SP Member of Parliament Frank Futselaar had informed the minister in parliamentary questions about a recent article in the NRC newspaper about an investigation into the "suffocating atmosphere" at the Leiden student association Minerva. Isn’t it about time for a "national approach, aimed at addressing humiliation, sexual harassment, violence, the hush-hush approach and the private legal systems within the fraternities"?

Startled

The minister is also shocked by the image in the NRC, she replies, but she sees no reason to intervene. It’s best that the educational institutions do this themselves. "For several universities, the incidents were a reason for suspending management grants or the (temporary) breaking of the ties with the student associations involved. I think that's a good approach."

The Executive Board of TU/e immediately suspended the subsidy for the Eindhoven Student Corps (E.S.C) in January. The reason for this was a very unfriendly misogynistic announcement of a carnival party on the Facebook page of the Aleph dispute.

At the beginning of this year, the minister took a similar position after revelations of the television program Rambam, which had made undercover recordings of two student associations. With this she continued the policy of her PvdA predecessor Jet Bussemaker.

There have been more attempts in history to ban hazing at Dutch student associations. These attempts have always failed, historians Pieter Caljé and Frits van Oostrom explained in an interview with the HOP.