Many students apparently don’t want to have to speak English in their own home, as evidenced by the many advertisements for rooms to rent on Facebook and Kamernet that say the room is ‘Dutch only’. That’s great for Dutch students, but it makes the search for international students all the harder.
GSb and ESN want to start a campaign to end this aversion to international students. ‘It’s to be a positive campaign and get people interested in their fellow students from abroad’, GSb chair Jolien Bruinewoud says.
The campaign is part of a covenant between the GSb, ESN, housing corporations, the municipality,, the RUG, and Hanze University. The covenant was signed last week. They want to improve their collaboration to improve housing for internationals in particular. ‘Our goal is to stop blaming other people and start working together’, says Bruinewoud.
International only
What the anti-Dutch only campaign is going to look like, Bruinewoud can’t say yet. ‘We don’t have a proper overview of it yet. We’ll be working on it with ESN this year.’
But pre-master student of psychology Tijler Dommerhold says it might be difficult. Last summer, he and his roommates put an ‘internationals only’ advert online. ‘My roommates and I have many international friends and they would always tell us how hard it was to find a room. So we wanted to help that group out.’
After eight Skype conversations, they picked Johanna from Germany. ‘We had an immediate connection with her. We didn’t even talk about the room; all we talked about was vegetarian food. We knew she’d be a good fit.’
Gezellig
Dommerhold hasn’t noticed anything different about their German roommate. ‘Just like with Dutch people, it’s gezellig. She’ll remark on our Dutch behaviour occasionally, such as the fact that we always carry our dayplanners with us. Small, funny things.’
He thinks many students are scared of the language barrier. ‘It can be a bit of a switch when you’re talking to your Dutch roommates and Johanna comes home. But she understands that Dutch is our mother tongue and that we speak it sometimes.’
For him and his roommates, it’s no issue. ‘We’re used to speaking English in class and with friends. Maybe it’s more difficult for students whose study programme isn’t in English.’
He’s not sure a campaign will be able to change this: ‘Student culture, and association houses in particular, is pretty rigid on this. Changing that would be a challenge.’