Humans of the VUB: Lieselotte Deconinck, masterstudent Agogische wetenschappen

The VUB has a very bureaucratic mindset

“I study, I work in the library, I am with PPK (not actively anymore, but I am still a member), I help build up Spectrum since that is a new group, I am with the VUB Musical group; that is about everything I do here at the VUB.

Organising activities is very difficult, I think. The VUB has a very bureaucratic mindset. You have to fill in a lot of forms and you are sent from one person to the other to organise something. When you know people it is pretty okay, but the room booking service is not always very clear about bookings. When we book a room with Spectrum or the musical until after 9 p.m. they will often come knocking to lock up the room earlier. Now they know that if I am in the room, it is booked until 10 p.m.

The VUB likes to boast about us as a cultural group, but there is hardly any support for the musical group. We should get support from above, but it seems very difficult, especially because we were away from campus for a bit since there was nothing for us here. We found a spot for us in a music school for a while. When we returned to the VUB we were able to have a good understanding at first, but especially the past year there has been a lot of opposition from the technicians about using aula Q. But doing our performances here is what binds us to the VUB. Two years ago we tried to hire the VUB technicians for our performances at their own request, but a week before our performances they cancelled on us which isn’t right. Since then we always ask students or third parties.

Because we are not a traditional fraternity we are not given any support, even though lots of students look forward to our performances and a lot of people find their voice in our group.”

On the occasion of the VUB’s 50th anniversary, prof. dr. Martina Temmerman asked the students in her introductory course on journalism genres to make portraits of people on the VUB campus. The ‘snapshots’ resulting from the project Humans of the VUB offer a lovely cross section of life on our university campus in 2019/20.