A board year requires a lot of time and money – and fewer and fewer students are interested

Study and student associations are having a tough time. Not only do they see their membership numbers declining, but they are also finding it increasingly difficult to prod members for a board position. While administrators are desperately needed to keep the association alive.

Associations play a significant role in student life. Students get to know friends and they go to parties, lectures, and debate evenings together. In addition, many students play sports in associations.

‘I got to know all my friends in Tilburg at the association,’ says Milou Jongbloed, former board member of POLIS, the study association of the Organisation and Management Sciences programme. She would become a member again if she started now. ‘It is just fun, says Luuk Brouwer, treasurer of Asset Financials. ‘People walk in here all day long, including at the other boards of Asset. We have a lot of drinks and activities.’

But student associations are finding it increasingly difficult to find new members and especially board members, warns Studenten Convenant, a national partnership of student organizations. ‘Student activities are an important outlet for many. If these disappear, the social lives of students will come under further pressure,’ the student organizations predict.

Search

For an association to flourish, new student board members are needed every year. Organizing meetings and parties takes time and requires commitment, as does keeping track of the membership or finances. Jongbloed became a board member of POLIS two years ago: ‘I was honoured that they asked me for a board year.’ She really enjoyed it, but she does look back on a tough year, in which she worked overtime for the association.

Brouwer recognizes the problem: ‘We have divided Asset into different departments, but that also means we need a lot of board members. And that has not quite worked out in recent years, so departments were forced to merge. As a result, we went from seven to four departments.’

Versot, the study association of Sociology, also had trouble finding new board members. The fact that they eventually came about was mainly due to the efforts of the former chair, who approached a number of students from her year personally. But few new members have joined. ‘It feels like a community that is falling apart,’ sigh the new administrators.

Disadvantages

Students who do a board year often have little time for their studies but do have to pay tuition fees. To compensate them for this, and to make board work more attractive, student board members receive a board grant from the university.

For her board year, Milou Jongbloed received a contribution of three thousand euros. Most of her scholarship was spent on college tuition of 2,500 euros, while she barely had time for a part-time job to cover other costs. ‘The board work took me forty hours a week and then I was often busy for the association in the evenings.’

‘Board work can’t pay the rent.’

No, you do not have to do it for the money, Luuk Brouwer agrees: ‘I can’t pay the rent from that.’ Board work costs him a lot of time and money: ‘We have calculated it. I think I earn twelve or thirteen cents an hour. It feels more like volunteer work.’

Active members

The decline in new board members is a direct result of the decrease in active members and in members in general. Heja Yakut is a board member of Enigma, the study association of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence: ‘During the 013 Fair, a lot of people came to our stand, but at the end there weren’t as many registrations as we expected.’

Romy Oomens, now a lecturer in Sociology, has been actively involved with Versot since 2018. According to her, an association does not necessarily need many members, but mainly active members. ‘We had a group of twenty people and that was a very close-knit group. If there was an activity, almost everyone came. You wanted to be part of that.’

Active

Actively participating within an association has many advantages. This way you can gain a lot of knowledge and skills that you do not learn in the lecture halls. Brouwer: ‘For example, you learn how to organize a meeting. And the other day I had to present a budget at a members’ meeting, because I am the treasurer.’

Association work also looks good on your resume. Jongbloed: ‘I hope to get into the management of a company, which is also one of the reasons I did it.’ And by organizing company visits, for example, you get to know a lot of people from companies, Brouwer adds. ‘I know someone from the previous board who was asked a number of times to come for an interview at a company, purely on the basis of the personal contacts.’

Junction

Large student associations such as Vidar report no problems recruiting new members. It is the smaller study associations that have difficulty finding new members. Associations such as Enigma and Versot only have a small pool in which they can fish.

‘It is really difficult to get people excited these days. While we still recruit a lot at introduction programs and events, in the lectures and via social media channels,’ says Elle Bouman, the new chair of Versot. ‘It feels like a community that is falling apart,’ sigh the other board members.

Causes

Why is it that there is so little enthusiasm for active membership of a study association? Heja Yakut: ‘Last year I was a first-year student and I did attend a number of events. But I did not want to become a board member yet, because the work seemed so difficult to me. And I also had to get used to the university and the lectures themselves.’

But even the growth of non-active members is therefore failing. Associations seem to have become less interesting for students. Jongbloed thinks that this is partly because students are living at home longer: ‘Rents have risen and newcomers can hardly get a room. And so first-year students postpone active student life.’

Corona

The corona pandemic and the lockdowns also seem to have been a bummer that is still having an impact today. ‘Before corona, student life was much more active,’ Brouwer hears from senior students. ‘Most pubs were still full at the time. If you went to the city too late, you just could not get in.’

‘A Zoom meeting was too big a barrier for new students’

It probably went downhill after corona, the board members of Versot also think. ‘We still see photos in the boardroom of introductions and study trips before the pandemic.’ Once the lockdown was lifted, Oomens also thought, students will have the urge to visit each other again. But the members did not return.

Rupture

‘During corona, we did organize events via Zoom, but that mainly attracted the older active members, says Oomens. ‘An online meeting like this was too big a barrier for many new students, I guess. If you end up in a Zoom meeting where you do not know anyone, it is difficult to feel comfortable there.’

After the lockdowns, many new students had already found their own way. They no longer joined the study association, Oomens thinks. That is why, according to her, it is important as an association to do its very best to attract first-year students, especially now.

Oomens: ‘Now, they are still without a community at the university. If first years see that the association is doing fun things and if friends or acquaintances join them, then you can gather more and more people around you, and then it can really become something again.’