To be an English university or not to be?

‘To be an English University or not to be?’, was a headline in Cursor two weeks ago. I had joined the discussion ‘TU/english’ at Studium Generale and was very curious for that reason also. To my great astonish-ment and disappointment I saw that the article had been written in Dutch. To be very honest, I even found that an insult to all international students and staff members. A major two-page article about a topic that the whole international community within TU/e is interested in, is summarized for us in three lines, and the rest may be read on the Internet.

In my opinion this article is typical of the way in which TU/e deals with the English language: they state that it is very important, but do not practice what they preach. All the news of my student association is in Dutch too, for example. The posters announcing activities at TU/e are in Dutch. This way it is not being made easy for us to participate actively within the university.

TU/e underestimates how important it is for us to get information. We neither know the country, nor the city, nor the university. Yet we do want to know something about the place where we study! Moreover, today’s international students at TU/e are the ambassadors of this university in their own countries. So you had better make sure that they become enthusiastic and involved in particular. Involvement begins with providing information, giving us the feeling of belonging here. That feeling is one we definitely do not have now.

Cursor should have placed both versions: Dutch and English. That would have been symbolic at once of the problem you get by using two languages, and it could have raised a discussion about how things should be done. I would like to feel part of TU/e and of Eindhoven. However, this is difficult, as there is hardly any English-language news to be found. Don’t get me wrong: I think that everybody should learn Dutch. I’m doing that myself as well. Before your command of this language is good enough to understand everything, though, you will be several years further, also because the courses are nearly always full. And during those years you are yearning for news, information and all kinds of details about the place where you live.”

Reaction Cursor editor in chief Han Konings:
The article stated clearly that the full text was available in an English translation on the Cursor site.
We did discuss putting the English version on paper, but since the Executive Board has decided that English will be the second language at TU/e and not the first, we decided after all to do it the way we did.