Is the campus designed for protest?

In lecture halls you sit and listen, project rooms are there for group sessions, and when exam period hits, you fight for a spot in the Library to study. The campus seems to be a place with a clear purpose: work on your research, or work on your degree. But our campus is also increasingly political. Between the concrete, the glass and the grass, we’ve seen protests on the Library stairs, on the lawn in front of the Aula and around the offices of the executive board. Is the campus designed for this?

A library has always been a place to sharpen and shape (scientific) minds and opinions. But what do we think of this when banners about complicity in genocide suddenly appear on the balconies, and it starts raining protest leaflets while we’re studying?

Maybe we should ask ourselves what a campus is for in the first place. Is it a public space, and if so, is it a safe environment to shape your opinion on collective matters in society or in the university and student life? Should it be? And how do we design it so that everyone feels invited to make use of it?

Tonight we will take the Library and campus as a starting point to talk about public space as a stage for claiming space, and we will take matters into our own hands and start to design it.