Newsletter 001

Newsletter 001 - May 2025 Dear Ant of The Union,
It’s good to see you. Thank you for signing up to our monthly newsletter, in this edition, we will talk about the workshops, our platforms, and a lot of upcoming future activities. As the cherry on top we have a small interview with one of our core members. Have fun reading.

Ants?

But why Ants?
You may have seen one of our posters, stickers or came across one of our zines. As you saw, we put ants on everything, we love our ants. Ants are insanely strong, one ant can easily carry ten times it’s body weight, but it’s when ants work together that they show their true power.
The world is a crazy place, genocide, warfare, inequality, climate change, even when you are privileged enough to not have to deal with any of these issues yourself, it’s very easy to get lost.
We don’t believe in miracles. The Union of some school somewhere will not reverse all of this injustice. But united we can and will achieve some things on a less global level. One ant can do a lot, but a colony can do a lot more.

Alumni Workshop Policy

The HKU has proven once again that a student Union is necessary. As you know, on the 1st of April they posted a message on the Student Portal stripping alumni of the right to use the HKU workshops in the year after graduation. The Union opposes this abolishment. We sent an email to the CvB (Board of Directors, HKU wide) on April 10. 2 weeks later we still hadn’t received a response, we then sent a reminder on april 25.
We started a petition to gather data and to show the HKU just how big the impact of this decision is. This petition has currently been signed by 326 people, you can still sign it here. On 16 may we still didn’t receive any reply. We sent yet another email to the CvB. This time stating our demands:

• The full nullification of the rule, so that all enrolled students and future students can make use of the workshops in the year after they graduate
• Clear reasoning about why the policy was abolished. The information on the Student Portal does not justify putting the careers of thousands of students of the HKU on the line.
• Better communication to the students in the future. A simple message on the Student Portal does not suffice. We are now awaiting the response from the CvB, we understand that for many students this is a very urgent matter. Even with the new transitional arrangement, there are still three full study years, and an upcoming one starting in december that could’ve enrolled thinking they could use the workshops.
The Union will keep fighting this injustice, we believe it is time to escalate, since it has been a full month without a response from the CvB. You will hear from us.

Potluck

After working hard all month, even the ants deserve to chill out and feast! It has been too long, so the Union is organising a Potluck on the 26st of May [TIME]. Bring your friends, enthusiasm, questions and if you can, a vegan meal/snack. This is a good time to unwind, have a laugh or discussion and get to know your fellow members of the Union. HKU4Palestine

The genocide currently happening in Gaza and the West Bank might be worse than ever. The IDF is literally starving the Palestinians, blocking all the trucks from coming in, even the ones with food and water. The Hku continues to have ties with the Bezalel University, they were only suspended last summer. HKU4Palestine is a student organisation that challenges this complicity in the ongoing genocide.
HKU4Palesine is organising a quilting session on June 12, Nieuwekade 10:30. Read more about it on our website

Website & Platforms

You might’ve seen it already, the Union has an official website hkustudentunion.nl!!! Lovingly coded by one of our members. This will be our main way to get information from the Union into the world. From the boring stuff, but important stuff, like finance reports and meeting notes, to fun stuff like art, announcements and articles. You will all find it on our website.
We are working on other pages, like our full about page and mission statement, but those will be posted in the near future. Apart from our website we have a couple of other ways to inform our members of what’ve been doing.

• This newsletter! We aim to send one via electronic mail twice a month, with updates, announcements and foto’s, maybe interviews! Cool and fun stuff. So awesome that you’re signed up already.
• For important messages that we want to spread to as many HKU students as possible, not just our member we try spreading our messages using the Whatsapp groups that every class has. If you want to help us, try spreading these messages as much as you can when you see one!
• Occasionally we will hang posters around the school as another way to reach more people.
• We also have a whatsapp community, this was originally from HKU4Palestine, but we decided to merge this group with the Union. We will send only important announcements here. The Union tries to use as little platforms from Big Tech as possible, hence we do not have instagram. Art We love art, we are art students after all. We are currently working on a page on our website where we display some (activistic) art from students of the HKU. Want to sent in a work? mail us at art@hkustudentunion.com
We also always love art of ants or anything that has to do with ants. You can also mail those to art@hkustudentunion.com Want to help? Sick! We are always looking for new members to help organising. Even if you just have a few hours in a month or if you want to do one specific task, every help is more than welcome. You can mail us at ants@hkustudentunion.com

That was it! The first edition of the newsletter. Thanks for reading, we hope you learnt something and we hope to see you soon.
The Ants of The Union

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