By Lou Boot As the new academic year starts, AUC’s Student Council (StuCo) has compiled a plan for 2024-25 of what they would like to achieve for the student body. Their strategies involve a focus on transparency, diversity, academics, mental health and well-being, safety, graduate students, and internal collaboration. Through an interview with StuCo’s co-chair…

By Klaudia Sobczyk Amsterdam is known for its international character. Whether it is tourists streaming in from different parts of the world, expats working online, or international students, English is the main means of communication for many groups navigating through the streets of this city every day. Despite this fact however, English is not the…

By Emmy van Ingen Affordability, sustainability, and democratisation. These are the three demands of Antikantine, a group of students who wish to see a less profit-oriented university cafeteria. After their first protest in March last year, the UvA responded to their demands by implementing a cheaper meal option. However, the execution of this plan did…

By Malavika Libish The Oxford Learners dictionary defines the word laundry as “the process or the job of washing clothes, sheets, etc.” As of late December 2023, several washing machines (as well as dryers) at the AUC dorms located on Carolina MacGillavrylaan have not been working, to the extent that students have begun to question…

By Klaudia Sobczyk Nearly half of the AUC class of 2026 majors in Science. The Science students are followed by 27% of majors in Social Sciences, and 25% in Humanities. First-year students, who began their journey at AUC in the 2023/24 academic year, brought AUC much closer to achieving its intended goal: half of the…

Opinion Note: The following is an open letter from several of the individuals who were arrested in front of AUC during the protests that occurred from 25 to 28 March. Dear AUC community, We are writing to you as a group of students who were arrested for peacefully protesting our university’s complicity in the genocide…

By Wilma Tynkkynen and Deirdre de Leeuw den Bouter A new academic calendar is being piloted for the 2023-2024 school year. In contrast to previous years, the calendar includes three additional class-free weeks and increased class length, from one and a half hours to one hour and 45 minutes. The additional class-free weeks are a…

By Weronika Szymańska “A classmate of mine even thought this might be an experiment to measure the students’ empathy towards teachers,” comments Austeja Varyte, a second-year Social Science major, enrolled in The Empathic Brain course during the January intensive period, where hopes of unravelling the complexities of neuroscience turned into an uncertainty of receiving credits…

By Violet Domínguez Note: Most names have been changed to provide safety and anonymity. “Whose university? Our university! Whose campus? Our campus!” On Wednesday 21 February another protest took place on the second floor of the Academic Building (AB). This time students gathered to speak out against the AUC Management Team’s censorship of political expression…

By Ben Kiem AUC’s financial deficit reached a record high in 2023, marking a net loss of 1.2 million euros, as the university continues to grapple with structural financial imbalance and the consequences of the new UvA lecturer policy. The outlook for the future, meanwhile, remains dim.  The 2023 deficit exceeded predictions by approximately two…

By Lisa Jesudas Please refresh the browser to read the most recent blog entries. 13:58 – The live blog is now closed. We hope you enjoyed keeping up with the Budget GA and we wish you a great rest of the week! 13:57 – The 48th annual general assembly has swiftly concluded ahead of schedule!…

By Deirdre de Leeuw den Bouter As everyone settles back into school and our new semester begins, AUC students might find themselves itching to leave Science Park. While Amsterdam itself offers plenty of opportunities to go out and explore, here’s a list of the Herring’s top three Dutch towns to visit when you find yourself…

By Kama Wojtuszko Finding a job is one thing, but then all the formalities… They can be quite overwhelming, and not all employers are as helpful as we wish they were. That’s why The Herring prepared this guide to getting a job in the Netherlands, answering the most important questions. Okay, how do I even…

By Weronika Szymańska In a city where incoming students rush to purchase a Cineville Pass faster than you can say “action,” and the annual IDFA festival transforms Amsterdam into a cinematic mecca for thousands, the Dutch capital can pride itself on having one of the most developed cinema landscapes in Europe. Within this expansive art…