Inge Adriaans, Internationalization policy official with STU, emphasizes that the need for a meeting room for international students and employees has been known to STU for some time now. “That is why we are consulting with DPO and the Accommodation Department to create such a meeting place on campus. We expect a decision about this to be made even this calendar year.”

At present it is impossible for Adriaans to say anything about the location and the decoration of the room. “The room will have a multifunctional nature, but the final furnishing of the room will be explored in consultation with its users. The idea is for international and Dutch students and employees to meet there; hence the room will have to be suited for organizing cultural events, for example.”

In the past few months there was a real run on the drinks at Japie en Van der Waals, the student associations of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry and Applied Physics respectively. The rooms where the drinks took place were so full of people from outside the Departments that many of their ‘own’ students stayed away. Jesper van Berkel, chairman of the Eindhoven Federation of Student Associations (FSE), informs us that the crowdedness at the drinks is caused largely by groups of international students: “Apparently international students, especially when they are few, don’t always feel at home at their own Departments. Then they decide to go to one drink all together.”

His reaction to the plan developed by STU is understandably positive: “It is a good solution. We do hope that the international students will continue to be involved in the student associations of their own Departments, for that is going fine now with CHEOPS and GEWIS (student associations of respectively Architecture, Building and Planning and Mathematics & Computer Science, ed.). It is good, though, that they should have the occasion apart from that to meet with other foreign students. “

Bond
STU official Adriaans does not think, for that matter, that international students do not feel at home with their Departments. “Apart from contacts at their own Departments they also see each other frequently on occasions across the different Departments. They feel they have a bond because of their native countries or their cultural backgrounds.” (SK,TJ)/.