‘Faculty councils should translate documents’
‘This is no longer in line with a university that wants to be internationally oriented’, says Van Gulik. He feels that faculty councils do not accurately reflect the makeup of the faculty. Until January this year, there were no international students in the BSS faculty council.
‘I feel like the participation councils aren’t properly accessible to them’, says Van Gulik. International students are officially allowed to run for council, but they often don’t because they don’t understand the Dutch meeting documents. ‘I grew up with Dutch as a native language and even I have trouble understanding the documents sometimes.’
Translation program
There is a translator present at the BSS faculty meetings, but Van Gulik has proposed to release the documents in English from now own. The faculty board was not immediately enthusiastic about this. ‘I understand, because it costs time and money. But the university has a big internationalisation budget, so they should invest in these kinds of things.’
The board will now be looking into a professional translation program. ‘That’s an intermediate solution that I can live with’, says Van Gulik. ‘But ultimately, we should have them professionally translated. After all, we’re a professional international organisation.’