Demonstation against tuition fine

Yesterday (29-11-2010) I demonstrated for the first time. In Groningen it was a completely peaceful demonstration as far as I know. Why did I demonstrate? Read on.

The Dutch government has come up with the idea that students who take even one year longer than 3 years for their BA title should pay an additional 3000€!! next to the normal tuition fee of around 1700€. Oh and as far as I know, that 3000€ fine is stackable for an extra year.

*scroll down if you don't care too much for my ranting but do like students freezing their asses off on the Grote Markt in Groningen.

Oh and if you want to start a MA? Well, no governmental support at all, you'll have to pay for the entire year by yourself. Now I've studied my fair share of years and I'll probably be done before the aforementioned plan takes effect but it pisses me off! I think you should demonstrate because you agree with the demonstrators, not just because something hurts you directly. The thing is, it cóuld've hurt me directly. I wouldn't have been able to pay for uni if they thought of something like this say 3 years back.

There are dozens of really good reasons not to be able to finish your BA in 3 years flat.
1) getting ill (apparently not an issue for the government atm)
2) being handicapped
3) being a member of a board of a study society (like I was) which can easily cost you a year.
4)choosing a study that didn't turn out to be what you thought it was..a pricy mistake!
5) I'll probably forget a couple..so fill in whatever

And then you have to decide to live on a loan for the MA even if you've managed to complete your BA in 3 years flat.
Mind you, the government hasn't let an opportunity go to point out that you:
1) Shouldn't borrow too much money because you'll built up a big debt.
2) Shouldn't work too much on the side because you won't have enough time to study..
...which begs the question how the F people are supposed to get through uni..

Ranting cut short..here are some photo's!

It says: 'Save the (school)banks!'


Loosely translated: 'Wanted: rich parents!'


Our current rector magnificus


I took some shots of the crowd behind me, there were aprox. 1500-2000 students in the freezing cold, it started snowing halfway through (btw, here I found out I had the setting of my cam wrong for the other pics - too lazy to correct):

Ignorant graffiti or on purpose?

First of all, I listen to a lot of rap music and I know there's a lot of violent and sexist content in it, but it's not different from a lot of other music and it's not new so I don't think the discussion is all that interesting and it's not what this post will be about, it will just be slightly touching on that subject.

Dan was posting some graffiti he saw and I remembered I still wanted to take a photo of a piece of graffiti that always makes me smile and shake my head.





I was talking about rap music earlier on and as some might know, rap music is part of hiphop. But hiphop also includes among other things .... graffiti. And that's where the graffiti piece above turns funny. By spraying 'Stop Hiphop'the creator is participating in it.
The following questions remain:
1) Was the creator only against rap music (because of the content?) and in his/her ignorance wrote hiphop?
or
2) is he/she against anything hiphop related?
or remotely possible
3) the creator knows the nuance and made it on purpose as a statement against people who dón't know.

What do you think?

Youtube 'Saturday'

I've found so many cool new songs this week that one song just didn't cover it.

Mr Probz - Drivin'

--> A song to play in your car while driving on a dark saturday night returning home.

Kaytradamus - Good friends (skip till 12 seconds)
--> really relaxt with a bit of sadness to it. Unfortunately it's not complete. This week you can still find it in 22tracks 'beats'.


The Walkmen - Victory
-> Vampire Weekend'ish.


Dinosaur pile up - Mona Lisa
--> it has a bit of a long intro, but get passed it. Think Foo Fighters.


One songs that is really worth listening too, but I couldn't find on youtube (or spotify):
Moon & Sun - where the wild things are If the link leads to another song, check down the list, it might have moved down.