Thursday’s edition of The Slash reads ‘Industria displeased with speaker Dies Natalis’. The board of study association Industria is not happy with Rector Hans van Duijn speaking at the upcoming TU/e anniversary ceremony, and distances itself from the event invitation extended to the retiring rector. The article obviously refers to the Cursor item about fraudster Diederik Stapel attending an Industria event, to the dissatisfaction of the departmental board as well as the Executive Board.

The tongue-in-cheek references to the news are long overdue at “down-to-earth TU/e”, according to the founders of The Slash: two master students and a staff member of Industrial Design (ID). “We love satirical Dutch newspaper De Speld and TV shows like Zondag met Lubach, for example”, the staff member involved tells us.

The trio started writing and was quickly joined by five other TU/e people, all with a satirical eye and pen, and from outside ID as well. “We need authors and sources from all over campus. We don’t mind a little self-deprecation, but ideally we’d like to embarrass all of TU/e.”

The authors use pseudonyms of writers who have all won the Nobel Prize for Literature, including M. Maeterlinck and W. Butler Yeats. “Satire is not for everyone, and some people are more easily offended than others.”

The Slash is available in Dutch only for now, but the creators are considering English items as well. “We’d love to appeal to the many foreign students and staff at TU/e.” However, there are no concrete plans for that yet.