Cats on Campus

Last week I visited Bo?aziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. When visiting a university abroad my habit is to look closely at the campus and compare it with our own campus. What can we learn from these institutions, what nice solutions do they have, how is the set up? In this case I was the South campus of Bo?aziçi university and this campus turns out to be much alike our own campus. It is as green as ours or even more if you would visit it in spring or summer. It has American style buildings spread around campus, connected by small pathways. The view from several points of the campus is spectacular: overlooking the Bosporus, the bridge towards Asia, the oil tankers slowly moving to the Black Sea. And then you learn to understand what Bo?aziçi means: Bosporus! Sometimes a name is not as complicated as it might seem.

What many visitors find most interesting is the number of cats and dogs on campus. At one point, I counted three dogs and seventeen cats within twenty square meters, all living peacefully together. Students and staff take care of the animals, making sure they get enough care and food all year long. The host at the university even told me that some staff bring their own cat to campus if they travel abroad and pick it up upon return. How would our campus look like with so many cats and dogs? I think our jackdaws and squirrels will be quite upset if they need to share our campus with cats and dogs.

Another habit of mine is to look at the signs and messages on campus. This one I saw at Bo?aziçi on a message board for the arrival of exchanges students and one of the messages was to bring 6 passport pictures: “If 5 pictures were enough, we would have said 5 rather than 6. Why do you need 6 pictures? As good student advisors, we are introducing you to Turkish bureaucracy.”

Hans-Georg van Liempd is program manager internationalisation at TiU and president of EAIE. He blogs for Univers.