2 INTERNATIONAL ■ Who the
bleep is...?
Kruimeldief A burglar is lying in a coma, with only a poor prospect of recovering, after being attacked by four men last week. They were on the lookout for him after several break-ins at their tennis hall in Amsterdam. One of the four was the owner of the hall. The others were his sons and a security guard. When they caught the 50-yearold burglar, they beat him up and one person strangled him. When the police arrived on the scene, they had to resuscitate him. A heated debate has erupted over the incident. When the current Cabinet gained power a year ago, Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced that citizens should have the right to defend their property. Fred Teeven, the State Secretary for Security and Justice, has moved to change the law on self-defence. Citizens are now allowed to use violence against criminals when they are threatened. Previously, violence was only allowed when citizens were attacked. Some commentators and opposition MPs now say that this has created a climate in which disproportionate violence against a petty burglar (kruimeldief) is allowed. Rutte has denied this. But Hero Brinkman, MP for the populist right-wing PVV party, dismissed the incident as a “professional hazard”. The Public Prosecutor, meanwhile, has accused one of the four suspects of attempted manslaughter. If the burglar dies, as is expected, this will be upgraded to manslaughter. [ RENÉ FRANSEN ]
NEWS
Foreign students bring in $21 billion International students add $21 billion to the United States economy. The number of students rose by 5 percent during the 2010/2011 academic year to 723,277 and by 32 percent over the last decade. These figures were revealed this week by the American Institute of International Education (IIE) and by the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in its report ‘Open Doors 2011’. About 70 percent of the primary funding for international students comes from outside the US, amounting to $21 billion in tuition fees and living expenses. Most international students come from China (158,000), India (104,000) and South Korea (73,000).
UK 12 - 17 NOVEMBER 2011
SOCIAL MEDIA
Job description: Fa | I N T E R N AT I O N A L | When Jessica Winters
wanted to start a Facebookpage to reach international students, she met with a lot of doubt. But she went ahead anyway. And the results were astonishing.
By TEODOR LAZAROV “Yeah, we were the first university in Holland with a Facebook page and we most definitely have the biggest”, says Jessica Winters, international marketing and communication member of staff, proudly. While she poses for the photographer, Winters talks enthusiastically about her ideas concerning social media and the way it should be used by the RUG. “Social media is a very open and easy way to connect with your students. It’s almost like talking directly to them as a person instead of an institution.” Nowadays it is really important to open up and start a dialogue with students who are already here and with potential students. “Social media is the new way of advertising and a very helpful critical tutor at the same time.” Winters explains that running the RUG’s Facebook page is now part of her job. She spends between a quarter and a third of her time maintaining the social media channel. “But it wasn’t always like that”, she laughs. “When I came here four years ago, nobody was interested in Facebook.” She is responsible for the recruitment of international students. Through social media Winters saw an easy and direct way to reach her target group. But she met a lot of doubts at first. “My first idea was to start a team that would manage the RUG’s social media and use it to communicate with international students. My boss didn’t believe this new approach would work and told me to stick to my job description.” Convinced that getting international students to Groningen was part of her job, Winters started the first Dutch university Facebook page anyway. After a few months
RESEARCH
Jessica Winters: ‘Four years ago nobody was interested in Facebook.’ the results were astonishing, so she presented the statistics to her boss. “That convinced the RUG that social media should be part of its com-
munication strategy.” Facebook now spends close to an hour a day responding to questions, posting new content and sometimes
chatting with foreign students who are interested in the RUG through the avatar Ubbo. “I can’t respond using my own Facebook account, so I
Personal and public memorial
| G R I E F | Roadside memorials are
personal expressions of grief in a public place, just like memorial sites on the internet. Why are they erected? Mirjam Klaassens tries to answer this question in her PhD thesis in cultural geography. By RENE FRANSEN They range from an inconspicuous plaque to elaborate structures: roadside memorials, marking the place where a fatal accident has occurred. “There has been a change in the way we deal with death and remembrance, but very little research has been done on public memorials”, says cultural geographer Mir-
jam Klaassens. She has expanded a database of roadside memorials, previously collected by a Master’s student, to include some 400 sites. On top of that, she has collected virtual memorials on the internet.
‘The memorial celebrates the life of the victim’ “Most memorials are for young people and permanent memorials are often erected by their parents”, says Klaassens. The roadside memorial is of-
ten just one of the places where a loved one is remembered. “It is at the exact location of the accident. The last place where the person being remembered was alive. And in the case of teenagers killed on their way to school, that place was part of their usual routine.” The memorial celebrates the life of the victim, in contrast to a place of burial, which is associated with death. Public memorials also serve as a means to cope with a sudden bereavement. “These memorials preserve the memory. They also generate support, for example when parents find that someone has put fresh flowers on a memorial.” Support is also an important aspect of virtual memorials. “I looked
at guestbooks and found a lot of messages from total strangers.” Online memorials also often remember a sudden and untimely death. “Apart from traffic accidents, you find that the cause of death might have been a fatal illness. And many memorials are set up to remember stillborn children.” Klaassens found that one reason why parents create a virtual memorial for children who die at birth, or shortly afterwards, is to confirm the identity of the child and recognize its existence. “Especially if it was a first child, it also serves to identify the parents as parents. If it was a first child that died, they no longer have children. On the memorial site they are still parents.”