It all started because I needed to laser cut something. For this treatise, it doesn't really matter what I had to make, but you have to assume that it was of the utmost importance and urgency.

Laser cutting is an everyday activity for me, as it’s part of the expertise of the average Industrial Design student. Nonetheless, I had a problem: I didn’t have any MDF, the material I needed. A rookie mistake, I have to admit. It’s like an electrical engineering student without a soldering iron in his back pocket, or a mechanical engineer without a tire patch kit in his bag.

The only place on campus where you can buy materials is the workshop at Vertigo, where built environment students work on their models. They have heaps of MDF there, but they’ll send you away angrily if you need it for laser cutting.

This is more or less how it goes. I go up to the desk and ask for a small piece of MDF. The staff member asks what I intend to do with it. This may seem like helpful interest at first, but it’s actually a procedural trap. As soon as I tell him that I’ll have it laser cut, the look in his eyes changes. In a Brabant accent, he grumbles: “This isn’t a hardware store.” Comments like that really make me want to repeat his words in the tone of a toddler. Fortunately, I take the high road: “That’s true, this is a model hardware store.” I don’t dare to add that he shouldn’t be so difficult. Nevertheless, he refuses to sell me anything and sends me to the hardware store. There, I’d have to buy much too large a piece of MDF at much too high a price. After that, I’d have to bike back to campus, putting myself in the hands of the weather gods, and saw it to size before I can laser cut it.

I still don’t understand why. We’re not allowed to buy materials at the workshop to process elsewhere. What’s the problem with making more money? What’s the interdepartmental conflict that’s at the root of this mismanagement? Could it be the result of the market power of an evil monopolist? Despite the extensive investigative journalism I conducted for this piece, I haven’t found the answers to those questions. Hopefully this story will be picked up, preferably by a professional. I recommend Huib Modderkolk.

What I do know is that too many victims have already been made: students who fell off their bikes returning from the hardware store with a dangerous sheet of MDF, or projects that missed their deadline. It can’t go on like this.

Thankfully, I have a solution. It’s of the utmost importance that this stays between us, dear fellow student. Let it be a kind of public secret among students. The staff members at the workshop won’t read this. If they find out about this workaround, they’ll think of something to prevent it. Then we’d all be caught in a vicious circle. Keep it quiet.

To test my solution, I went to the Vertigo workshop undercover. I put on sunglasses to avoid being recognized – I also considered a fake nose, but decided this may be counterproductive – and casually waited at the sliding doors until someone came out.

I don’t have access to the workshop, which is a problem in itself. Why can only certain privileged students work here? Doesn’t everyone take the Engineering Design course? That being said, infiltration is the first part of the solution. Smile kindly at the person exiting, act like you belong there, and slip in.

Once inside, I put my bag and jacket on a workbench. They have to believe I’m actually going to do some work; that’s part of the illusion. From there, I walk to the desk and look at the materials list with a frown on my face, as if I’m thinking about something unimportant, like models. Then I cough, and say in a deep voice: “Uhm… could I have a piece of MDF of 30 by 30 centimeters, 3 millimeters thick?” It’s a sentence I’ve rehearsed. I hastily add that I'm going to saw a building out of it, because that's what they do here, I think. We make brief eye contact, but the sunglasses hide how tense I am. I get the piece of MDF and pay 36 cents.

The final phase of the solution begins. I have to be quick to avoid being found out, but not so quick that I draw suspicion to myself. Purposefully, and without looking back, I walk to the sliding doors. Once I’ve passed them, I’m outside the jurisdiction of the workshop and I have secured the MDF. Now I can have it laser cut in peace. With a bit of trivial deception like this we can arm ourselves against the childish university bureaucracy. That is how it works at the Vertigo workshop, but elsewhere as well. Mission accomplished.