Bèta is working on...
Next to the accomplishments that Lijst Bèta has achieved in the past 13 years, this year we are working hard to improve your education and the overall experience that you have in the TU Delft.
Here’s a sampling of the things we are working on…
Education
The TU Delft and other universities in the Netherlands offers a massive variety of Massive Open Online Courses. Since, it is possible for you as a student enrolled in a Dutch univeristy to freely take an offline course in these universities, Lijst Bèta is working for you to get a free certificate of completion for these MOOCs once you are done taking them. This insures that you have a proof of the knowledge and skills you gain up taking these courses, for you to use later for example when applying for a job.
We are working on providing you more fair examinations!
We want to get a clear policy in place indicating what happens when an exam question is changed during the exam. This can happen due to a type, or that some clarification is required. There should be clear steps, like the question turning into a bonus question for example.
It should be indicated on every question how many points that question is worth, so that you can plan which question you’ll tackle during the exam!
The current Board of Examiners (BoE) procedures can be improved.
When making a complaint of a teacher breaking the teaching and examination regulations, it should be possible to do that anonymously. By allowing anonymous complaints, students do not have to worry about the potential impact on their grades if they file a complaint.
Currently, if a student files a complaint about a BoE member, the student is at a disadvantage as they do not know what is discussed in the BoE meeting. We strive to get student members those minutes to level the playing field.
The size of your wallet shouldn’t play a role in the way that you follow your education. Right now students face a lot of course-related costs, especially for project materials. This puts students with less finances at a disadvantage. We want to give everyone an equal playing field and remove financial pressures by making sure that either free material is available for a project or by having budget made available for you. Students are already increasingly under financial stress with more and more benefits being stripped away from them. With these changes Lijst Bèta hopes to ensure that every student can still follow education the way they want to without being worried about being able to finance their project.
Currently the TA trainings offered by the TU Delft Teaching and Learning Services (TLS) has small capacity ratio to the number of new Teaching Assistants each quarter. We are working on increasing the capacity of the trainings and the occurrences of the trainings through the year. We believe that TAs are an important part of your academic journey for example during a practical or an exercise session. For that these TAs should be given the tools and skills needed to help you get the most out of your education!
Courses in the TU Delft are evaluated using a system of three different methods which are the Board of Studies, course evaluation surveys and evaluation lunches within study associations. Data from this system is most of the time not representative for example the survey is not filled by most of the students, the students are not taught how to give constructive feedback and the gap between lecturers and teachers is getting wider. Adding that in-real-time improvement of the courses is not impossible. QuEST is a way to add reflection into course objectives and activities. Students wishing to participate are contacted and encouraged by the professor/Teaching Assistant (TA) of the course at the first lecture. Both stakeholders undergo constructive feedback trainings and have recurrent meetings to share their opinion and brainstorm points of improvements. Professors/TAs are then encouraged to present a slide in the lecture next to the meeting about the conclusions and points of improvements to let the students know that their voice is heard. Incentives as participation certificates are given to the students involved in QuEST as a prove for their contribution to the innovation in their education. This initiative is not a stand alone system as we believe that the current system has some advantages as it allows larger pool of students to participates and filters out destructive feedback so that it keeps our teachers motivated. This initiative is rather an addition to the system, where all parts are held together by a communication strategy, to create a better evaluation system!
Grammarly is a writing assistant that many students and employees already use. The premium version offers a lot more features than the free version. Having a contract between the TU and Grammarly would not only provide Premium licenses for all students and employees, but the TU can then also make agreements on how the data of its users is being handled, which is important for an educational institution where a lot of research is being done.
We have created a database of all the Entrepreneurship courses available for all bachelors and masters students studying in the university, highlighting the differences between the courses available in the different faculties and the opportunities available outside the curriculum to increase knowledge about intra- and entrepreneurship in education. We are busy with the Delft Centre for Entrepreneurship, YES!Delft Students and the TU Delft Valorisation Centre to see how more of these courses are made accessible to Bachelor students, investigating the possibility of introducing credits for these courses as well. We have also enhanced the Delft Entrepreneurship Journey by adding to the info available there with the added information about the faculties. We also launched the survey to learn about student demand for such courses and want to restart the discussion about integration of entrepreneurship in the existing curriculum to produce well-rounded Delft Engineers, allowing students to get the most out of their education!
Too often as a student you start in a minor program, but it’s not really what you expected it to be. Lijst Bèta is working on a system where students can evaluate their minor program. With this, other students can make a more informed choice, and the TU Delft can be consistently improving the minor programs.
Finding the right master thesis project can be overwhelming. Where do you start? What if you want to look beyond your faculty? To help, Lijst Bèta is working on a master thesis platform where you can search for available projects and find something that sparks your interest.
Your education should provide you with the skills needed for the future market. Currently, companies and organisations are heavily askign for engineers who are able to reflect within their team work, projects and themselves. We currently are working on getting reflection as a permenant skills in your education, by lobbying and facilitating funds and structural space for experts, reflective engineers, within the TU Delft. These experts would help program directors, coordicaotrs and other to update their program materials to teach and practice reflection with students.
When making posters, reports, videos or renders for your (design) project, the Adobe
Creative Cloud applications are very useful to have access to. Moreover, often they are even
essential, and teachers just expect you to have access to those programs, even though you
have to pay for them on a yearly basis. Lijst Bèta believes that those essential programs
should be freely accessible to everyone at TU Delft who need it for their study. Thanks to
Lijst Bèta IDE and Architecture students had one year of free Adobe Licence (2022/2023).
Lijst Bèta is working on getting this license back and making it permanent for all students.
We started this by achieving them for FSCs and now working on getting more licences for
Student and Study association boards. With an aim to make it available for all students!
Student councils in different faculties at the TU need to spread the word about their
projects. To make eye-catching posters and videos they need the right software. Apart from
awareness of projects, another item of importance is the awareness of the FSC itself, which is crucial to let students know what the FSC is and does and to find succession. The de facto
standard for this is software from Adobe. Right now, some student councils do not have
Adobe software, or pay for the licences out of their own pockets. This makes it hard for
them to get students excited and involved. They are missing out on chances to make a bigger
impact and improve the faculties. By giving these student councils Adobe licences, we’re
giving them the power to create posters, videos, and more needed for their promotion. This
means they can grab people’s attention and get them interested in what they’re doing. With
these tools, they can show off their projects in a way that really gets people excited. So, by
investing in these licences, we’re helping student councils become even more effective in
making their ideas come to life. In the long term, a more effective FSC improves the faculty
as a whole.
Some FSC’s do not get a printing pass. They have to borrow from SV’s or print against their
own wallet. We know from personal experience the usefulness of printing. This will be
solved by structurally giving FSC’s a printing pass. They can keep this at their office if they
have one, or with their secretary. This allows the FSC’s to keep the pass through succession,
as opposed to having linking the printing to a specific student which can leave the FSC.
Currently, there is an ordered and numbered list used for the election list of the FSC. Having
these numbers on the list, might give people the impression that it is like a national level
elections with a party system. Therefore, people might vote for someone not based on the
person, but based on the number. By keeping the ordered list, there is still the advantage of
signing up early. By removing the numbers, students should be more inclined to vote based
on a person instead of a number.
Lijst Bèta believes that students should be able to make informed decisions about their
study. That’s why we are advocating for transparency in all collaborations of the TU Delft.
Any project, lab or thesis should specify their collaborations so that you, the student, can
make an informed decision. Thanks to Lijst Bèta, such a list of collaborations is available!
Extra time is something that needs to be asked for repeatedly, regulation wise. So for
example, a student with a broken hand only has the right to extra time for a certain period.
But also students who have a chronic condition need to ask for extra time multiple times.
They might forget and then temporarily lose their right to extra time. Impacts their grades
and gives them unnecessary stress. We are working on making “permanent” extra time
passes a thing, so that students who have chronic conditions don’t have to worry about
having to ask for multiple extra time.
Students often struggle to find meeting rooms to work on projects or have meetings.
Currently, they are not allowed to reserve rooms during the day as they are reserved for
employees. This makes it frustrating for students who want to meet to work on projects for
example. Give students the right to reserve rooms during the evening hours, as employees don’t work/work less in the evening so those rooms shouldn’t have to be reserved for them
anymore.
Currently, there are thesis supervisors who are not available for an extensive period during
the time that they are supposed to supervise students with a thesis. These students can
then not ask questions and get guidance. Get regulations in place that thesis supervisors are
available for a minimum time a week or that they get a replacement for a certain time.
Finding the right master thesis project can be overwhelming. Where do you start? What if
you want to look beyond your faculty? To help, Lijst Bèta is working on a master thesis
platform where you can search for available projects and find something that sparks your
interest.
A lot of students want to travel abroad during their studies. There is also demand from
students to do their master thesis abroad. But there is a lot of hassle around this, like finding
the proper support, thesis subject, university and even funding. There is no clarity about
these necessities or even that a thesis abroad is possible. Science and engineering knows no
borders. Every student should have the opportunity to expand their knowledge wherever
they want. Just like with the master thesis platform, we want to set up a platform to make it
easier to get an overview of what is possible when you want to do your thesis abroad. Right
now information is scarce, but demand is high.
Currently, there are no regulations on when revisions to programs are made final in the
academic year. This can make it so that for example a master is changed giving students too
short of time to see if the revised version is something they find interesting. This is too little
time and makes it so that students cannot think well on their decision. This is also for
current studies with study delay, who will also need to follow the revised version of the
study programme. Get regulations in place to discuss this topic to put a deadline a certain
time before the enrollment deadline of the particular studies. This way students will have
enough time before making a decision or prepare for their courses.
Currently the focus of policy makers is often on external pressure, BSA, langstudeerboete,
leenstelsel. However, the holy grail is for students to develop intrinsic motivation. As
intrinsically motivated students perform better in their studies. Also, these students switch
earlier and more effectively. This can be reached via a proven goalsetting method early on in
a student’s career. At Erasmus a goalsetting approach has been developed that improves
academic performance by 22%! Furthermore it reduces the gap in academic performance
between demographically different groups of students. This low cost approach to improve
studentsucces is a no-brainer to implement. That is why Lijst Bèta – together with Dé Partij –
is discussing this with the Executive Board.
Currently students complete their bachelor or master end project, and they just receive their
grade. Some faculties might also give them their assessment form, to see where they
performed well, and where they can improve, but there seems to be a big part missing,
which is present during all other courses and projects: the student evaluation at the end.
Lijst Bèta strives for that students who recently finished either their bachelor or master end
project, should be able to fill in an evaluation form. In this form, students can – anonymously
– reflect on how their project went, if there were unforeseen hindrances, and if their
supervisor adequately mentored them.
Students carrying out research projects for the project partners should be aware that there
is some collaboration with other (external) parties. Students often do projects, research labs
and internships for their studies. All of these could be in collaboration with companies or
other institutions. Students should know all the details of their project, before choosing a
final topic. Therefore, this clarity and transparency should be regarding these projects, and
have it stated clearly with which companies or institutions they work with. Regulations that
projects, labs and internships should be clear about their collaboration with companies and
institutions should be made. On the webpages and slide deck of thesis and project
overviews, the companies with which students will cooperate during lab/thesis are
mentioned. This will enable students to make an educated choice on which project they do
or don’t want to do.
Currently, AI has been a big deal in the university used by almost all students and not enjoyed by
some teachers. This is mainly because of the lack of any policy or guidelines on the usage of AI at the
university. Some other applications of AI such as ChatGPT are also dangerous when it comes to bias
or misinformation given by AI. Together with the SPiCE, and the TU Delft AI initiative, Lijst Bèta
achieved a preliminary central policy on the usage of AI and currently, is working on providing a
central TU Delft Policy and a faculty policy on the usage of AI. Lijst Bèta is also advocating for a TU
Delft sponsored AI, where the materials fed to this AI are regulated by the TU to avoid bias and
dependency on any external organization. This generative AI can also be with collaboration with
other universities which TU Delft is already in alliances with as 4TU, ENHANCE or idealistic. This AI
model should also then be freely accessible for all students. Lijst Bèta is also working on including “AI
usage Ethics” in the Ethics course within all of the TU programs to raise awareness on the responsible
usage of AI. Lijst Bèta is also working on including “How to use AI” in the literacy courses within the
TU Delft, so that students would be taught which prompts for example to use for more efficient and
effective results from the chatbots.
Student housing & well-being
The current time you need to wait until you get help from psychologists or study advisors
fluctuates heavily between faculties and programs resulting in an inconsistent level of
wellbeing across the campus. Lijst Bèta aims to bind the responsibilities of the TU Delft to
these issues with a researched minimum ratio. So that a certain amount of study advisors &
psychologists are available per amount of students. This way we can ensure that at least a
minimum quality is given throughout the campus where employees can’t go beyond.
Study Advisors are an integral part of the student journey at the TU Delft. Currently, there is no system to evaluate the meeting you have with your study advisor/academic counsellor. Lijst Bèta believes that in order for your experience with study advisors to improve they need to be evaluated. This is why Lijst Bèta is working on creating a survey which you fill in after your appointment with an academic counsellor. Lijst Bèta is also working on making this system to protect your privacy and making sure that study advisors are taking your evaluation into consideration. Right now, this exists at EEMCS. Lijst Bèta is working on bringing this to all faculties.
At Lijst Bèta, we believe that you should have space for your personal development. X TU Delft serves as one of the main places for that purpose. Currently, we think that the package for X (fitness) subscription is financially very heavy for the students to be paid in one go. That is why Lijst Bèta is working on getting you the possibility to pay in terms for the X (fitness) subscription.
During the pandemic many students dealt with mental health issues and often did not have access to sport facilities due to the restrictions. Lijst Bèta is working together with X to try and realize a free voucher for all students to give a discount on for example memberships of associations or a sport subscriptions!
Students often struggle to get basic medical help. This is especially the case for international
students as they do not know who to go to. Even Dutch students often do not know where
to go in Delft and instead rely on their General Practitioner at their parental home. A
General Practioner on campus would help students in case of emergencies or in situations
with a high level of uncertainty. Given the size of the TU Delft campus, Lijst Bèta believes
that, for a full functioning campus, a general practitioner should be available on campus.
That allows the students with physical injuries or those who needs medical attention to get
it directly on campus without needed to walk or cycle a far distance outside of the campus!
The TU Delft has become a diverse university that welcomes a lot of different groups. With this diversity also comes a lot of different religions being practiced by students. To make sure every student gets equal opportunity to pass their exams, even when they’re restricted due to a religious obligation, we’re making sure regulations are being set up that will give students with an exam during an important religious holiday an extra resit possibility, so that the chances you get to make an exam is not dependent on your background!
Students go from one exam week to the next in a short period of time without a lot of rest. To make sure students have a good start of their next quarter we propose to introduce a small break between each quarter by extending the weekend, so that students have time to rest and get their minds off of things. Extending this idea to all quarters will then also add more structure to our academic year planning and give some breathing room in the second half of the academic year.
Privacy is becoming an increasingly important issue as more and more information is being
recorded about what you do as a student. During the pandemic for example, in part thanks to our efforts, proctored exams have become the exception, instead of the rule! We will
continue to monitor the developments in this area. In addition we will work on ensuring
only relevant information about students is recorded.
At TU Delft, students need quite expensive laptops due to the specifications that are
required for their studies. Thanks to the laptopproject, students are able to buy these
laptops for a discounted price. Unfortunately, having to pay 1400-1850 euros at once is still
too expensive for a substantial group of students for various reasons. Being able to pay for
your laptop in terms helps to break down the costs and spread it over a longer period of
time. Making it more feasible for students to buy a laptop when they need one, for example
at the beginning of their study or when one breaks down.
Safety is an important part of making a campus accessible. A TU Delft wide policy which
ensures that faculties always have appropriate first aid kits and placement of easily
accessible first aid kits at strategic locations on every floor at every faculty. We also want to
make sure study associations also have first aid kits. These kits must be regularly checked
and restocked.
Currently, when a student fills in the form of the student psychologists, they get a warning
that their data is shared on an American server. This makes students feel unsafe and
potentially have them not be honest in their answers. Get the TU Delft to host the data on
their own server or on a secure server in the country.
Sport associations play an important role in uniting students, getting them involved with TU
Delft life and giving them a sense of belonging. Even though they have a lot of importance to
the culture and student participation of our university, they barely maintain contact with the
university. This while these associations like any other have problems they face because or
at the university. They sometimes do have certain contacts at the university, like X, where
they can go for help. Sadly, these don’t always work as intended and add unintended
frustrations that take a lot of time to resolve. We propose to remove all the bureaucratic
distances between these associations and the leadership of this university. We would like to
see that these associations get the chance to directly discuss their problems with the
Executive Boards and lobby for solutions that would work for them, instead of new policies
and strategies being set in place for them without a lot of direct involvement.
Student well-being has been in the focus of attention since the pandemic. Unfortunately,
matters dealing with student well-being often cost money and time, two things that are not
obvious to allocate for the Executive Board in times of potential budget cuts (at the time of
writing). That is why small steps are needed. This is why Lijst Bèta works on making sure that
in every Executive TU-decision (besluitvormingsmemorandum, BVM), a field is included that
explains how this decision will influence students’ well-being. In Delft, this is already done
for sustainability. In a similar way, this would then be done for well-being as well.
Revamping existing canteens with more sofas, board games, table-top games, and comfortable seating arrangements, giving it more of a chilling vibe instead of an area where you only sit down for lunch, can allow more space to students to take a break from their daily routine, grab a bite with their peers and take their minds off by engaging in some fun board games. Thanks to Bèta, the chill spaces at Pulse became like a shared large living room for all students. Lijst Bèta is also working towards realizing more chill spaces on campus at other buildings.
Sometimes it’s also needed to talk about harder topics in life; motivation, study life balance, perfectionism, fear of failure, you name it. Lijst Bèta wants to create more space for these conversations by creating Meeting Groups on a program level that also allow students to exchange study information and meet new people. Guided by a professional trainer, students can have an open conversation about the less pretty parts of life.
Sustainability
In every faculty there are multiple stakeholders working on sustainability. Green teams, study associations an employees for example! Lijst Beta and GreenTU have together been working on the improvement of a governance so we can accelerate the transition as effective and fast as possible!
Lijst Bèta believes that 21st century engineers should be aware and educated about climate change and sustainability. For that, Lijst Bèta is working for the TU Delft to facilitate a grant for professors and educators to include sustainability in their courses and thus in your education!
In order for your education to include sustainability, teachers has to be trained to do so. Lijst Bèta is working on getting trainings for teachers to help them become more aware about sustainability and help them with implementing it in education.
Lijst Bèta is working on adding sustainability tags to courses in Study Guide for you to know which courses include how much information about sustainability & sustainable skills in it. This is already implemented on the website, but still missing from the study guide.
Lijst Bèta is working on implementing a sustainable browser on all desktops on campus, so you can save the world planting trees while browsing the web!
A lot of students at our precious university care about sustainability and making their lives
and the world around them greener. They however often don’t know how to go about doing
this, when small changes and awareness could lead to great improvements. We want to
send an e-mail every start of the academic year containing tips about how to live your life
more sustainable and how they can tackle climate change. This would also be a great place
to show what is already being done at the TU Delft and how sustainability is being integrated into their curriculum. We want to do this in collaboration with student sustainability
associations, so that they will have a reach like they never had before!
Sustainability is one of the core challenges of this century, making it incredibly important for
TU Delft to teach her students the necessary skills and knowledge. This is also acknowledged
by TU Delft in their “Sustainable TU delft: vision, ambition and action plan 2022”.
Unfortunately, most curricula are already incredibly full, creating challenges for actually
implementing the action plan. Climate Fresk is a 3-hour workshop that teaches students
about the building blocks of climate change and giving a systemic view. The workshop has a
high information density compared to many other forms of teaching.
Giving all students of the university a foundation on the topic, that later on can be built on
and expanded to gain discipline specific knowledge on sustainability.
Currently, the TU Delft population is unaware of what the impact of their food choices at the
TU Delft cafeteria is on the climate. This unawareness together leads to poorer food choices
is a problem, even though you can make a big positive impact on climate change with
choosing the right food. To create awareness around this and to make sure people can make
their own informed choices on what they want to eat, it should be clear what the true
catering cost is, when it comes to the impact their food choices have on the climate (the
Climate FooDprint / Dive into your dish campaign). To achieve this, we are working on
placing signs near the different foods at a cafeteria. On these signs it shows how much CO2
has been used to create the meal and to transport it to where it is now. This overview will be
made by Appèl. With these signs all people can easily compare themselves what is best for
the climate. This way they will be more aware about what they eat and how this affects the
climate. This might lead to them making better food choices when it comes to climate, and
at the same time still giving them the option to choose themselves.
Lijst Bèta is the first and only party in the CSC who dared to commit to the sustainability
goals put forward by the Jonge Klimaatbeweging. We even convinced GreenTU to also join
this sustainability movement! By actively demonstrating our dedication to sustainability, we
prove that our vision for a greener university goes beyond words; it’s backed by action.
Canteens at various faculties are quite pricey and often don’t offer food which is attractive to buy for the average student. Lijst Bèta sees this as a missed opportunity, and we want catering in the future to be more affordable for the average students!
Diversity, inclusion & social safety achievements
Being a first generation student means that you are the first student within your direct family to go to higher education which can come with its challenges. Lijst Bèta is working on improving the support that the university provides for this group. For example, having more information about what studying entails in open days and decreasing financial stress through indicatives like decreasing study costs and laptop payment in terms.
Each year there are students who would like their names to be changed due to them
transitioning or any other personal reasons. Currently, they can only change their “roep
name”, call sign, so nothing in communication or brightspace is changed. This is not nice for
these students. Works towards a system where the brightspace name can be changed, so
that also official communication is changed with the new name.
For some neurodiverse students, reading and writing might be challenge. To provide equity for this group, Lijst Bèta is working on getting a text to speech and speech to text tool for them to be used especially during examinations.
Lijst Bèta is working on having the possibility of not writing your name on an exam! By having the option of not writing your name on the exam, no longer will you by experiencing any subconscious bias against you.
There is a lack of accessible training and knowledge around Diversity & Inclusion, especially
with the TU Delft boundaries. The students and employees of TU Delft need the skills
provided by such training to help foster an inclusive environment. Develop and provide a
Diversity & Inclusion MOOC under the umbrella of the D&I office and with the help of a
professional organization as ECHO. Such a course will also need to be tailored to TU Delft
needs to allow engineers to develop the skills to become an inclusive engineer. Currently, we
are talking with the Diversity & Inclusion office about this.
Due to our differences and diverse backgrounds, we have all developed an unconscious bias that oftenly affect our decisions when acting in our daily life. In order to raise awareness toward this bias and try to control it, Lijst Bèta is working on getting implicit bias trainings for students and staff to create a more inclusive and safe environment on campus!
The university offers great introductory Dutch courses for international students, during the
year as well as in the summer. International students seeking to learn Dutch greatly enjoy
and value these courses. But even though these courses are of high quality, there are too
few places to keep up with the demand for these courses. Learning Dutch is a way for
international students to more easily connect with their new place of residence, and get
more involved in university life. To solve this Lijst Bèta is working on making the places for
Dutch courses available proportionally to the amount of international students studying at
the university. There should be enough such that the students that want to learn the
language get the chance to do this.
Currently, there are bridging programmes containing Dutch courses even though they are
bridging to an English program. This makes it difficult for non-Dutch speakers to follow these
courses. There should be regulations in place limiting these occurrences and thinking ahead
of replacement courses that these students can take.
Across the previous academic years, reports from numerous different faculties indicate that
socially unsafe behavior is still being experienced. Socially unsafe behavior can be classified
as behavior that makes a student feel uncomfortable (e.g., bullying, microaggressions,
harassment). Following both the findings of the Inspectorate Report and recent observations
from the Central Student Council, it is apparent that communication on Social Safety
initiatives are scattered and that the current complaint system is not allowing for an
accurate representation of the complaints on campus. To address the issue and ensure
safety across academic and social environments at TU Delft, students will have the
opportunity to submit suggestions, complaints, or general feedback regarding existing social
safety measures. Drawing inspiration from the successful Quarterly D&I Meetings, where
valuable insights have been shared and subsequently acted upon in discussions with the CvB
and Diversity Office, positive changes have been implemented for the benefit of students.
These meetings also feature the presence and updates of the Central D&I Office. Therefore,
the introduction of the Quarterly Social Safety Meetings, with the inclusion of the Integrity
Office, aims to mirror the effectiveness of the Quarterly D&I Meetings in identifying and
addressing significant issues. It will also act as the perfect place to overcome any fears of
current complaint systems and make it easier to share such experiences in a safe
environment.
There is a lack of accessible training and knowledge around social safety, especially with the
TU Delft boundaries. The students and employees of TU Delft need the skills provided by
such training to help foster a socially safe environment. Develop and provide a social safety
MOOC under the umbrella of the integrity office and with the help of a professional
organization. Such a course will also need to be tailored to TU Delft needs to allow engineers
to develop the skills to become a socially safe engineer.
Social safety is an increasingly important topic among students. Around 10% of female
students and 1% of male students are faced with sexually transgressive behaviour during
their study time. Besides these statistics, we often hear too many stories of association
boards and confidential people about individual cases. As the executive board already states
enough: every case is one too many.
The university has a role in ensuring that students feel safe and at home, as experiencing a
socially safe environment is an absolute boundary condition that forms the foundation for
student wellbeing and study success.
Lijst Bèta vouches for the importance of introducing social safety workshops or trainings for
all students, as this is one of the most effective measures to prevent unwanted behaviour.
Concretely, we want to collaborate with student organisations in order for them to offer
trainings as part of their introduction programme to first year students, some of which
already starting doing so.
Many study and student associations currently do not have a policy regarding such actions, creating potentially dangerous situations during association events (both on and off of campus). Without adequate repercussions and a sense of community protection, incorrect behaviour is not dealt with and correct behaviour is not actively promoted. To properly tackle the issue holistically and ensure that it is safe within both study and social environments at TU Delft, Lijst Bèta has formed a specialised committee for policy writing with respect to social safety guidelines and consequences.
During exercise/practical sessions, socially unsafe behaviour might occur between students. Teaching Assistants need to be equipped with tools to recognise this behaviour, react sensibly, and discourage any further such actions. This is why, Lijst Bèta is working on adding bystander training into the current central Teaching Assistant training.
Currently there are quite some struggles regarding social safety with TA’s. The structural
change in behaviour is of course very important. This initiative is to make sure that TA’s who
are fired at one course because they were socially unsafe cannot just do another course
again, because the other professor doesn’t know about their annotation. This is a difficult
process, legally speaking, and Lijst Bèta is now investing the options with the legal
department of TU Delft.
The reporting point for social safety is being set up. However, some associations feel like
they are not nicely included in the process. They are struggling about whether they have to
set up a reporting point themselves. However, that is not ideal, since you want to have a
good overview of all the reports at the TU Delft. A solution to this would be to make sure
that student and study associations can be included in the reporting point, which Lijst Bèta is
striving for. An example of this would be the following.
– Student X who is a member of association Y wants to report socially unsafe behavior.
Student X goes to the central reporting point and fills in their report as intended.
However, somewhere in the process of submission, student X has the possibility to
decide whether he also wants to inform association Y about the report. Of course,
the way that all the personal details from people will be handled AVG proof.
This way, both the TU Delft and association Y can do something about the report and also
have a good overview on what is happening at their association.
TU Delft has a large student population of which a not insignificant amount are dyslexic,
color blind or some other form of visually impaired. It is important to make communication
to students with such impairments as good as possible. Whilst nothing in the house style
inherently contradicts designs that are well legible for people with colour blindness or
dyslexia, a lot can be done to inhibit accessibility in the aspects that aren’t defined in the
house style. For that reason Lijst Bèta is advocating to create/add an existing document to the house style page that explains how someone can apply the house style in a dyslexia &
colourblind friendly manner.
Currently the contemplation rooms are sometimes hard to find for students or they are not
even aware that they exist even though they would be very nice for the student to have. To
make the contemplation rooms better visible it is important to add them on the campus
map. of TU Delft, which Lijst Bèta is now working on.