Many new parties in 2023 student council elections
Student council elections are once again upon us. A total of 15 parties have submitted their electoral lists on time. Can they break the trend of ever- lower turnout figures?
How many UvA students will cast their votes this year? That's the big question leading up to the 2023 student council elections in early May. Both the Central Student Council (CSR) and faculty student councils have been struggling with disappointing turnout figures for years; only 11 percent of students cast their vote for the CSR in 2022 (in 2021, it was as many as 11.2). Most faculty-student councils also hovered around an abysmally low 12 percent turnout rate last year.
It is up to the participating parties to turn the tide. Today, the first step was taken: the electoral lists for the various student councils were officially announced. The central electoral committee reports 15 registered parties. What stands out about the lists?
The Free Student (DVS)
020,
Inter,
Activist Party UVA
Sefa Student Party
UvASocial
EnCore
SLAAFS
Party MFAS bachelor
MFAS master party
The Founding Students
HUMANS ARE MADE EQUAL
LOVE
VOTE
Elect ACTA
61 candidates on one list
Among the parties listed are many new names. The Founding Students, EnCore, HUMANS ARE MADE EQUAL and STEM have never participated in a student council election before. Most parties are limited to the faculty-student councils, but EnCore is also participating in the CSR elections. It is also the party that provides the most candidate delegates on a single list. As many as 61 (mostly international) students are on the EnCore electoral list for the student council of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
Parties such as the Free Student, Inter, and 020 are, as always, competing for multiple seats, both at the faculty level as well as UvA-wide. But especially (the relatively young) Activist Party UvA is overrepresented on the lists: only the faculty lists for medicine and dentistry lack activists. At the Faculty of Humanities, the Activist
Party is in fact the only participating party with nine candidates for 12 seats. Thus, a number of seats will remain unoccupied.
This year, UvASocial submitted its electoral lists to the central electoral committee on time. Last year that went wrong. The party, which was one of the largest at the UvA for years, was late in submitting its lists and was excluded from participating. The party invoked force majeure because of a tragic event experienced by the party's Ukrainian chairman, Sofiya Koba, but the polling station did not agree.
Familiar names
A total of seven parties are participating in the elections for the CSR, where seven direct seats are up for grabs. The current president of the Central Student Council, Tessa Trapp, can once again be found on the Inter CSR list (in spot 5). Last year, the German PPLE student had the distinction of being the first international UvA student to lead the CSR, even though her party fell far short of becoming the largest in the previous CSR elections. That honor fell to the Free Student.
In addition to Trapp, other members of the current CSR are running for another term. For example, Robin Blom and Juda Groenewoudt can be found on the Free Student's new CSR list, both as list contributors. And CSR members Carlos van Eck, Job Vermaas, and international student Noah Pellikaan are once again on the list for the Central Student Council on behalf of Activist Party UvA, the latter as list leader, the other two as list contributors.
Activist Party UvA's CSR list also includes a number of other familiar names. Asva board member Bor van Zeeland, who previously argued in Folia for a temporary halt to further internationalization of the UvA due to the increasing student population, occupies spot 24. Journalist and philosophy student Tammie Schoots is in spot 8. Schoots was previously list leader of the Anti-Corona Party. In that capacity, she filed a lawsuit against the UvA for alleged bribery by other student parties, which she later withdrew.
Student council elections will take place from Monday, May 8, to Friday, May 12. Any UvA student can vote.
