The University of Groningen and Hanze University of Applied Sciences have not granted accreditation to the Vindicat student association for the current academic year. The association will not be invited to official occasions until mid-September next year.
The association has been regularly discredited in recent years. Due to abuses, Vindicat did not receive accreditation in 2019.
The board promised improvements and proposed measures, but not enough has yet come, say the university and the university of applied sciences. The board of the association is also said to have intervened insufficiently in incidents that happened during the corona crisis.
Excessive use of alcohol
The committee reviewing the case says Vindicat is not sufficiently aware that the excessive alcohol consumption within the association should be addressed. “There is a retrospective response to incidents, instead of preventing them. Internal surveys show that the members of Vindicat do not experience a cultural change sufficiently.”
The committee also blames the Vindicat for not informing the university and college of a recent incident, when about 100 people were partying in a house, in violation of the corona rules.
Alcohol-free beer
There are also positives. For example, the committee says that steps have been taken in reporting incidents and that more attention is being paid to diversity, culture change and the serving of non-alcoholic beer.
Vindicat says that the news ‘has arrived like a hard blow’. “We were not expecting it. We will do everything we can to ensure that things are in order next year.”
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