Photo: The new building of Vindicat, located on the Grote Markt in Groningen.
It was announced yesterday that a prospective member of student society Vindicat was injured to the head during the initiation. This is not the first incident in recent times. The University of Groningen, Hanze University of Applied Sciences and the Groningen municipality find this unacceptable.
Change in culture
The three parties have discussed this for the last few days and drew the conclusion ‘that a change in culture within the student societies is necessary to make sure that initiation rituals stop.’
Together with Vindicat, the parties want to appoint an external commission that should see to it the change in culture takes place. It is now the societies’ move: Vindicat indicated it will heavily scrutinise its initiation period.