“Vikings” from the Economics student fraternity line the road that runs from the station to the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, busily engaged in their “christening”. Schachten, first-years, kneel in rows of five, pouring half litres of beer over themselves.
“I wonder how long the university will allow this”, muses a young man in a lab coat plastered with texts and badges. These hazing rituals are held in Belgian university towns in the first weeks of the academic year; now, Dutch students are joining in.
More and more Dutch are deciding to do a degree course south of the border, according to DUO, the Education Executive Agency. Their figures reveal that there were 3,413 Dutch university students in Belgium last December, compared to 2,538 three years ago, while number of students at higher professional education rose from 1,876 to 2,247. “But we’ve only included students who receive student grants from the Dutch government”, explains DUO spokesman Tea Jonkman.
The Netherlands Organisation for International Cooperation in Higher Education, Nuffic, includes students who don’t receive grants. “We base that information on the OECD figures for international enrolments”, says their spokesman Guus Staats. Viewed that way, student numbers (at university and higher professional education) have almost doubled, rising from just over 3,650 (in 2007) to 6,250 (in 2011).
“The numbers in Antwerp are growing too”, claims Josephien Jansen (21), who is doing a course in Media Studies. “There are thirty Dutch students on my bridging programme alone – more than the number of first-years.” Lindsay van Gils (22) failed to get a place on the veterinary course in Utrecht. “I came here because I really wanted to do veterinary science. That applies to most Dutch here: if they’re not here because they didn’t get a place, they’re here because it’s cheaper.”
And it will stay cheaper too, even if the plan to raise tuition fees from six hundred Euros to nearly nine hundred is adopted. “For me, two years at university in Flanders is cheaper that one year in the Netherlands”, explains Carola van Dam (27), whose is doing a Master’s in Culture Management.
Our little group is joined in the lecture hall by Milou Audenaerd (21), who is doing a Master’s in Socio-Economic Sciences. “You can’t compare it to the Netherlands”, she says. “Lectures are much longer, often lasting three hours. They tend not to use PowerPoint and you don’t see many laptops: nearly everyone writes their notes on notepads. Many subjects are concluded with oral exams.”
“It’s impossible to skip a lecture because you miss too much”, adds Bart Peeters (21). Before starting a Psychology degree in Leiden, he did a year of Biopharmaceutical Sciences in Ghent. “Tutorial groups don’t amount to much because everything you learn everything you need during lectures. Practically all my subjects finished with an oral exam. You go to see your tutor – ‘Prof’ they say here – in your suit and tie. They call fellow students ‘colleagues’ by the way.”
He mentions more language differences: “A Belgian student says muilen instead of kissing and poepen when he means shagging.”
Peeters continues: “You’re always ‘the Dutchman’ to the Belgians; they regard you as a foreigner, even though you speak the same language – and that’s not counting the Belgians who refuse to even talk to you because you’re Dutch – so it’s quite hard to make any Belgian friends.”
Do the two nationalities ever rub each other the wrong way? “The Dutch are noisier, particularly the students”, says Max Hermans (19), an Economics student from Flanders. “But there’s little to confirm their stingy reputation because everybody’s equally poor.”
Even so, it’s striking: when Audenaerd joined us in the lecture hall, nobody said anything although Belgians always greet each other.
We relocate to a café. There is one opposite the university sports centre. “Social life in Antwerp centres on student fraternities which don’t have their own places. They have regular haunts where you are admitted if you have a member card”, Audenaerd explains. “That means I can go to De Prof’, their local, every Tuesday. You can even go without a member card if you pay an entrance fee, which means it’s always full. In theory, there’s something to do every weekday but if you want to be more actively involved, you can do the hazing ritual.”
Peeters has completed a “christening” at the Flemish Biomedical Circle. “Hazing in Belgium is done on the street. The first week is mainly physical humiliation and for the rest of the year, you are kept in your place. That means sitting on the grounds at a cantus. You also have to attend to a senior-year student who can ring you up whenever he likes, even during lectures, to fetch a sandwich for him. Or you could be given a hundred Euros at the beginning of the year which you must raise to five hundred. How? I know people who have been medical test subjects.”
The “christenings’ at the Antwerp student fraternities are no piece of cake either. Van Gils describes her “christening” “At Campinaria, a fraternity for students who live in digs, you first have to walk a certain route outdoors. On the way, you undergo all sorts of punishments like crawling through mud and eating horrible stuff. Then there’s the ‘indoor christening’: you enter the room two by two, dressed in swim suits or underwear. You have to pretend to do sex acts or kiss with a mixture of ketchup, mustard and worms in your mouth while the audience drenches you with water and beer.”
Active members of fraternities often go into digs, bedsits with a kitchen and bathroom. There are hardly any student houses, which, according to Peeters, reveals another cultural difference: “Belgians like to be alone.”
Many of the student rooms are near the campus. Audenaerd points out a passing boy carrying a washing basket: everyone takes their laundry to the laundrette.
“Groceries are very expensive, so I often eat a hot meal at the university and have some soup or a sandwich for tea. Hot meals cost less than four Euros and you can have as many helpings as you like except for the meat.”
Most students in digs join a fraternity while their fellow students who live locally don’t.
Audenaerd remarks: “That applies to the Dutch too, who are often from Zeeland, Noord-Brabant and Limburg because it’s an easy commute, only half an hour by bus from Breda. It takes me one and a half hours to go home to Zeeland compared to over three hours from Leiden.
“Unfortunately, at Roosendaal, you always have to dash to check in for the Dutch part of the journey if you want to stay on the same train.”