Price? Keep Campus Fees Equal by Rafaella Karadsheh Look, there are plenty of reasons to hate the different units on campus: Wall is ugly, Kromhout has too many mice, W has the smallest closets mankind has ever seen, G is the furthest thing from cosy, everyone can look into K rooms, the doors in academic buildings make a lot of noise, X has loud masters’ students, and honestly I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that lived in Y. Arguably, we’re spending too much money for our accommodation - a topic which may weasel its way to another bar brawl in the future. But one thing is for certain: some units suck more than other units. Personally, I would love to have a room of the same size as the ones in Locke. I would also prefer to not have mice watching me as I cook in the kitchen. “But Rafaella, what does this have to do with paying equal campus fees?” I’m glad you asked -- this has everything to do with it. Although UCU may have a reputation for attracting rich students, this is (very obviously) not the case. And that means different housing fees would make housing less accessible to students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Simply put: richer students would live in larger rooms, like the ones in academic buildings, while poorer students would live in smaller rooms, like the ones in Kromhout. This would create a clear divide between students from different financial backgrounds, and definitely throw off the whole ‘community’ vibe of campus. Also, if you want to sign up to live with friends you all have to live in the same unit. And you can’t live in a unit that not everyone can afford. The most likely scenario would be that students sign up with friends with a similar financial background, which in turn widens the gap between students of different socioeconomic backgrounds, feeding into a ruthless cycle of division. Not to mention, the housing would be a little trickier to manage: there are limited numbers for both cheap and expensive rooms. What would happen if too many people signed up for cheaper rooms? Would they be forced to live in a larger room, and pay fees that place a financial strain on them? And what about students who require accessible units, but can’t afford to pay the high fees of an accessible unit? Would they be forced to live in a room that is nearly impossible for them to access? So while I do agree that yes, it sucks to pay high campus fees if you’ve gotten a small room year after year, you need to look at the bigger picture. Splitting the rent equally actually has more benefits than downsides.
Equal Campus Fees Are Unfair by Naomi Michael-Lohs Living on campus can be both a blessing and a curse. And when there’s money involved, this really shouldn’t be taken lightly. Having a service where each student pays the same price for different qualities of housing doesn’t make any sense. As someone who has lived in tiny Kromhout and Wall over the summer, why should I be paying the same housing price as those who’ve lived in gigantic rooms in Locke and K? Granted that I now live in spacious Newton, the same cannot be said for people who’ve lived in units with small rooms throughout their time at UCU. As a residential college that highly encourages students to live on campus during their studies here, if we want to encourage different socioeconomic groups to be reflected among our student population, a housing policy with different price levels needs to be implemented. Although scholarships are provided to help pay for the annual €6212.50 campus fees, some students who are not eligible for this funding may also want to choose to live in cheaper housing. Whilst students in their third year are able to move off campus, first and second years are highly discouraged from doing so. The only option these students face is to pay the campus fees and hope that they get their money’s worth. The quality of buildings also shouldn’t be taken lightly. The washing machine to person ratio in Kromhout is atrocious when compared to W. The view from an academic building is surely worth more than a view from ground-floor K, where there is hardly any privacy. The kitchen to person ratio is much smaller in X than it is in Wall. The square meterage of a Tower room is half that of a room in G, and those rooms don’t even have sinks! As students, we all pay the same price for starkly contrasting levels of housing quality when this shouldn’t be the case. Having completed a housing survey on my Wall unit on the Dutch Student Union Website, I was informed that I was paying far more rent than I should have been. I could easily have contested this with our housing provider, but there’s a small issue with this argument: at UCU we pay for a housing service rather than actual rent. This legal loophole is all that stands between us and fair housing. By using this deceitful contract, our housing provider itself is admitting our housing system is broken. Why should we trust a housing provider that knows what they’re doing is wrong? As students living in such different buildings, we really shouldn’t be paying the same price for such contrasting experiences. It’s unfair for us to continue to live in a housing system purely based on luck.
8
BUBBLE Becoming Hybrid
The Boomerang | September 2020
Teaching in the overlap between physical and digital by Giulia Martinez Brenner
“This crisis obviously really had a strong affective impact and I could feel that myself and I could also see that in the students. At the beginning of last semester some students were blocked and by the end of the semester I was just exhausted.” A statement from Prof Elvira Moreno, one of multiple teachers I recently interviewed. The changes last semester were abrupt and strenuous for everyone, on both an educational and personal level. This new academic year began already in the full midst of the Corona pandemic, and I am sure we can all count ourselves lucky to be experiencing our current hybrid mode of education, with whatever small freedoms it allows. It still has not been easy and we are all trying our best to navigate this unfamiliar overlap between the digital and the physical. So how have those on the other side of our screens and desks been handling this? Professors were given basic instructions: 50% teaching in person, 50% online- to be interpreted in whatever manner they deemed fit to structure their course. Some of the reactions have been surprisingly positive. For one of her courses Prof Chiara Robbiano rotates half the class online simultaneously with the other half in person, and she says, “I was really nervous the first time, that they wouldn’t hear anything…but we managed and actually I’m so happy because it really works! These people from home really ask and answer questions. I must tell you I didn’t really count on people participating online so much, but still I didn’t want to change the format because I want them to read texts, and not watch clips, at home and then I can come in with the big concepts and explanations. That is the moment when they need to be able to interrupt me, you know, “wait what is that word,
what does that mean” and that is actually what happens!” Prof Moreno decided to only have one face-to-face class during the week and upload a separate lecture recording for the students to study on their own. “I have to say that my experience has been quite positive; there was a lot of empathy and solidarity among the students and teachers. I could feel that my students understood me. I admit I’m missing their stories; I get to know my students quite a bit less and that is also something that I am trying to solve. But in the way the students learn, they can study all the content on their own first so they have time to reflect, to take notes, according to their own style, because every student has a different learning style…they become more autonomous, they learn very well on their own, the classes are much more profitable and the connection is nice, so it’s good.” Unfortunately, these feelings aren’t always shared. Prof Sander van Maas applies the
“I feel a bit like a Youtuber” same format as Prof Robbiano and he states, “On the surface the experience I have now is utterly confusing. It’s confronting to have the two forms of address and of self-address while I teach. Each form has their own magnetic power, either you are looking at each other and registering all the face expressions and movement that’s going on in the classroom itself, and that draws you in making you totally forget the screen. And at the same time the reverse thing can happen, all of a sudden I get shocked into the realization that there is a whole group following this online and you get pulled in by the screen which of course is an immense force and after half a minute you forget the people in the classroom looking at you
while you are talking into your laptop. And I am looking into my own face, and it creates this fractured experience that also kind of “derealizes” myself, and I don’t really know where I am.” The peculiar feeling that mixes detachment along with the hyper visibility of digital presence is not uncommon. Prof Ruth Clemens’s course consists of a pre-recorded lecture, an in person seminar, and a study group activity that gives students’ an extra support system. “It took a lot of planning and understanding what was logistically possible and also a lot of thinking from the students point of view. There were lots of factors that staff had not thought of, things like privacy- I mean, I can’t base the structure of my syllabus around getting students’ permission to be recorded- that just doesn’t make sense. So I have designed the course and am in charge of the administration but Roos (her co-teacher) is doing the seminar teaching, so she’s the one the students get to see every week and I’m sort of this strange distant puppet-master…It definitely feels strange being this distant, especially when I’m making these videos where I feel a bit like a Youtuber and students get to see my face every week but I don’t get to see theirs.” What is certain is that they are doing the best they can. This transition has required trials and errors, flexibility, and cooperation. The system isn’t perfect, but how could we expect one? What we can do is remember our professors are people too and everyone on campus has the responsibility to keep all our efforts acknowledged and appreciated. Let’s do our best in keeping what precious liberties we have now, and value each other’s presence more because of it.
Sam and Ivan’s Summer Experience by Sam de Visser and Ivan Ryan
In the midst of a global pandemic, UCU decided to allow a small group of students to stay on campus during the summer. Two of our editors were among the lucky (?) ones to experience six weeks in the Wall. This is their story. IT IS JULY 2020. We have received the keys to our new homes. All our friends are gone. But the Wall beckoned us.
Illustration © Maia Francisca
WEEK 1 Moving is a struggle. Sam’s couch barely survives. Ivan moves from Wall to Voltaire to Wall. It’s the
biggest workout he’s had in years. Sam lives with ten sorority girls even though there are only supposed to be six of them - which means he now lives in an eleven-person wall unit with fifteen people. What could possibly go wrong? At the end of week one, Sam runs into Ivan. They make plans to barbecue together. It never happens. WEEK 2 What day is it? No one knows. At least it’s sunny. Sometimes. The days start to merge and merge and merge and merge, and they are all the same and all the same and all the same. Sam and Ivan have underestimated the amount of work their ‘extracurricular’ online Chinese course requires. “What a productive way to spend your summer!” Sam’s tutor said. He wasn’t wrong. WEEK 3 The sorority girls have thrown a party. Sam did not attend, but he hopes that they had a good time. Judging by the lack of clean-up,
they did. Before long, the mess starts to fester. This is the start of the mutation. Ivan managed to sleep a lot. WEEK 4 It’s so hot. Are we dying? Maybe. Barbecues are the only meals Ivan eats now. Although he smells like an arsonist, he promises he is not responsible for (maybe) accidentally burning his unitmate’s dish towel. Sam has resorted to an endless cycle of homework, walking around, eating, sleeping, homework, more sleeping, and occasionally lighting an incense stick. The incense gives him massive headaches, but he keeps lighting it anyway because the horrid smell of the living room has reached his room, smothering his possessions with the all-too-familiar stench of a smelly shoe tossed around in wet garbage - the Dirty Wall fragrance. He looks out the window. Ivan is barbecuing. WEEK 5 It’s already August? Where did July go? Time is but an illusion. Ivan has scared it off with his new taste for extra-fermented kimchi. It smells, but not too much, he says. His unitmates disagree.
A University College Student Association Magazine
SAM HAS PASSED HIS SUMMER COURSE WITH AN A-! He has never been happier. THE ENDING Sam’s unit is now a nuclear wasteland. As he spends his last week in Wall eating take-out food, the rats make their presence known. Pip no longer visits for fear of being attacked. Sacrificing his perpetually filthy, grimy, greasy dishes, now permanently marked by a vague grey-ish sheen, he flees. To a better place? One can only hope. Ivan moves from Wall to Voltaire (again). At least he has a big room. EPILOGUE Two weeks into the new semester, Sam and Ivan have made plans to hang out. As they see each other for the first time since the Wall, they realise something has changed. They have grown stronger now. It might be over, but in their hearts, the Wall will forever remain. The dark empty block of concrete will stand the test of time. Even after the eventual heat death of the universe, one thing will remain: Wall, its rats, and its summer inhabitants, permanently stuck in time, frozen in motion, waiting for their time in purgatory to end.
The Unspoken International Impact of COVID-19 Coronavirus has taken the world by storm, causing nearly 1 million deaths and over 30 million infections since the start of the pandemic. Consequently, numerous countries went in lockdown, leaving thousands of students stranded across the globe. It comes to no surprise that on an international campus like UCU, many students struggled to go back home. One of these students is Gemma*, a thirdyear student who stayed on campus over summer. “It’s been shitty because I haven’t been able to see my parents in two years. I was really looking forward to seeing them, but it just wasn’t possible.” While border control was already a challenge on its own, Gemma’s family had another challenge to face. Her father lost his job, meaning her parents lost their home and were forced to move to another country to stay with their friends. This financial loss was another obstacle preventing her from seeing her parents. Having to quarantine while also dealing with all of that proved to be quite challenging. “Like any other college student in a foreign place, when you don’t know what’s happening in your country or with your family, you’re just sort of trapped in your little room. It’s very easy to get lost in your own thoughts. We are all
dealing with our own shit and quarantine really emphasised that for me,” Gemma said. “But it forced me to confront things and grow.” Despite having lived in this country for two years, she was confronted with an upsetting realisation, “I consider the Netherlands my home, but it’s not mutual.” Since then, Gemma has been coping by doing art, going out for walks, and trying to figure out a routine in this chaos. Gemma isn’t the only student who was stuck on campus. Tara* was also forced to stay over the summer. Flights to her home country were very scarce, and every available flight was too expensive. Therefore, she had to abandon her plans to go home for the summer. “I am very homesick,” she said. “I’m still finding ways to cope with it.” Living with her friends has made her feel less lonely, and she feels at home in her new room. She has also been in contact with her family every day to feel up to date, “Does it make my life significantly better or easier? No. But it definitely does ease the situation.” As for the future, its uncertainty is concerning. “I’m scared that I won’t be able to go home in December,” Tara commented. “Going home helps me have a little break from feeling sad.” A break she undeniably really deserves -- aside from not being allowed to go back home, Tara was forced to move four times over summer break because of the changing situation. Something which would take a heavy toll on anyone, both physically and mentally. The start of the new academic year has not been smooth either. “Seeing and hearing about other students partying on campus does make me a little sad. While I spent my summer going through so much shit, some people did have the privilege of being able to go home, taking a break from everything, and coming back,” Tara explained. “The real fear is that this could spark things up again.” Alina Katz is facing unique challenges getting back home: her family lives in Malaysia where both of her parents work. However, since her family is not Malaysian, she’d be entering the country as a tourist. This is extremely challenging given the strict regulations that have been imposed. Although Malaysia was doing significantly better than the Netherlands when classes moved online last semester, she decided to stay on campus, “I felt like it would be better for me, for my education,” she explained. However, her plans to go back home for the summer were soon crushed, “I wasn’t able to go back because at some point Malaysia had the most cases in all of Southeast Asia.” A full lockdown ensued and entering the country as a foreigner became impossible. “It sucked mostly because I couldn’t go back. I was told that I can’t go back to see my family because of things beyond my control,” she explained. She hopes to go to Malaysia in December. However, there is a chance that the country will close its borders to the Netherlands once again, “It’s frustrating because cases [in the Netherlands] are rising. And if they keep rising, it increases the chances that I can’t go back,” Alina explained.
BUBBLE
9
“In the Netherlands, there’s just a general obliviousness that corona is rampant here. People don’t think it’s as severe as it is,” she concluded. On the other side of the globe, students are facing trouble getting to campus. Haadi Naqvi is a first-year student, one of many students abroad right now. Although he completed his administration papers, getting his visa has been challenging. “Dutch citizens in third world countries had to return to the Netherlands, which meant that the embassy here [in Karachi] is closed,” Haadi stated. However, even after the embassy opened, he couldn’t pick up his visa in Karachi, forcing him to travel across the country to get his visa in the middle of the pandemic. And he wasn’t the only one facing this issue. A few of his peers in India faced a similar situation, some of whom opted to delay their arrival by a semester due to travel concerns. Because of the COVID-19 measures, parts of introweek have moved online, which Haadi was thankful for, “I’m glad it went online because I was scared of missing out. I felt like I couldn’t integrate to campus in peace.” Attending classes online has not been an easy task. “An online semester is very tricky to manage but I’m working on it,” Haadi said. “My electricity goes off sometimes, and I have to manage academics with that.” Haadi is planning to come to campus at the end of September, making classes a little easier to follow. However, jumping straight into academics without the chance to settle down is a point of concern. Especially since he was given little time to recover from all the uncertainty. “There was this huge period in which we didn’t have a lot of answers,” Haadi said, “UCU tried their best, but it still ended up being difficult. But that’s life, isn’t it?” he concluded with a small laugh. Sarah* also faced challenges returning to campus for her third year. Her home country's borders were closed for an extended period of time, meaning she could only return to campus after the semester began. “I was put into a quarantine unit all alone for 10 days without prior notice that this would be the case,” she wrote. “I had to move in on my own. The kitchen had no utensils, and no food either.” The surprising news was due to an admin mix up, Sarah said. That didn’t make it any easier, especially after a flight that was over 8 hours long. “It took a very heavy toll on me,” she concluded. UCU prides itself in being an international campus and is passionate about its community. A majority of these international students (if not all) faced issues returning to campus or visiting their beloved families. During times like this, the passion of the community must be directed to supporting these students. Not washing your hands, actively attending parties and/or crowded gatherings contributes to the spread of the virus. And when members of the community fail to take precautions, they let down the students who need their support the most. *Names have been changed for anonymity purposes.
10 CULTURE
The Boomerang | September 2020
Emotional Time-Travel Through Vivid Musical Memories by Vela Kaluderovic
As is the case with many people, often I find that I can’t leave my house without headphones. If I forget them, I’m taken aback by a feeling of intense paralysis: I genuinely can’t imagine going to the grocery store 10 minutes away without music playing in my ears.
Illustration © Sofie Ryan
Because music is constantly present, I can mark specific checkpoints in my life with songs: the song that played when I had my first kiss, gradu-
ated high school, snuck out of my parents’ house for the first time. Regardless of whether or not I actually enjoy listening to them, as soon as I hear a few notes or lyrics I am instantly transported to those key moments, all emotions included. The feeling is almost hypnotizing – I can no longer focus on whatever I am doing until the song stops. This link between music, memory and emotion was studied at length by Baird and Samson, from the University of Lille, in 2009. They used popular music to help severely brain-injured patients recall personal memories. What they discovered was that a piece of familiar music ‘serves as a soundtrack for a mental movie that starts playing in our heads’. The music called back memories of people, places and events which were so vivid, patients were often taken aback by the fact that they weren’t in fact experiencing the moment right then and there! Petr Janata, associate professor of psychology at UC Davis’ Center for Mind and Brain, performed a study to discover the neural pathways that music activates. By making tonal maps of each musical excerpt played and comparing them to their corresponding brain scans, he discovered that the brain tracks tonal progressions in music
in the same region that memories are experienced in: the dorsal part of the medial prefrontal cortex. These studies support the fact that music triggers memory, or at least that they feed into each other. What is interesting is that in both studies, participants had only positive memories triggered. Music can trigger negative ones as well, and whether because of second-hand embarrassment of one’s past actions, sadness over people no longer present, we avoid songs, artists or even whole genres. What I have found, after finally listening to my grandpa’s favorite song, which I avoided for years following his death, was that I was overwhelmed with a cathartic sense of calm after it: listening to it brought me back to those moments with him, yet instead of feeling sad, I felt good to have been able to access those memories which I was sure were long gone. Maybe immersing yourselves in avoided songs could help you find clarity and peace as well? So, next time you listen to a song that was playing the first time you stepped foot in UCU, or the first pandemic you lived through, hold on tight and enjoy the emotional time-travel adventure your brain will take you on - it’s one hell of a ride!
Illustration © Sam de Visser
Stan’s Sad Boi Sounds :( by Stanley Ward
Sad Boi No More Look at my little baby face in the picture that has accompanied this column for the past year and a half. How much has changed. This used to be a ‘genuine’ ‘music’ ‘column’. However, as times change so must we. Given that I ranked the top 5 best songs from motion picture The Muppet Christmas Carol (all still bangers by the way) in the last Boomerang and the other week I unironically emotionally connected with a Coldplay song, it’s time for me to hang up my hat and retire the format. However, as my monthly musings have garnered significant praise, often referred to as ‘obnoxious’ ‘annoying’ and ‘irrelevant’, I thought I’d do one last one. Someone recently commented that the entire thing was literally built on a combination of pure ego and borderline insanity. To that, I say thank you. Strap yourselves in because it’s time for one last serving. What’s on my mind? It’s the Utrecht Railway Museum. Because I recently discovered that it kinda fucking slaps. And it slaps kinda hard. I was already on board with the concept when I rolled up alongside my housemate and friend on an overcast Tuesday afternoon, but at this point I didn’t know these crazy trainloving dudes had rides and shit. After a lovely afternoon of train trivia, simulators, and a successful crash course at the museum's very
own university of train technology (yes it was for children, but given the current state of my academics it was reassuring to be awarded any degree), I thought the day could hold no more excitement. That was until I heard a group of fellow museum-goers talking excitedly in hushed tones. They were speaking in Dutch, and as my Duolingo progress is currently stagnating around ‘ik eet een appel’, I motioned my nederlandse vriend to come over and translate for me. As he listened in, his eyes widened and his mouth fell open in shock. While he rapidly relayed the conversation to me, I felt an enormous sense of relief wash over my body. The strangers’ conversation went a little something like this: “Yes, it seems those University College students are quite clever after all”. “Developing a vaccine for corona before the professional laboratories - simply astounding”. “I mean I saw those videos of around a hundred people pressed together in a sweaty mess, it’s proof that they have their own vaccine; how else would this be possible?” “It’s a shame they have to keep it secret for now, even sending all those apology letters - probably throwing those American private healthcare providers off the scent so they can’t patent and profit of it”. “Clever, brave and moral!” Finally. UCU students have actually been productive. I knew those science majors were
doing so much work all the time for a reason. That’s why they were always too busy to have dinner with me. Maybe that’s why the Dean is moving on, so that one of these brave heroes can step in. My friends and I high-fived, shook hands, and spat into each other's faces - no need to worry about regulations if there’s a UCU vaccine. I returned home with glee smeared all over my face like a good-news mudpie. All my covid anxieties evaporated into the air, just as a song drifted through the airwaves from the living room speaker to my ear. It was Coldplay. Chris Martin was telling me to see each sunrise as a gift. Instead of the usual symptoms of retching, sighing and eye rolling I have experienced in the past, the over-compressed millenial pop made me, now anxiety-free, feel good. I understood. I understood that music is just for fun, and Chris just wants us to learn to be free and happy and love, even if we aren’t millionaires like him. I felt inspired, inspired to go make flower crowns in meadows, ‘manifest’ things, and eat hummus or whatever it is happy people do. No more COVID, no more sadness, and therefore… no more column needed. Time to go live life.
A University College Student Association Magazine
CULTURE
11
Harry’s Hedonistic Hotspots by Harry Mills SONMAT Korean Voorstraat 30, Utrecht Cost: € Price to Calorie Ratio: Quite Decent Welcome back gastronomic enthusiasts to the hottest and most hedonistic column in the Boomerang! With lockdown lifted there’s a whole host of restaurants and eating establishments to explore. This month, we’re headed to SONMAT. Located on a corner of the new and improved Voorstraat, across from both Anan and O’Panuozzo (that is, at the gastronomic epicentre of Utrecht), SONMAT is a newly opened Korean restaurant that specialises in comfort food. Chicken is the staple fare (although there is a veggie option too), served either on its own (with a little coleslaw) or over rice. You can order your chicken fried (along with your cold beer on a Friday night - jokes SONMAT doesn’t have an alcohol license) with a choice of three sauces (yangnyeom, ganjang, and padak) or stir fried; for a little extra, you can even get a combination of both. Kimchi (pickled cabbage), baek kimchi, and pickled radish round out the sides and offer a nice tangy means of cutting through the grease (although, to be fair, SONMAT is not as heavy or greasy as you might expect fried chicken to be). In addition to various sodas, SONMAT offers crushed pear juice and homemade ice tea. Orders of fried chicken cost about €5-10, depending on the size, with combos sitting at €15 and sides and drinks
going for €2 each. On weekdays, between the hours of 12:00 and 15:00, SONMAT also offers a student deal where for €6.50 you can get yangnyeom fried chicken over a bed of steamed rice. Now, on to the review (he says, not being Korean nor ever even once having been to Korea). It’s not bad. Despite my limited experience in the realm of Korean cuisine, I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the flavours (and the spice in particular) have been somewhat… tempered, for a Dutch consumer base. It’s not that the tastes aren’t good (in fact, they’re quite intriguing), it’s just that there aren’t thaaaat many of them. It feels a little bit like listening to a hip hop track on daytime radio; you know the song is good, but the bleeping dilutes the experience. In addition to the somewhat muted flavours (which, for the average Dutch person, I can only imagine must be like a roller coaster ride into flavourtown) the chicken is sometimes on the drier side, although this isn’t much of an issue when it’s coated in sauce. In the end, I guess SONMAT isn’t quite the succulent fried chicken purveyor of my dreams. On the whole though, the food is quite good (maybe a B+ instead of an A), the people working there are super nice, and it’s somewhere I’ll be returning to again in future (not least to test out that student deal). So give them a visit and munch on some comfortable chicken.
Important Opinions on Important Movies by Sam de Visser Happy new year! Summer is finally over! I don’t normally like summer all that much, because heat makes me sweaty and sticky. This year’s summer, living in Wall purgatory, was especially annoying - so you can imagine my relief now that things are finally sort of cooling down. Oh, this column is supposed to be about movies, you say? Well, luckily I know a movie that captures endless summer purgatory at its worst. Greener Grass (Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe, 2019) is something that I accidentally stumbled upon while watching some filmbro’s ‘my favourite movies of the month!!!’ video, and boy, it is… something. The movie takes place in some nightmare version of American suburbia. A setting that i have seen portrayed a bunch of times, but never as weird as in this movie. In the opening scene, main character Jill impulsively decides to give her baby away to her bestfriend-but-also-rival Lisa, as they both watch their older kids play a football match on top of a bunch of graves. Things only get stranger from there: the whole film can best be compared to a late night Adult Swim sketch. The most entertaining thing about Greener Grass is just how bizarrely absurd it is. To give
you a few examples: one main character has an obsession with pool water, and everyone drives around in golf carts instead of cars. Throughout the movie, the characters are constantly tiptoeing around each other, which creates that lovely atmosphere of people who are always polite to each other even though they very clearly can’t stand each other. A lot of Greener Grass’s runtime is devoted to unraveling the boredom and normalcy of these rich suburbs and revealing the ugliness beneath it. By exaggerating the idiocy of - can I say that? - middle-class white culture, this movie turns banality into absurdity and it’s really great (also quite funny). Everything in Greener Grass is oversaturated and over-the-top. The green trees are extra green, the blue pool water is extra blue. The only somewhat rational character in the film appears in the brief scenes that take place outside the suburban prison. In some ways, Greener Grass is kind of the worst of paradise: a suburb in which everything goes so well that it turns into a claustrophobic nightmare of boredom, repetition and numbness. Even the sound design sometimes seems to be taken straight from a video game. Everything about this movie’s
setting is artificial and alienating, and it’s kind of brilliant. There is a lot I want to say about this movie, but I would end up spoiling it. What I can say, is that it very accurately captured the feeling I often get in the middle of summer. That feeling of continuous boredom on never-ending sweltering hot days. When you feel like there’s nothing to do, while there’s in fact so much you have to do. I know I often write these columns about bizarre, QuiRkY movies, but I feel like those very unreal movies are the perfect format to capture a lot of very real feelings. Obviously Greener Grass doesn’t address any world-changing issues, but I do think it’s a really smart deconstruction of the American suburb at its very worst, its most sleepy, and its most prison-like. Out of everything I’ve watched this summer, it’s the movie that’s stuck by me the most, the one I can see myself rewatching the most. It’s really funny, really smart, and hits a note that a lot of other movies aren't really able to hit. It’s also criminally under-watched; so please, if you happen to stumble across this little suburban masterpiece, give it a chance.
12 QUAD QUERIES
The Boomerang | September 2020
U "What is your UC creative juice??"
“caramel ice coffee”
“Those AH vers e smoothies… mmmm”
– Rachel
– Annelise
“this WAP”
–Emma
with “Vodka Sprite
– Naomi
“fat joints”
– Giugi
“Malibu Fristi”
– Minke & Noort
je
“floor coffee”
– Janneke
cucumber"
“Collaging”
– Maren
in my cup when I " The tears I catch on the pitch" see that there is chalk
“Sam related
nonsense"
– Sam
- Arnoud
THE BOOMERANG BOARD Stanley Ward | Editor-in-Chief Rafaella Karadsheh| Managing Editor Ivan Ryan | Executive Editor Justus Boesschen Hospers | Executive Editor Khoa Tran | Layout Manager Sofie Ryan | Art Director Sam de Visser | PR Manager
Boomerang uses wind energy printers The Boomerang is a periodical newspaper. It comes out eight times a year. This is the first issue of the academic year.