"International Student Movement"

Last Friday on May 21st, some 1500-2000 Dutch students protested against budget cuts in higher education, expected to be realized by the government which will be installed after the national elections on June 9th. We are currently governed by an interim government, after the last government collapsed in February in a dispute over our Involvement in Afghanistan (some ministers wanted to extend our mission there, others didn't).

In the meantime some government-commissions continued their task to investigate how 'necessary' budget cuts of some 20% could be realized in social spending, including education. They published their conclusions on April 1st, as if it was a joke, though there was no reason to laugh about it for most. The plans were the following:

• To completely replace the modest grants every student receives to pay for tuition fees, books, housing and living, by a "social lending system" (the "social" in it meaning something like: if after 15 years you're still really poor, you only have to pay repayments and interest for 15 years.
• To introduce variable fees, meaning the abolishion of the current cap of 1600 euros on tuition fees universities are charging students.
• To restrict free public transportation use for students (Dutch students can currently travel for free during weeks or during weekends), which could easily be implemented since the introduction last January of a digital public transport card for everyone (dangerously increasing monitoring of every step we take, but that's another discussion).

Those are the measures expected to be implemented by the coming government. And those were the main topics that were discussed and protested on May the 21st.

Some remarks about the organization of this protest: there seemed to be different ideas about the way a demonstration should be. The main organizers (the official students-unions) organized a manifestation/party on a city square including dj's, and even sponsors who sponsored the stage, where we mainly stood listening to invited politicians, and very few representatives of critical students or critical academics. Some other action-commitee thought this wasn't enough action and organized a succesful noisy protestmarch (of a few hundred) towards this square through the city, and some criticized the manifestation on the spot by saying through the microphone of the stage: "i didn't come here to party but to protest".

Future plans: Today there was a meeting planned by various movements/organizations - of studentcommitties, socialist movements as well as labour unions - to discuss plans to protest budget cuts in general, in every field of social spending, and to not "pay for their crisis". Joint actions are to be expected around september, when traditionally the new annual budget will be presented by the Dutch government.

for more images: the website of action committee Comite SOS

- by Anton of kritische studenten utrecht