This became clear from conversations with parties involved, and internal documents disclosed to newspaper NRC Handelsblad. In whistleblower emails there is mention of, among other things, intimidation, racism, financial malpractices and conflicts of interest. The engineering society, which has some 17,500 members, was faced with a change in management last year when Bart Struwe took over as interim director from Micaela dos Ramos, who had become ill. According to NRC, Dos Ramos aimed to make KIVI attractive again for young engineers, and one of the ways in which she hoped to accomplish this was by setting up a new department with additional website.

Jan Vleeshouwers, research policy officer at TU/e’s department of Electrical Engineering, is a member of KIVI and co-organizer for the region South of many activities that take place under the flag of KIVI. Vleeshouwers had heard about some of the frictions already, but he says that his primary focus is on organizing his own, regional activities. “They are a great success, think of lectures, visits to companies, the annual prize for the best Bachelor’s project at EE. I’ve heard that we are one of the most active organizations in this field. Last year, we organized a series of lectures on the theme of energy supply in the Netherlands. We presented those lectures in Utrecht, so that everyone who was interested could attend.”

Ageing and declining membership base

Vleeshouwers has no idea how many TU/e employees are still affiliated with KIVI. “The process of ageing and the resulting declining membership number has been going on for some years now. As soon as people graduate, it becomes very difficult to motivate them to take part in activities like these.”

Vleeshouwers wasn’t very enthusiastic about Charted Engineering, an initiative launched by KIVI to help engineers keep their professional qualifications up to date that led to much commotion within the organization. “I looked into it more closely for a while, but I quickly lost interest.” He did get the strong impression that the financial resources used for this initiative were at the expense of the budget with which regional activities were supposed to be financed. “These activities are organized by and for members, and you should really stay away from that,” Vleeshouwers says.

KIVI’s new digital activities have come to a standstill, and there appears to be a factional strife going on: the board and the influential, conservative members on one side, and the staff and director Dos Ramos, sick at home, on the other side.

The KIVI board told NRC earlier that Dos Ramos’ position has become untenable because of a “dispute over policy.” The paper writes that Struwe aims for a reorganization.

KIVI wasn’t available for comment today.