Study Special - The Voice Leuven

Transcription

Distance learning with MOOCs
Time management for dummies
“Thinking globally, acting socially”
Test: Can you handle exam stress?
Study Special
DECEMBER/JANUARY 2013
1
DECEMBER/JANUARY 2013 Year 17, Issue 3
THE VOICE DecemberJanuary.indd 1
12/30/2013 4:37:07 PM
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Team members
Karin Fliswasser Editor-in-Chief (Features
Editor, Photo Editor, Layout)
Evelyne Van Hecke Editorial Secretary
Sally Sharif News Copy Editor, Writer
Salman Akram News Assistant, Layout
Alex Zamora News Photo Editor
Zoe Que Features Copy Editor, Writer
Odette Rivera Culture Editor
Ike Sullivan Culture Copy Editor, Writer
Limin Liang Culture Assistant, Test designer
Erdem Yilmaz Culture Photo Editor
Pavlina Pavlova Interactions Editor, Writer
Alyson Faller Interactions Copy
Editor, Writer
Serena Corio Interactions Photo
Editor, Cover
Contributors
Michael A. Akinbolusere, Catherina
Demidenko, Sara Rasoulian, Yuma M. S. Dils,
Daniel Miranda, Jessika Nilsson, Matthew
Garrett, Karlijn Sas, Christina Seyfried, Renilde
Vos, Pieter Rombouts, Karolien Wilmots,
Gabrielle Burghouwt, the Proper Writes team,
HKM, Kay Wayne, Stipe Odak, DN, Kalina De
Blauwe, Prof. Theo D’haen, Daniel Tkatch
Editor’s note:
Hi everyone. Aren’t we all glad that the irst semester is over? Don’t worry too
much about papers and examinations, as the month of January will be over before you know it. To all of you who need that extra push or those encouraging
words to meet the demanding expectations of academia, we have tried our best
to provide you with a cheerful solution. If you take a look inside this issue, you will
ind many articles with innovative takes on academia and studying. For those of
you who have had enough of thinking, talking, writing, and reading in relation to
university, we have provided some non-academic articles which will be able to
freshen your mind a little. In any case, we wish you all the best with your personal
endeavours, and hope you have pampered yourself enough during the holidays.
Whether you’re staying here or travelling abroad, make sure to come back with a
smile in February. Also, be ready to track down our next issue in February/March
- You can already prepare yourself by contacting us online. Don’t forget that THE
VOICE is here for you, and that you can always share your own voice through this
magazine, in case you can’t wait to express yourself to Leuven. Take care!
Best,
Karin F. & THE VOICE team members and contributors
P.S. Let us know what you think of our new layout... Contact us!*
Professional support
Sara Rich Copy Editing, Proof Reading
Reader’s reaction:
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Back at the Orientation Days, I read a funny article in THE VOICE that made me
feel cosier in Belgium: “It’s true Belgians don’t like to talk. We don’t talk on the
train or bus, in the elevator, in the supermarket … We just don’t like it. Why? We
don’t know, it’s just a known fact that we don’t like to talk too much. … One might
ask how we make friends and how we can get life partners then. To be fair I’ve
been asking myself that same question too. Then I understood why Belgians invented so many different fantastic beers. Everyone can ind at least one he likes,
we get tipsy on our favorite beer and then we start talking to each other. Belgian
beer is actually a precaution to ensure the survival of the Belgian breed.” Funny,
because as a Hungarian guy I found Belgians open people who smile at you along
the streets even if they don’t know you. OK, I have to admit, I’m a very introverted
person, but in my opinion the folks are more outgoing here than in my country. I
don’t know if I would dare to visit ‘those people’ who ind Belgians silent. In Hungary, the role of beer is quite familiar. If you’d ask me about my kind, I would say
the same. We are also silent – in my opinion even more than people here, so it’s a
pleasant surprise to hear about Belgians. I think I’m in the right foreign country.
Cheers,
Mr. Nobody
Distribution
Team members
2
12/30/2013 4:37:07 PM
Contents DEC/JAN 2013
04
NEWS
04 Local controversy over
student rites in Belgium
05 Leuven wants to be
Belgium’s first green city
06 Amazon’s drone plan
receives a lot of attention
07 Distance learning
platforms more popular
07 FIFA group stages
show promising outcome
08 Self-competence
in the academic domain
10 On the disdain for
plagiarism and its origins
11 Studying in a
non-native language
08
FEATURES
12 Time management for
dummies: Stay focused
14 Techno and Belgium
14
CULTURE
15 Craftastic Sundays
16 KeepUPthespirit
17 Leuven’s Christmas fair
18 AIESEC supports
your studies & career
19 Revising the culture
behind local student rites
20 Proper Writes returns
22 Poem submissions
23 Try Alyson’s festive recipe
24 The wonders of
Prague (Czech Republic)
25 This is India
26 Fac. VOICEs: Capture
your faculty in a picture
23
INTERACTIONS
28 Meet Prof. Theo D’haen
30 Test: Can you
handle exam stress?
3
12/30/2013 4:37:10 PM
NEWS
STUDENT RITE ACCIDENT SHEDDING
BAD LIGHT OVER RULES OF INITIATION GAME
TEXT BY MICHAEL A. AKINBOLUSERE
PHOTO BY
MICHAEL A. AKINBOLUSERE
4
During a recent incident, a female student
at the University of Liège accidentally died as
she was being initiated to join a student club.
The young woman had “voluntarily” chugged an
enormous quantity of water which caused her
death. This incident, among many others, afirms
suspicions that student rites can be more than
just an innocent game.
As an incoming student with horizons to discover, there is a need to ind orientation in this
unfamiliar community. According to some, one
of the best ways to develop a sense of belonging in a new social environment is by joining
student clubs. Such clubs are infamous for rituals through which the new students prove their
allegiance to the club and its members. The rites’
organizers claim that the participants are volunteers. It is, however, questionable whether candidate members really volunteer to go through
every single test included in the initiation ritual
(otherwise known as a doop or baptism).
A ‘doop charter’ has been devised by KU Leuven to guide initiation activities and thus ensure
that club members do not cross reasonable
boundaries. Despite the regulatory presence of
the charter, it has been reported that students
still engage in activities leading to shameful
circumstances. For instance, here in Leuven,
new members volunteered to rub garlic all over
themselves, which resulted in such a bad odor
that they had to shave their heads in order to get
rid of their smelly hair.
While the charter forbids the consumption
of alcoholic beverages in the rites, there has
been no mention of the amount of non-alcoholic
drinks that could be consumed by candidate
members. Students are encouraged to use their
common sense when opting to participate in initiation activities. However, many of the students
who stay away from these clubs ask themselves
how commonsensical the initiation rites are on
the whole. Whether volunteers are actually able
to use their common sense when faced with a
doop’s challenges is an important question altogether.
This doesn’t necessarily imply initiation rites
need to be banned entirely -as they are in many
US universities-. There are innumerable ways to
engage in student activities without involving
detrimental scenarios. At the university OAU
Ile-Ife in Nigeria, for example, students roam
around their campus wearing unusual costumes
to announce their presence as freshmen. They
are playfully called jambito’s, alluding to the obligatory Joint Admissions & Matriculation Board
(JAMB) examinations that they passed to be admitted to the university.
Following the incident at the University of
Liège and complaints from the victim’s parents, a case has been opened to identify the
individual(s) responsible for her death. According to Flandersnews.be, investigations are still ongoing. The public prosecutor, Christian De Valkeneer, has stated that, although he is not against
student folklore, he wants students to know that
“they are not living in a lawless universe.”
Naturally, the role of the court is to prosecute
the perpetrator(s). Nevertheless, it is contestable whether a harsh penalty can be incurred on
the club members who either devised the rite
or made the student take the challenge. After
all, not consulting one’s common sense is not a
crime. Neither is it against the law to challenge
another individual, especially if that person has
the right to walk away from it at any moment.
It also remains unclear which regulatory body
will take a broader perspective and deal with
the excessive symbolic reinforcement of power
structures to which the student clubs expose
candidate members. Once there is a demonstrated potential for harm and even tragedy,
everyone involved must view the doop as more
than a playful tradition. Student rites could be
redeined as a partially-institutionalized exploitation of a freshman’s fear of abandonment in a
new social environment; however, this would call
for other rules to govern the student clubs that
exercise these rites.
Whatever follows from the court proceedings
will never compensate for the loss the victim’s
family has experienced. THE VOICE expresses
its condolences to the family of the victim, and
hopes that this incident will call for greater
awareness of the potential for disaster, on the
part of students, clubs, and regulatory bodies,
so that similar incidents never have the chance
to recur.
For more information on student rites, (1) read a previous coverage on our website: www.thevoiceleuven.be/baptism-beyondregular-student-life/ (2) and skip to page 19 of this issue.
12/30/2013 4:37:10 PM
LEUVEN WANTS TO BE THE
FIRST GREEN CITY OF BELGIUM
TEXT BY CATHERINA DEMIDENKO
Leuven has set the goal of becoming a climateneutral city by 2030. As the largest infrastructural supporter of the city and one of the largest
academic and research centres in the region, KU
Leuven has a double responsibility to promote
sustainable practices. Does this local initiative
have a chance to succeed?
The City of Leuven joined forces with KU Leuven and four other organizations from both public and private sectors to become the irst city in
Belgium with a neutral impact on the climate. As
a result, a new non-proit organization, Leuven
Klimaatneutraal 2030 vzw, has been launched
to work out the strategies required to achieve
a sustainable and climate-neutral city. The municipality will provide half of the budget for the
campaign, while the rest of the funding will come
from KU Leuven and other partners.
The project started with an overall measure
of greenhouse gas emissions in Leuven. In 2010,
the Bilan Carbone method was used to estimate
the CO2 emission levels and to identify the polluting sources. It was reported that the average civilian in Leuven emitted 8.5 tons of CO2equivalent per year. The largest pollutant was
found to be the city’s buildings whose energy
ineficiency was responsible for 60% of the total
emissions. As the second polluting factor, road
trafic accounted for approximately 25% of the
total emissions.
KU Leuven itself produced around 195,000
tons of CO2 in the year 2010. Combustion of
fossil fuels for energy accounted for 53% of CO2
emissions. Two other large sources were mobility and transportation (24%) and materials and
services (16%). This distribution of emissions
per aspect of university life is comparable with
that observed in the city overall.
Being the largest group in KU Leuven, students also have the biggest share of university CO2 impact. Private student residences account for 25% of total emissions, and transport
between home and the university accounts for
12%.
Although most of the energy loss is due to
the buildings’ older architecture and their oldfashioned modes of energy supply, the situation
can still be improved by using the bottom-up approach. The campaign targets raising awareness
and responsibility in students and staff members
with regard to eficient energy consumption.
The KU Leuven Klimaatneutral work group
has used public advertisements and lyers to inform everyone about a sustainable everyday life.
The Metaforum, recently held in the main university campuses, brought together students,
scientists, and university oficials for brainstorming. It is currently preparing a report of the
university’s carbon footprint, outlining recommendations for how the university can reduce
its CO2 emissions. One focus of the report will
be that “Students should be given the means and
the possibilities to make concrete changes in
their lifestyle.”
All students are invited to become so-called
climate ambassadors, supporting the initiative
and encouraging their acquaintances to submit their own vision of a climate change action
plan. Not just students but all citizens living in
Leuven can develop their own way of sustainable life, depending on their individual and collective lifestyles. People should inform fellow
residents while the university and the city create
the general obligatory rules. The bottom-up and
up-down approaches should hopefully work in
combination to optimize efforts.
Considering the global scale of the climate issue, Leuven’s campaign itself looks like a bottomup initiative. It is as clear as it is unpleasant to
come to the realization that, without appropriate decisions made at the top, the whole project
will at best remain at the level of setting a good
example. Without concrete decisions made by
political and corporate institutions on the national, European, and global scales, Leuven won’t
be able to tackle climate problems on its own.
“BEING THE LARGEST GROUP IN
KU LEUVEN, STUDENTS ALSO
HAVE THE BIGGEST SHARE OF
UNIVERSITY CO2 IMPACT. PRIVATE
STUDENT RESIDENCES ACCOUNT
FOR 25% OF TOTAL EMISSIONS,
AND TRANSPORT BETWEEN
HOME AND THE UNIVERSITY ACCOUNTS FOR 12%.”
PHOTO BY
KARIN FLISWASSER
5
12/30/2013 4:37:12 PM
AMAZON CONSIDERS USING DRONES FOR
PRODUCT DELIVERY AND AWAITS DEFINITE ANSWER
TEXT BY SALLY SHARIF
CARTOON BY
NITROZAC & SNAGGY
The corporate giant Amazon is testing the employment of drones for civilian purposes for the
irst time. The largest online retailer is to provide its customers with 30-minute air delivery
via unmanned drones, also called ‘octocopters’.
The use of this technology is yet to be approved
by the US Federal Aviation Administration and
other regulatory agencies; however, there is already a rising number of concerns, e.g. practical,
environment, and social.
Practically speaking, the project’s proponents
at Amazon are well aware of the challenges to
package delivery in densely populated urban
areas. The video that the company uploaded on
its website shows the delivery of a small package
on a trajectory that only involves a ield of green
grass from the Amazon warehouse to the doorstep of the client’s villa.
The video shows a father who orders a speciic
tool necessary to ix his son’s rollerblades. They
both look very happy when they receive their
package within half an hour. As nice as it is to see
our fellow citizens happy, it might not be worth
the potential risks that drone delivery poses to
the environment and other human beings.
There are environmental issues that are still
waiting to be solved. While the effects of war
6
machinery, civilian airplanes, jet skis, etc. on
the environment are well-known, the effects of
widespread drone use on the environment is yet
unknown, particularly in terms of interference
with animals in light.
On the other hand, proponents for the use
of every new technology argue that even if a
technology is new, it has already been invented
and so it can and should be employed to make
human life easier. They are of the view that this
new advancement in delivery systems would
face opposition from traditional-minded critics,
who may think of the heavens as a space exclusive for eagles to spread their wings, songbirds
to chant, and butterlies to display their beauty.
Instead, proponents encourage the use of scientiic advancements to improve the quality of
life, whatever plausible risks it might have on the
environment.
A social question can be raised in the midst of
the discussion on the pros and cons of Amazon
PrimeAir. Considering that it is not vital products
like medicine that Amazon delivers, and keeping
in mind that the weight of packages delivered
by the drones will not exceed 2.3 kg, one has
to ask why people would ‘need’ to have dronedelivered goods within a half hour, if they are not
stuck in, for example, a health-endangering situation.
The unmanned drone technology is probably
going to be implemented for civilian use within
ive years, even if it proves to be against the
wish of the majority. We know for long that the
invented products on the market do not relect
the needs of the buyers. According to the logic
of capitalist producers, consumers do not know
what they need until they have seen it. Sometimes, products and modes of delivery have to be
expanded and made accessible for consumers to
feel the need for them in the irst place.
With the popularity of online shopping, the
consumption trends of Western societies have
moved towards the slogan, “I not only need to
have it, I need to have it now.” This is a big step
from the otherwise independent “I think, therefore I am” towards “I have it, therefore I am.” Amazon’s new delivery system will allow us to soon
be able to say, “I got it in thirty minutes, therefore
I am.” With high-speed drone delivery, Amazon
is feeding the thirst for and the dependency on
having products that are characteristic of materialism. On that note, it is yet unclear which consumer desires a speedy drone delivery would , or
should, fulill the most.
12/30/2013 4:37:12 PM
WILL KU LEUVEN FOLLOW UC LOUVAIN IN
INCORPORATING DISTANCE LEARNING PROGRAMMES?
TEXT BY ALYSON FALLER
This February, the Université Catholique de
Louvain (UCL) joins some of the world’s most
prestigious universities for an experiment in international education: edX.
Launched in 2011, edX is a non-proit MOOC
(Massive Open Online Course) platform with
free online courses from Harvard, MIT, Berkeley,
Peking University, Kyoto University, and other
big names.
Universities have been offering Open Course
Ware for the past decade and distance learning
programmes for longer. Early cMOOCs (collaborative MOOCs) allowed thousands of students
to meet and learn through blogs, forums, and
projects. However, most recently, platforms such
as edX, Coursera, Udacity, Futurelearn, and ALISON are offering more xMOOCs (lecture-style
courses where knowledge is passed from professor to students), each of which can accommodate hundreds of thousands of students at a time.
The scramble of universities to offer MOOCs,
as well as the sheer number of participants signing up, testiies to a hype that is hard to ignore.
Distance learning has become more attractive.
But are MOOCs truly creating a revolution
in learning? The majority of participants already
have a bachelor’s degree and are just looking for
an intellectual challenge. Few degree-granting
institutions recognize MOOC work.
It is no surprise that completion rates have
stayed below 10%. Then again, if MOOCs were
bringing about a revolution in higher education,
perhaps universities would approach them more
cautiously. After all, they are expensive, and cost
time and effort to keep intact. These costs would
be even higher if tuition-paying students began
to see free online programmes as a real alternative, and chose to opt out of regular enrollment.
For universities that rely less on students’ tuition fees, such as UCL and KU Leuven, MOOCs
would not pose a challenge in terms of inancial
loss. In fact, many arguments used by universities opposed to MOOCs do not apply to Belgian
universities. There are fewer small institutions
that might suffer from increased competition,
and xMOOCs are not that far removed from
many large professor-centred lectures offered
at the undergraduate level.
GROUP STAGES ANNOUNCED
FOR FIFA WORLD CUP 2014 IN BRAZIL
UCL’s website claims that creating MOOCs as
a form of distance learning will allow for “lipped
learning”: there will be space for more studentcentred and project-based learning than in regular classrooms.
With UCL opening its virtual doors, the question arises: will KU Leuven stay outdone by its
sister school, or will it also take the plunge into
the world of MOOCs?
PHOTO BY
KARIN FLISWASSER
TEXT BY YUMA M. S. DILS
Every 4 years, the World Cup is held in a different country. This year, it will be held in Brazil.
After a long and hard qualiication campaign, the
32 teams to be present have been sorted into
8 groups. They range from groups A to H, each
containing 4 teams.
After a strong qualiication campaign, during
which it qualiied irst in its group, Belgium made
it into the World Cup. It was placed alongside Algeria, Russia, and the Republic of Korea in Group
H, which is the last of the 8 groups. In this group,
Belgium should expect to make it to ‘the last 16’,
although there are no certainties in football.
Some would argue that the new Belgian squad
is the most talented in many generations. Talents the likes of Eden Hazard, Kevin De Bruyne,
Thibaut Courtois, and Romelu Lukaku, just to
name a few, are playing on the highest level of
European football. These youngsters are meant
to be the surprise team of the tournament.
This year’s World Cup is a landmark event
because it will be hosted in Brazil for the second time in history, the irst time being in 1950.
Brazil traditionally out-performs when playing
on home soil, so we can expect them to be an extremely formidable team in this year’s inals. Two
other teams that will deinitely play prominent
roles are Spain and Germany. Spain is the reigning champion of the world, having won the 2010
World Cup Final against the Netherlands, which
was hosted in South Africa. On the other hand,
Germany is possibly the strongest team in Europe at the moment, with its two club sides Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, who were
the inalists of last year’s Champions League.
Germany always has good World Cup campaigns, and this year will be the same with it being one of the irm favourites to take home the
Cup.
Brazil will undoubtedly be a marvelous host.
The country of sunshine and samba is the perfect
location for this most festive of football tournaments. There have been naysayers who doubt
whether Brazil will be ready to host the World
Cup. There were plenty of naysayers in 2010
concerned that South Africa would not be ready
due to social unrest and a lack of infrastructure,
yet it turned out to be great. Just as South Africa
did, Brazil will outdo herself and host a memorable World Cup inals.
See www.thevoiceleuven.be for more info. on Brazil and football.
PHOTO BY
ALEXANDRE LOURERO
VIA GETTY IMAGES
7
12/30/2013 4:37:13 PM
FEATURES
THERE IS NO TIME OF THE YEAR LIKE THE EXAM
SESSION, IN WHICH STUDYING IS THE MOST
IMPORTANT ACTIVITY OF A STUDENT’S LIFE.
thE voICE HAS THOUGHT ABOUT THIS VERY
CAREFULLY. OUR WRITERS HAVE LOOKED AT
DIFFERENT DIMENSIONS OF WHAT IT TAKES TO
STUDY WELL FOR EXAMS.
WITH THE HELP OF THIS STUDY SPECIAL, TAKING A BREAK FROM EXAMS WON’T HAVE TO
MEAN THE DEATH OF THEM. THE FOLLOWING
ARTICLES PROVIDE SOME INSIGHT INTO HOW
TO IMPROVE THE TASK OF STUDYING. GOOD
LUCK! STAY TUNED FOR MORE EXAM TIPS AND
TRICKS VIA WWW.THEVOICELEUVEN.BE OR
TWITTER.COM/THEVOICELEUVEN
SELF-COMPETENCE
IN THE ACADEMIC DOMAIN
TEXT BY IKE SULLIVAN
8
PHOTO BY
KARIN FLISWASSER
“Use your words,” says the parent to the
young child, the teacher to the young student,
the professor to the older student. The ongoing
task of using words to express what one means
begins early in life. Leuven’s exam season is no
exception. To do well, students must respond to
the age-old professor’s prompt with their own
words.
KU Leuven outlines its goals as a university
community in its 2009 document, Vision of Teaching and Learning. KU Leuven’s vision rests on the
hope that students will develop competencies
they can carry into society: “assuming their social responsibility as committed citizens,” “in professional roles,” and “as professional researchers.” The university hopes students will integrate
an identiication and understanding of problems,
a critically constructive approach to them, and
“competencies that they put to the test in their
everyday world.” Exams are only the irst of many
tests. To receive positive feedback on exams,
students must effectively express their competency. This, however, is not meant to be an act.
12/30/2013 4:37:15 PM
For the student to play their part according to
the university’s vision, an honest expression of
their understanding must take place.
Exams don’t require students to perform
from a script, so students don’t need to assume
the role of a performing actor. The university
expects them to show their competency through
the use of their own words, not the words of another. In this respect, exams are more of an exercise of self-expression than of name-dropping
or reiteration. Marks are not determined solely
by the words a student uses, in either written or
oral form, but also by the degree to which their
expression is self-formulated.
Martial artist Bruce Lee clearly articulates
the distinction between honest self-expression
and acting, copying, or performing. His ighting
style and philosophy, Jeet Kune Do, is not based
on any particular rules, as he believed rules hinder honest self-expression. In a 1971 interview,
he said, “It is easy for me to put on a show and
be cocky, and be looded with a cocky feeling...
I can show you some really lashy movement.
But to express oneself honestly, not lying to
oneself, and to express myself honestly, that, my
friend, is very hard to do.” Later in the interview
he explained what he was teaching students at
his school in Hollywood: “All knowledge is selfknowledge. [Actors] come to learn to express
themselves through some movement, be it anger, be it determination... [they] are paying me to
show them in combative form the art of expressing the human body.”
Although Lee’s statements refer to self-expression in movement, they also apply to selfexpression in the form of academic discourse.
The knowledge students study in preparation
for examinations should, by the time of exams,
become internalized self-knowledge that they
can express freely. Students should still, however, be cautious in how freely they express their
knowledge.
Honest self-expression may be the key to
exam success in accordance with the university’s
vision for students, but it must be tempered
to it academic standards and methodology.
Academic modes of expression are geared towards presenting material as objectively as possible. Despite the necessary academic approach,
however, students cannot and need not remove
themselves from the formulations they make.
Hiding behind the mask of third-person speech
and referencing the words of another is akin to
putting on a show. Only through honest selfexpression can students show a true portrayal of
their competencies.
Bruce Lee’s students do not merely copy the
movements that they are shown. Similarly, the
task of KU Leuven’s students is not to simply repeat what they have read from various authors
and studies, but to genuinely express themselves
and their own understanding. In this way, students effectively prove their competency.
During exam season, the university says, “use
your words”. By following this advice, students
contribute to the vision of the university. Students should express themselves honestly in exams, papers, and everything else academic. It will
surely increase their academic self-competence.
9
12/30/2013 4:37:17 PM
ON THE DISDAIN FOR
PLAGIARISM AND ITS ORIGINS
PHOTO BY
DANIEL MIRANDA
Plagiarism, deined as the unacknowledged
use of someone else’s work, is a human act. According to the German philosopher, Georg W.F.
Hegel, there are three distinctly human traits
that distinguish humans from other animals.
These traits are the capacity for religion, morality, and law. Why are people, unlike other animals, accountable for plagiarism? It is perhaps
because people individually own their achievements. Names are expected to appear alongside
achievements when they are referenced or used
by others.
On the other hand, there is an anonymous
body of information, called common knowledge,
which is not attributed to anyone. Tapping into
this reservoir is not considered plagiarizing. This
means that I have not plagiarized in offering a
deinition of plagiarism in the irst sentence of
this article. Common knowledge is like air: people can’t reasonably claim it as their own.
The emergence of the reservoir of common
knowledge started with the development of language. The knowledge that people possess and
produce builds off of the words of every individual before them. While the names and faces
of many contributors have been lost, many other
names have survived, ones which are commonly
bound to certain ideas or phrases. As a result,
one can use a catchphrase like “actions speak
louder than words” without acknowledging a
source; whereas, one cannot get away with saying “democracy passes into despotism” without
mentioning Plato’s name.
People keep contributing to common knowledge, branding contributions with their names.
They get credit for this kind of contribution in
various forms: inancial beneits, social status,
employment opportunities, etc. At some point in
the development of academia, expanding common knowledge became so important that scholars’ rewards for contributing became dependent
on the amount of contributions they made. Who
a scholar is has become synonymous with what
is produced. An intellectual is turned into a company with a brand. An academic CV includes a
name, face, and publications.
When a scholar’s work is copied, not only
are personal ideas taken away, but this person’s
social and inancial status is also jeopardized.
10
What has been done so far to prevent people
from copying each other’s work? Accountability measures have been put in place, including
consequences like a failing grade, expulsion, or
legal action. Everyone is brought into the game
that has as its principal rule: do not plagiarize, or
you’ll lose face.
However, some of the players in this game
are just not docile enough to say “yes” to the
rules of a game for which they did not request
an invitation. To them, running off with someone else’s idea is as trivial as stealing an orange
from a supermarket or snatching the lights off of
somebody else’s bike. In society at large, and in
academia, anti-theft laws and regulations should
stop petty thieves from pilfering supermarket
goods or scholarly writings, but these deterrents
are often insuficient.
So how can humanity be convinced of the immorality of stealing and plagiarizing? If this could
happen, there would be no further need to investigate those names that pop up every once in
a while for having broken the rules of the game,
names like that of Professor Martin Stone.
Who was Martin Stone? He is the Voldemort
of the Institute of Philosophy: his name is not to
be said. One utters it and a hush falls upon the
audience. He was Distinguished Professor of Renaissance and Early Modern Philosophy before
being forced to resign. What he did has often
been described as an act that shook the world
of scholarship. In 2010, KU Leuven retracted its
afiliation with Stone’s publications, after it was
discovered that almost all of them had been partially or wholly copied from works of other authors. This includes the Ph.D. thesis of a member
of the Finnish Parliament.
The most entertaining aspect of Stone’s crime,
however, is not that the Faculty of Philosophy
remained almost silent on the case, that Stone
never oficially commented on the accusations,
or that he now has a nice job in Brussels and
possibly earns more than he previously did. The
highlight of the story happened some years later
when an impressive list of books which previously belonged to the library of the Faculty of
Philosophy was found for sale at a bookshop in
Hasselt. An investigation revealed that the antiquarian bookshop had bought the ‘personal’
library of Martin Stone for the price of a modest
holiday for two.
Losing face is often seen as the consequence
of plagiarism. Yet, some scholars don’t seem to
mind damaging their own reputation. Curiously
enough, cases of plagiarism surface among people whose face is an integral part of what they do
for a living: professors and politicians.
It can be speculated that for the Martin
Stones of the world, the reservoir of common
knowledge, as well as the library of the Faculty
of Philosophy, is part of the commons: the natural and cultural resources freely disposable to
all members of society. They live in an imaginary
kibbutz with water, grass, milk, and books available for everyone to share equally.
On one hand, this behaviour can be appreciated as a political act for it refuses to acknowledge the difference between the common and
the private. Denying the harsh border that modern society has drawn between what is mine and
what is ours is revolutionary.
However, there is a problem in comparing plagiarism with communal living: it is only one out
of the two that is legitimate. Plagiarizers might
claim that they refuse to play the game of gain
and rule, so that there is no distinction between
a personal library and the faculty’s. However,
people should not be able to wear a double-sided
mask of having a face and not having one at the
same time. By stealing the ideas behind someone else’s face, plagiarizers assume a false identity, and put their own name on a face where it
doesn’t belong. Plagiarizers lose face by applying
someone else’s to their own; however, too often
in high-proile cases, the facade is only temporary, and when removed outside its original context, the plagiarizer is free to return to his face
because no one recognizes it anymore.
Plagiarism is disdained for turning all animals
against the farmer so as to steal his throne. It
should be reproached for abridging the Seven
Commandments of Animal Farm into one: “All
animals are equal, but some animals are more
equal than others.”
Read more on plagiarism via (1) the original coverage of Martin
Stone’s case on our website www.thevoiceleuven.be/kuleuveninvolved-in-new-plagiarism-scandal/ (2) and Sally’s interview
with Prof. Theo D’haen on page 28 of this issue.
12/30/2013 4:37:18 PM
PHOTO BY
KARIN FLISWASSER
STUDYING IN A
NON-NATIVE LANGUAGE
TEXT BY ZOE QUE
Scattered amongst the hordes of students
studying their course books or labouring over
thesis papers are students struggling with another issue on top of their schoolwork: their
language of study. For many international students in Dutch or English-taught courses, the
language of study is not their native tongue.
These students attack their school books and
writing assignments armed with dictionaries,
thesauruses, and grammar guidebooks, but is
the knowledge of grammar rules and vocabulary
enough to truly succeed? Could these students
be overlooking a critical element of language
proiciency? Language is a cultural phenomenon,
after all. Perhaps they should consider that mastering a language requires a degree of cultural
immersion and understanding of that culture’s
norms and values.
Yasmine Sadri, a master’s student studying
international politics at KU Leuven, discovered
that luency in a language could only take her
so far at the university level. She began the irst
year of her Dutch-taught bachelor’s programme
after having spent ten years living in Belgium
and developing a working knowledge of Dutch
vocabulary and grammar rules. However, she
had no academic experience with the language
because she had completed grades 8-12 in the
United States. This disadvantage materialized itself in Yasmine’s writing. When she asked Flemish students to proofread her writing assignments, they claimed her ideas weren’t expressed
clearly enough. They could still understand what
she was trying to say but feared not everyone
would be able to. Professors made similar comments after grading Yasmine’s assignments,
saying she had good arguments but no way of
connecting them. Her inability to use transition
words to bring structure to her writing was clear.
Science provides an interesting clariication
for the feedback Yasmine received. In 1966,
linguist Robert Kaplan proposed and developed
the idea that conventions of discourse, such
as the organization of arguments, paragraph
structure, and use of transition words, are culturally bound. The devices one culture uses to
express an idea can be radically different from
the devices used by another culture to convey
the same idea. For instance, people from an
English-speaking culture typically develop their
ideas in a straightforward, linear structure, with
emphasis on an introduction, body, and conclusion. Chinese students are more likely to use a
looser structure that revolves and lows around
their idea by exploring it from different angles
rather than explicitly stating it. These differences in rhetorical approaches relect cultural
differences in norms and values. Kaplan referred
to this idea as ‘contrastive rhetoric’.
The idea of contrastive rhetoric is especially
relevant to students like Yasmine, who are studying in a language that is not their native tongue.
Yasmine tried to apply the English conventions
she was familiar with to her Dutch essays, but
because her rhetoric diverged from the rhetoric
native Dutch speakers expected from their language, her arguments came across as jumbled
and unclear. Her line of reasoning got lost in
translation.
Mastery of a language’s discourse conventions is crucial to communicating in the most
effective way possible, so it only makes sense
that students’ abilities to uitilize those conventions have an impact on their grades. To earn
full points on a short answer exam question, students need to be able to explain concepts and the
relationships between them in a clear, coherent
way. To defend their theses effectively, doctoral
students need to have a good command of rhetorical devices. Indeed a recent research project
carried out by researchers Lieve De Wachter,
Jordi Heeren, and Linda Cuppens from the Leuven Language Institute (ILT) conirms that good
control of a language in an academic context increases the chances of academic success.
For the project, a language test was given to
irst year bachelor’s students across the KU Leuven campus and Association of KU Leuven at the
beginning of the academic year. It tested their
proiciency in applying various academic language strategies such as inferring the meaning
of a word based on its context and recognizing
the structure used in different texts. Students
from multilingual households, a category that
included non-native Dutch speakers, scored signiicantly lower on this test than students from
exclusively Dutch-speaking households. Additionally, a signiicant correlation was established
between the students who did not pass the language test and those who scored lower on their
exams in January.
Academic language skills, therefore, really are
crucial to success at the university level. Nonnative speakers can certainly acquire these skills
and succeed, but irst they must overcome the
tendency to use the rhetorical conventions of
their native language. Furthermore, they must
be able to identify the rhetorical conventions
of the language they are writing in, an endeavor
that requires an understanding of the cultural
context in which those conventions were developed.
To what extent, then, do non-native speakers
have to immerse themselves in a culture to understand its values and conventions? That, ultimately, is up to the student. Yasmine, for example, found it extremely helpful to start doing all
of her leisurely reading in Dutch. She purchased
a subscription to a local newspaper, read it every
morning, and she read iction books in Dutch.
Other students take advantage of the academic
language courses available at ILT, which include
academic Dutch and English classes targeted towards non-native speakers. ILT also offers writing classes aimed at teaching the conventions
of speciic academic discourse communities.
Regardless of the approach taken, simply being
aware that differences between rhetorical devices exist is already a huge step forward.
11
12/30/2013 4:37:20 PM
TIME MANAGEMENT FOR
DUMMIES: STAY FOCUSED
TEXT BY JESSIKA NILSSON
PHOTO BY
KARIN FLISWASSER
In most countries, a high school diploma
serves as a certiicate for having the intellectual
capabilities to successfully pursue university
studies. Yet, in Belgium, 60% of bachelor students fail their irst academic year, with some
continuing later on and often starting over in
a different ield. Ultimately 76% of those who
initially start studying something actually inish with a professional or university bachelors’
degree. While these statistics place Belgium
among the top OECD countries for completion
rates, compared to Italy, where only 45% graduate, these numbers still signify room for improvement. Either high school does not actually
prepare students for university, or the problem
is of a different nature. Students fail at reaching their academic goals for different reasons,
such as lack of focus, motivation, or ability to
organize their time. Despite the shocking failure
rates, this is good news because managing time
is something all students can learn. If students
manage their time in a manner that suits both
their personality and the routines of university
life, then they can not only pass their university
exams, they can actually be good at what they do.
If I found a way to do it, then so can anyone.
When I told my friends I was writing a feature
on time management, most of them reacted with
bewilderment. I am always late or just in time.
12
When I start studying for an exam, I usually have
to race around town the night before trying to
get a hold of all the study material I need. Yet, I
had my irst master at age 21, my second at 22,
and since then, I have been enrolled in Ph.D.
studies that I plan to inalize on time. Trust me,
I’m no Einstein. I just manage my time in accordance with my own chaotic personality.
Now, this is what most people do not understand about time management. They think a
standard set of rules exists that applies universally when it comes to managing time. In the
beginning of each semester, professors remind
their students to take notes, be present, and
study continuously throughout the year. If they
request a 7000-word paper as an exam assignment, they tell their students to start months in
advance. My line of thought goes something like
this: if I have the knowledge necessary to write a
persuasive paper, I can easily average 750 words
in one hour. Thus, a 7000-word paper should
be inished in 9.5 hours, and I can start writing,
ideally, a few days before the deadline (not that
I haven’t done the 9.5 hour marathon 9.5 hours
before a deadline).
If any universal advice concerning time management exists, it is to think in terms of vision
over micro-management. An important factor
that keeps students from managing time suc-
12/30/2013 4:37:23 PM
“SOMEWHERE DOWN THE LINE, I
REALIZED THAT I DID NOT NEED TO
BE THE BEST; I JUST NEEDED TO BE
GOOD ENOUGH. THIS ALLOWED
ME TO RELAX AND FOCUS ON MY
VISION, RATHER THAN MICROMANAGING EVERY SINGLE CLASS
INTO PERFECTION.”
PHOTO BY
KARIN FLISWASSER
cessfully is motivation. If a student’s only reason
for studying law is an obligation she feels towards a parent, then she will most likely not have
the discipline to organize her time effectively. I
always had a vision, albeit a loose one, of what
my goal in studying was: I wanted to study as
quickly and eficiently as possible, and I wanted
a Ph.D. Merely wanting a Ph.D. is not going to
motivate most students to spend four or more
years on the edge of poverty while their peers
are all working for Goldman Sachs, but the vision
did keep me focused in my early years of studying. As I have spent more time on my Ph.D., my
original motivation has luckily grown into a deep
passion regarding academic inquiry. My Ph.D.
is now more than just an excuse to go live with
Maasai and a house elephant for seven months.
My academic vision was formed in irst grade.
My mom held me back one year because she
believed I should not start irst grade without
speaking the national language of the country
in which we were residing. (Note that we moved
the next year and I had to start second grade in
another language I had never spoken before.) I
ended up being the oldest kid in the class. Traumatizing. As a result, I made it my mission to be
the fastest and most eficient, and this mission
laid the foundation for the vision that brought
me (at least partial) academic success. My irst
degree was in economics, a subject I was never
very passionate about, but it still worked for me.
The inancial stability of economist jobs gave me
enough motivation to follow through. My goal
was never to exceed in it, as I planned on exceeding in another subject later. Others may ind it
wise to begin their academic career with a topic
that sparks their passion and perhaps inish up
with a degree that will make their parents happy,
like an advanced one-year master’s in business
and economics. For students with the vision of
a business career but with little interest in economics or engineering, starting off studying the
subject they love most, be it philosophy or a language, can very well get them to that end-goal.
When I was young, I always thought I had to
be the best at everything. Somewhere down the
line, I realized that I did not need to be the best; I
just needed to be good enough. This allowed me
to relax and focus on my vision, rather than micro-managing every single class to perfection. At
16 I began taking university courses in addition
to my high school ones, and I inished my bachelor’s degree just after I received my high school
graduation papers. My high school exam was
good and my bachelor’s mediocre, but that was
not important. It did not inhibit me from moving onwards, to a subject I was more passionate
about. Not being the best did not stop me from
seeking my own deinition of success.
Over the years, I have been able to keep my
vision aligned with the practicalities of everyday
studying by using a maximization approach. I
have learnt to make big output with little input. I
have also found that intuition and rational thinking are not opposites, as intuition stems from the
universal rationalities one develops over time. I
approach everything with a rational stance and
try to make the most of everything. For example,
I lived through a crazy semester in which I studied economics in Bonn, Germany while working
on a Master of Cultural and Development Studies in Leuven. I had to hop on and off the I.C.E.
train three times a week, yet I did not lose time;
rather, I maximized it by studying on the I.C.E.
I do not know if this article on time management will inspire others to manage their time
better. Again, a universal method for managing time does not even exist. I have shared my
story in the hopes that at least one student can
perhaps get something out of it. My inal piece
of advice is for students to trust their intuition
and develop techniques that work best for them,
personally. In the end, it is all about the individual’s time and that individual being comfortable
spending it.
Test your stress resistance on page 29. Alternatively, let us know
how your studies are going by e-mailing us via [email protected]
13
12/30/2013 4:37:24 PM
CULTURE
TECHNO MUSIC
ROOTS IN BELGIUM
TEXT BY MATTHEW GARRETT
PHOTO BY
ERDEM YILMAZ
In 2011, Leuven’s techno nightclub, Club Silo,
was forced to close due to noise complaints from
neighbours, despite already being situated in
the industrial area of Leuven. If you walk along
the Vaartkom you can still see the giant sign for
the club, while the building remains empty. Although Club Silo’s physical home stands empty,
Silo lives on, organizing techno events around
Belgium at different venues. In late October,
Silo returned to Leuven with an event at De
Hoorn (also near the Vaartkom). Roman Flügel,
a techno artist from Germany, headlined the
event. Unfortunately, the event marked merely
a single occasion rather than a return of techno
to Leuven. Noise permits and a sad tendency
for the powers-that-be to consider electronic
music events as nothing but out-of-control
‘raves’ mean that, for Leuven at least, events
like Silo’s will be fewer and farther between.
This is unfortunate because, far from being
out of control, techno events are full of good
vibes and a positive environment. One of the
standout things about Belgium’s techno clubs
and events is how unpretentious they are: you’ll
never be turned away for wearing the wrong
clothes, or for being too old, or for not having
the right friends. All races, young and old, gay
and straight can be found. This level of friendliness and acceptance is sadly hard to ind in
many other scenes and other countries. After
twenty-plus years, techno remains an underground genre, where the music is most important. Despite the term being used to describe
electronic music as a whole, ‘techno’ as a genre
continues to evade mainstream acceptance.
In fact, Belgium’s huge ‘I <3 Techno’ event
doesn’t actually feature many techno artists, although many who listen to techno would probably agree that’s a good thing. While techno is
experiencing a renaissance these days, famous
techno DJs are still affordable to see live in small,
intimate settings such as Silo’s. One doesn’t
need to spend 60 EUR to experience an event.
When techno irst came to Europe from the
US, Belgium was one of the irst places where
it settled and took off. Established in the 1980s,
R&S Records in Ghent was and still is one of the
most famous underground record labels for
techno and other electronic music. Browsing
through old tracks from R&S, you can still catch
gems that sound exactly like they came from a
set at Fuse in Brussels. Music Man Records, also
based in Ghent, has been cranking out techno
releases since the 1980s. In the early days, Belgium was one of the premier producers of electronic music, and these two labels were some
of the best. The 1990s represented a golden
age for techno, and it was the closest the genre
ever came to mainstream acceptance. The rise of
techno was closely aligned with rave culture, although the two are not necessarily synonymous.
While Belgium doesn’t boast as many artists
today, plenty of techno DJs from Germany,the
UK, and the US come each month to Brussels,
Antwerp, and Ghent. In November, Silo hosted a
techno event in Brussels with Ben Klock, a German DJ who has been a big part of techno’s underground resurgence. The event also featured
Belgian DJ Kr!z, who is one of the leaders of
Belgium’s scene, and who runs Token Records
14
out of Ghent. Token Records may be based in
Belgium, but it represents the international appeal of techno: artists on the label come from the
UK, Singapore, Japan, Spain, Denmark, and many
more. While techno used to only exist locally,
wherever limited vinyls from the US were held
by prized DJs in Europe and vice versa, today it
can be found in every country. At irst listen, the
genre may seem dark and dificult to understand;
however, the overwhelming sense of anticipation
and community within the music has allowed it to
persevere throughout the years across all borders. Although Leuven has lost its techno home,
the beat goes on elsewhere throughout Belgium.
If you’re interested in hearing techno from
Belgium throughout the ages, you can check out
these tracks on Youtube:
“Anasthasia” by T99 - this 1991 song really
gives a feel for the rave scene from long ago; it’s
not as modern sounding, but it has a good old
school sound.
“Stylus Flight” by Equitek – from 1992, this
song seems very dark at irst, but sounds exactly
like something you could hear today at 4AM in a
Ben Klock set.
“There Can Only Be One” by C.J. Bolland –
from 1995, it’s deinitely faster than most techno, but it builds very well.
“North 6th” by Peter van Hoesen – from 2010,
this one builds slowly, but by halfway through it’s
irresistible to dance to.
“Binary Opposition (Process 1)” by Ø [Phase]
– Phase is actually from the UK, but this track
from is from 2012 off Token Records.
12/30/2013 4:37:26 PM
CRAFTASTIC SUNDAYS:
GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY
PHOTO BY
CHRISTINA SEYFRIED
TEXT BY KARLIJN SAS
Two out of three residents of Leuven are
students, making it an extremely young city full
of expressions of youth culture and new movements. Things that I have been noticing here are
the amount of DIY-things popping up. Calling it a
‘DIY-movement’ would be too big of a statement;
there has always been DIY – from the bricolage
of Punk fashion to the baby socks that grandma
made. What I would say is that there is an international trend towards local produce and selfmade products –it is a igurative turning away
from Colruyt toward the vegetable garden, so
to speak.
Reasons for this trend are great in number.
People claim that we are getting more resourceful because of the economic crisis; after all ixing
our own bikes and cars saves us money. Another
reason is that we are turning away from the type
of products that are making us into homogeneous H&M blouse-wearing clones sitting on Klippan couches before going to bed in our Tromsö
bunk beds. Now we see a craving for identiication with the particular things that surround us
and seeking distance from goods that are produced for the masses. This trend could be an effect of people becoming more aware of the impact mass production has on the environment,
and we are thus trying to curb our consumption
by doing things ourselves. We are disappointed
in the system, feel insecure in leaning on it too
much, and want to become more self-suficient.
Whatever the reason, young people are doing
things themselves in Leuven.
Since we are in Belgium, the land of cookbooks, two hot meals a day, Jeroen Meus, and
Felix Alen, DIYing in Leuven seems to have mostly to do with food. Take the popular organic farm
right by Leuven where you can harvest your own
organic veggies: it’s a great success and has lots
of students visiting. There are people bottling
their own beer, and there are many initiatives
that have to do with growing your own vegetables. The most popular coffee bars in Leuven,
Café Noir and Kofie Onan, have a deinite DIY
feel to them.
There are other DIY projectss that have less
to do with food. Almost every month STUK hosts
a repair café where people are encouraged to
being in anything that needs ixing, whether a
shirt or a computer. One of the best DIY bloggers in Belgium is studying at KU Leuven: the
blog mangelmoes.blogspot.be has won several
awards for inspirational blogging.
My DIY projects are often a form of crafting.
Screen printing is my great love, but making furniture and knitting are also part of my weekly
activities. Asking around the Leuven campus, I
found that a lot of students are also crafting their
own clothes and furniture. There are deinitely
some active crafters within my group of friends
in the Master of Cultural Studies. Crafting together is always more fun than doing it alone, so
we started a crafting collaboration.
During my bachelor’s in Amsterdam, some
girls and I crafted together, and our crafty days
got more and more serious until, at a certain
oint, they became ‘Craftastic Sundays’ – DIY
workshops on Sunday afternoons. The idea was
simple: there are enough craft-lovers, but the
step between wanting to craft and actually doing
it can be a big one. Craftastic Sundays were easily accessible events – participants could walk in
anytime on Sunday afternoons, and everything
was present to start: the materials, the space,
and the expert knowledge. Accessibility was one
of our main goals, so the workshops were held
in a cosy cafe.
With Leuven having a huge amount of crafters who would love to come to craft with us, we
igured that the concept would work well here
too. Christina Seyfried, Emma Oostlander, and I
– all international students doing the Masters in
Cultural Studies programme – started organizing this. We found the perfect location at Café
Entrepot in OPEK that has a laid-back atmosphere on Sunday afternoons with a DJ playing
easy tunes. The building is the old warehouse
that was redeveloped to function as a house for
several cultural organizations, and the reconstruction of the building was done using sustainable materials and with minimal impact on the
environment. This also relects our idea of using
mostly recycled and environmentally friendly
materials. For our irst workshop, for instance,
we used lavender oil printing on canvas bags –
an all-natural printing technique.
The enthusiasm towards our initiative has
been great – people like joining and have helped
in inding accommodations for the workshops
and telling their friends to come too. Leuven is a
great place to start new initiatives. The amount
of people living in the city is growing fast in comparison to other Belgian cities, causing a growing
audience for cultural events.
If you are interested in Craftastic Sundays,
we are at café Entrepot in OPEK every second
and third Sunday of the month. Anybody can join
us anytime from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. for 4.50 EUR,
which also covers the cost of materials. If you
want to start your own event in Leuven and want
to get together and talk about our experiences –
feel free to contact us!
Date: Every irst & third Sunday of the month
Time: Any time from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m.
Place: Café Entrepot – OPEK
Cost: 4.50 EUR
www.craftasticsundays.weebly.com
www.facebook.com/craftasticsundays
15
12/30/2013 4:37:28 PM
Reminiscing the holiday spirit
KEEP UP THE SPIRIT!
AN INITIATIVE OF THE UNIVERSITY PARISH
TEXT BY RENILDE VOS
What do you think when people tell you to
“keep up the spirit”? Which thoughts or feelings enter your mind? Does it sound naive, as if
people saying it only experience the sunny side
of life?
Maybe your life sometimes looks like a rough
sea. You wish to be part of a community where
you are accepted as you are, but you are facing
uncertainties and a lack of self-conidence. The
complexity, and perhaps even the chaos of life,
weighs on you.
How do you keep your boat on the right track
on this rough sea? What is the direction of your
compass? How do you reinforce your boat? Do
you ind companions who help you to sew the
sails? How do you keep in touch with the essence
of the sea?
Finding and cultivating the strength to live the
vicissitudes of life, so that in the midst of all the
complexity you can make those choices which
are life-giving for you and your fellow citizens:
that is KeepUPthespirit.
The UP-blog, www.keepUPthespirit.be, offers
you opportunities to generate, evolve, and cultivate this attitude of life. Come and take a look!
Join one of our groups, and share your opinions.
The holidays, New Year, and exam time is a season to wish all your fellow citizens all the best.
Leave your wishes here, and the next reader of THE VOICE can enjoy them.
Your kind messages might just brighten someone’s day!
An initiative of UP – KU Leuven: www.keepUPthespirit.be
16
12/30/2013 4:37:28 PM
FLEMISH STUDENT REPORTING ON
LEUVEN’S CHRISTMAS FAIR OF 2013
TEXT BY PIETER ROMBOUTS
According to lyrics of Christmas carols, the
most wonderful time of the year was the end of
December. The Ladeuze square of Leuven transformed into a colourful Christmas fair. For ten
days, everyone was invited to come and have a
look at 140 stalls wherein liquor, socks, candles,
mints, and other festive items were sold. Although it didn’t snow, Christmas was just as nice.
It was the 26th time local residents and KU
Leuven students could ind each other at the
Christmas fair in Leuven. The fair had little to do
with the artiicial Bayern village at the station, as
it is held traditionally at the Ladeuze square and
the Hoover square. Although quite small, Leuven’s fair has its upsides: it was voted third in an
online poll where voters were asked which fair is
the cosiest in the whole of Europe.
Despite the cosiness of Leuven’s Christmas
fair, a local writer argued against it on his online
blog, stating the Ladeuze square “was illed with
stalls of fear and tents of terror.” He claimed to
prefer death over having a ifteen-minute walk at
the fair. I have decided to refute his allegations.
Of course stalls are found where stuff is sold
only to make proit. There were reindeer hats,
arty-farty decorations, and Christmas socks that
no one would probably wear on a regular day.
This kind of ‘stuff’ is everywhere, in all the shopping streets of Leuven and other places commercial. Proit was certainly not the core business of
the fair, so let me explain what was.
There was delicious food on every corner. Tartilettes, pea soup with bacon, Bratwursts of ifty
centimetres long on which an ininite amount of
topping could be put, and delicious sweets. For
drinks, Glühweins were served in all sorts of variaties. The fair was also the perfect moment to
discover new types of jenever, a local gin. I was,
once again, amazed by its different lavours:
Wafle! Chewing gum! An alcoholic drink which
tastes like candy is quite the danger for Flemings, especially when artists play classic songs to
which Flemings will be dancing the polonaise.
My friends and I were tongue-tied after seeing
a guy who made candy in an old-fashioned way.
With a rolling board he transformed eucalyptus
sirop into delicious –and even healthy– bon-bons.
Children were invited to visit the house
of Santa Claus, which was surrounded by
spruce trees. Santa was there from morning ‘til
dawn, and smiled the entire time. Pictures and
candy were taken freely.
The Christmas fair is about charity, people
spending time outdoors, and bonding together.
Around 500.000 people visited the Ladeuze
square this time. More than 25.000 of them
have bought candles for good causes, an alltime record supported by Belgian soap opera
stars who helped selling the candles. Speaking
of those who have invested time and effort into
the well-being of others: Organizing the fair was
only possible thanks to all the volunteers who
were on site every day and night.
I am not the only one who, sometimes, wonders when it was that people decided to translate Christmas spirit into a so-called drinking
contest, but then I remember that Christmas coincides with another time of the year: Midwinter
Night. It symbolizes the shortest day and longest
night of the year, and people have always celebrated this here by getting happily drunk. People
can pretend to be heathens again and joyfully
celebrate every given opportunity for a holiday.
I hope you have all had a Merry Christmas. Let’s
make 2014 a memorable year!
17
12/30/2013 4:37:29 PM
“THINKING GLOBALLY, ACTING SOCIALLY”
IS THE BIG MOTTO OF AIESEC WORLDWIDE
TEXT BY GABRIELLE BURGHOUWT
PHOTO BY
AIESEC LEUVEN
You have just graduated and are entering the
workforce. You have applied for several jobs
but have received few responses. The few that
did respond might have quoted “lack of experience” as the reason for not offering an interview.
This might happen to you because a university
degree alone is no longer enough. In this time of
economic crisis, the youth unemployment rate is
around 50% in some European countries. That
is why it is necessary to start building your CV
right now. But how?
AIESEC Leuven has some tips for you. But
irst of all, you should know what AIESEC is. It
is the largest student-run organization in the
world, and because we believe that the world
is designed by the people who live in it, our goal
is to develop both responsible and entrepreneurial young leaders. Koi Annan and Bono
are only two examples of successful AIESEC
alumni. Since AIESEC’s founding in 1948, the
organization has gained a lot of knowledge that
will be shared with you in these three careerbuilding tips.
18
The irst tip is that your soft skills are incredibly important. You should be able to speak to
anyone anywhere, no matter how many people
there are or how daunting the situation might
seem. Learn to sell yourself! It may seem trivial,
but by giving a presentation to a large audience
at an AIESEC event, you will learn these skills
quickly.
Secondly, AIESEC Leuven not only helps develop soft skills, it also works to teach you more
practical and career-oriented skills than might
be provided by a typical university education.
AIESEC gives you the opportunity to attend conferences that include training sessions by inspirational speakers and workshops that open your
eyes to new and exciting information. In doing
this, AIESEC Leuven offers you unique insight
into the professional world.
A third way to make yourself stand out is to
make your global mindset evident. AIESEC offers you a once in a lifetime opportunity to work
or volunteer abroad. This will make you stand
out in the application and interview stages of
the job hunt and give you exciting stories along
with a wealth of fond memories. Global Talent
of AIESEC Leuven gives you the opportunity to
get a professional, paid internship abroad in IT,
teaching, engineering, marketing, or business
administration. Internships range from six to
eighteen months, and the organization offers
the chance to volunteer abroad in locations as
exotic as Cambodia or Gabon.
But AIESEC Leuven is more than just internships and CV building. You will make lifelong
friends, have unique experiences, and create
memories that will last forever. Our motto: work
hard, play hard!
“It is time for undergraduates to start thinking outside the classroom for ways to gain
skills and experience that will help them in the
future. Experience is priceless. Gain as much
as you can while completing your studies, and
you will set yourself up for an amazing university experience and a great career afterwards.”
- Quote by C. Ruggiero, National VP Operations for the UK ofice of AIESEC
12/30/2013 4:37:29 PM
PHOTO BY
A MODEST PLEA TO
REFORM STUDENT CULTURE
TEXT BY JESSIKA NILSSON
Each year in October, I am mortiied by the
student activities taking place in the streets
of Leuven. Looking outside my window makes
my stomach turn, and I am not even witnessing
what other activities take place indoors. Student
initiations are practiced across the world, and
in some countries, it is normal for a student to
be subjected to humiliation, degradation, and
sadism. This list of countries includes Thailand
and Belgium. In other countries, these rituals
are conined to the posh housing of right-wing
radical student organizations — the kind that are
subject to strict observation by national intelligence agencies. I’m referring to, for instance,
Germany and Austria.
Each year, Flemings tell me that I just don’t
understand it, that participation is based on free
will, that it is culture, that it is a fun experience,
that the studentenpolitie has worked out a restrictive charter, and that in exchange for humiliation this year the initiates will have the chance
to do it to the next generation. I am fed up with
these excuses, and so I believe some of the activities allowed in student initiations should no
longer be tolerated or endorsed by a Catholic
university under any circumstances.
The ‘K’ in KU Leuven does stand for something; it is what makes this university a gatekeeper of morality and dignifying behaviour. It
should be the responsibility of KU Leuven to,
together with its students, create a learning environment that is free of harassment and violations of human dignity. The initiations ind roots
in Germany’s nineteenth-century nationalistic
Burschenschaften, when the country sought to
unite its members on the basis of strict, sometimes militarized, conditions. As a result, stu-
dent fraternities adopted a penalizing attitude
towards newcomers. The challenging ritual has
spread to some other countries, including Belgium, and is clearly still ongoing. Given our day
and age, I ind it so disgusting and inhumane that
I feel ashamed each year trying to explain to new
international students what is going on.
I understand that these initiations are voluntary and coming from a certain political background, and I am the last person to stop any acts
of sadomasochism between consenting adults.
Yet, it makes me sad to see how easily people
can be inluenced, how they subordinate themselves, and how the victim later becomes the
perpetrator. True forms of oppression are correlated with fascism, and hence I am afraid to learn
that participants in these events go on to be the
political and economic leaders of this nation. I am
torn on the question of banning the manipulations that young students have to go through to
ind acceptance at their faculty clubs. No victim,
no crime. But these things spin out of control.
I recall reading about the famous Stanford
Prison Experiment, conducted in 1971 by Dr.
Philip Zimbardo, where participants were assigned one of two roles, either prisoner or prison
guard. The experiment had to be ended early
because the role play quickly escalated into violence, with ‘guards’ abusing their power and the
powerless ‘prisoners’ without the means to say
“stop.” In Leuven, I have seen young girls drinking
buckets of alcohol mixed with their own vomit as
older girls drill them to continue at 7:00 a.m. out
in the open. The vomit-drinking kids didn’t know
what they were doing anymore, and the girls in
charge were so high on power and abuse that
they kept the spiral of violence running until the
streets became too busy with shops opening and
people going to work. This past summer in my
native country of Sweden, our most prestigious
boarding school was closed because at the initiations, the seniors tortured the newbies with an
iron. This wasn’t the plan, but it happened. Imagine being held down by older students as they
press an iron to your chest. Not what you signed
up for, right?
No charter can determine which degrading
behaviours are acceptable or not, as in practice
unexpected decisions can be made. Some activities easily turn from ‘adventurous’ to ‘dangerous’. We need a radical culture change. We need
to foster and mentor strong, young individuals.
This is our responsibility as Leuven community
members, and we owe it to our newcomers and
to society in general. We can initiate our newcomers in other ways; we can give them a tour
of the city or perhaps a treasure hunt, which was
my student initiation in Germany. Our neighbouring country does not tolerate sadism in
its universities anymore. Germany has learned
from its past; its institutions of higher education
are doing a respectable job in mentoring strongminded individuals who do not fall for peer pressure. Why can it not be the same in Flanders?
What could be lost by replacing sadism with a
warm welcoming ceremony? Why abuse the
concept of ‘strong culture’ by accommodating
plausible oppression within it? This is a call to
rethink moral values; far from fostering tyrants
or sheep who blindly follow orders, this is to help
our younger peers in becoming reliable pillars of
society.
If you haven’t done so yet, please read page 04 in this issue for a
recent news report about the risks involved in student initiations.
19
12/30/2013 4:37:29 PM
LEUVEN TRANSCIENCE:
“WE COME AND WE GO”
TEXT BY THE PROPER WRITES TEAM
016/3000
Every year people come, and people go
but in this place time seems to tick oh so slowly away,
no one notices, not everyone is here to stay
forever and as you lose, you gain
new friends, and colleagues, and people to complain
to about classes, and noises,
and annoying, whispering voices
stuck between the cobbled stones in the little streets
which are travelled by those people on a Belgian iets
these ancient roads tell so many stories
of Chinese, Dutch and Irish sweeties
and the tales of many a man, woman and child
that has ever wondered, looked and smiled
and then slowly realized
that this town is ever so bustling
full of talk, and laughter and the illing
of cups of ale, and beer and wine
it’s not easy to see this place as a line
on which some balance, and some jump
and against many yearly bump
trying to stay longer
wishing they were stronger
and to ease their heart, I let them know
here in Leuven people come, and people go.
PHOTO BY
ERDEM YILMAZ
20
12/30/2013 4:37:34 PM
Leuven Transience:
The Perennial Vicissitudes of an Itinerant Student
The American singer-songwriter James Taylor once explained the inspiration behind one of
his most popular songs, ‘Carolina in My Mind’, in
the following way: “I was homesick at the time. I
didn’t have a home at the time, but that doesn’t
keep you from being homesick sometimes.”
What I want to suggest is that behind the façade
of Taylor’s pithy witticism lies the enigmatic articulation of an experience shared by many students in Leuven. One inds oneself in an ambiguous, tensile position, from one world and yet not
in it, and in another world but not of it.
Indeed, Leuven is a city and a university
marked by transience and constant novelty,
yet situated against the backdrop of an ancient
university and an even more ancient town. One
could examine this experience under a variety
of different aspects, such as the historical one I
have just suggested. One could also view it more
abstractly, and restrict oneself to the general
present. And in this case, one could consider the
ephemeral character of Leuven life from both
an active and a passive perspective. The active
aspect pertains to those who are themselves
coming and going, ‘with their loins girt and staff
in hand’, as it were. This is the experience of virtually all international students, yet to a certain
extent of our fellow Flemish students as well.
For coming to a university in- troduces one to
a new world, whether it is 5 km away or 500.
This leads to the passive aspect, which can
easily be overlooked, especially by international
students. Viewed from this angle, one sees a
wide variety of people coming and going at a
veritably absurd rate. One reaction to this - and
a very natural one, I think - is to adopt a reserved
and distant stance towards ‘the other’. Such
aloofness arises out of a fundamental insecurity
about the stability of one’s ‘life world’: one wishes to domesticate it, to make it less uncertain,
less menacing and threatening. And one does so
by minimising it.
These two aspects, active and passive, which
I have here enumerated do interdigitate and
intermingle. Many who have experienced one
have experienced the other, if only mildly.
One could visualise them in terms of a Venn
diagram. Indeed, my relections arise out of my
own ex-periences of traveling and studying in
places marked by a constant turnover of students and others, namely New York City, the
University of St Andrews (sic) in Scotland, and
of course, the Catholic University of Leuven.
The active side of student transience is experienced most acutely in terms of an identity crisis,
the quintessentially postmodern experience of
being distended at one’s core. One is pulled in
different directions, so much so that the question of one’s identity is raised in a troubling
way. For one has been formed in one place, and
yet has undergone a rupture simply in virtue of
leaving, such that one’s identity has been irreversibly altered. But to what exactly? In coming
to Belgium, one does not thereby become Belgian. Granted, one is a student in Belgium, yet
even the signiicance of such a state is unclear,
and to a certain extent, what one makes of it.
Kurt Vonnegut once said that we are who we
pretend to be, and this is certainly true of the
itinerant student: one is free to select from multifarious, potentially disparate elements in order
to craft one’s self. However, and this is perhaps
the most challenging aspect of being a student
in transition: many aspects of one’s experiences
are beyond one’s control, whether in terms of
academics, professional, or personal life. There
may be discrepancies between what one wants
for one’s life and the actual situation as it shakes
out. Such a tension can easily lead to frustration,
disappointment, and despondency. And this is
regrettable and extremely dificult. Without dismissing or diminishing this experience, I would
like to offer a relection on an experience of my
own which might serve to mitigate some of the
more negative effects of such disappointment
and powerlessness.
At St Andrews, I had a good friend with whom
I spent a great deal of time; in many ways, we
were kindred spirits. That time was also a period
during which I consumed myself in worries and
insecurities over my future, my life, and other
factors beyond my control (cf. above). When the
spring was upon us and the year began to draw to
a close, we had a small going away party for this
friend, as his time at Andrews was also coming
to an end. I went to this and wished him well, not
thinking much about the signiicance of the occasion. The next, he was gone, across the Atlantic.
I only realized the inality of it later, and how he
was not returning, and that it would be a long
time before I ever saw him again. I spent so much
time worrying about things that I did not totally
appreciate the short time we had together. In the
ilm Meet Joe Black, Anthony Hopkins’ character
gives a poignant if pithy speech at the crescendo
of the ilm, encapsulating his entire life: “Sixtyive years, don’t they go by in a blink?” And that
is all. Whether it is a year or sixty-ive, they do
go by in a blink, and we miss the opportunity
right before us if we are too pre-occupied with
things beyond our own control, and which will
probably work out for the best anyway.
Our words overlow! Go to www.thevoiceleuven.be for the rest.
21
12/30/2013 4:37:38 PM
A COLLECTION
OF STUDENT POETRY
TEXT BY HKM
Nostalgia
You are not the minotaur
we should buy a bottle of wine
or two
or three (but I think two
shall be enough)
she can’t offer you
bread crumbs
she can’t offer you
red thread
to follow
but what she can offer
is this:
a temporary respite,
we should then get
lost
(I’m iguring out the
logistics because we should
end up in a ield)
as you are smothered
by the comforting blanket
of her words
tumbling out of her mouth
at lightning speed,
painting worlds
you cannot conceive
(yet)
and proceed to
stargaze while
getting steadily drunk
and cuddle
(rather a lot)
we should walk back
discussing critical theory
(do you remember? we
shared a history teacher,
I’m sure you do)
Groceries
and spraypaint
our souls
to the walls of the
city we’re haunting
she untangles
your
brain, even the dustiest
and most far-lung parts
as you dissolve into
helpless giggles
(you’re wearing the dress
the one that looks like you
sprinkled
lowers
all over it
and I want to inch
closer still
just to make sure
whether you smell the way
you did
before.
on the windowsill
rest the herbs
you coaxed
into life
basil and thyme
as well as your name,
rosemary
and you’re humming
as you pluck them
bare.)
here is the carton of milk
you wanted,
semi-skimmed,
and here are the eggs,
one of them broken,
I’m sorry, I couldn’t ind any
tomatoes.
but I bought you some
tulips, instead -
22
12/30/2013 4:37:38 PM
INTERACTIONS
COOK UP A FESTIVE RECIPE:
PANNENKOEKEN WITH GLüHWEIN
TEXT BY ALYSON FALLER
PHOTO BY
ALEX ZAMORA
The weather outside is frightful, but winter
snacks can be quite delightful! With only a few
ingredients and one stove burner, you can enjoy
traditional Belgian pannenkoeken and Glühwein.
Smakelijk!
PHOTO BY
KARIN FLISWASSER
Pannenkoeken
Glühwein
Ingredients:
Ingredients:
- Two eggs
- 250 g (2 cups) lour
- 0.5 l milk
- Butter
- Salt
- Toppings (optional): speculoos, Nutella, jam,
butter, white sugar, brown sugar, honey, …
- Extras (optional): cheese, apple slices, bacon
bits, raisins, …
- 1 bottle red wine (750 ml)
- 150 g White sugar (¾ cup)
- 200 ml water
- Spices: cinnamon (stick or powder), nutmeg,
anise pods (a whole star), cloves
- Fruit (suggested): 1 sliced orange, 1 can sour
cherries
- Extra alcohol (optional): Kirschwasser, cherry
schnapps, triple sec
Cooking necessities:
Cooking necessities:
- Mixing bowl
- Whisk or fork
- Ladle or cup
- Frying pan
- Stove
- Stove
- Saucepan
- Mugs for serving (If you only have glass cups,
warm the glasses by running them under warm
water before serving the wine.)
Preparation:
Preparation:
1. Beat eggs. Add a pinch of salt.
2. Slowly mix in lour. Blend well. Slowly mix in
milk, whisking as you go, until mixture is smooth.
3. Mix in any extras that you want!
4. Heat butter in a frying pan. Pour a ladle of
batter into the pan, tilting the bottom of pan so
that mixture is evenly spread.
5. Flip the pannenkoek when the bottom is dry
but the top is still a little moist.
6. Place the pannenkoek on a plate and repeat
steps 3-4 with remaining batter.
7. Smother your pannenkoeken in toppings of
your choice!
1. Combine sugar, spices, and water in saucepan.
Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer.
2. Alternative: If you would like to reduce the
alcohol content of your drink, add the bottle of
wine instead of water and heat on medium until
foaming. Reduce heat and simmer.
3. Suggested: Squeeze orange juice and add peel
into simmering mixture. Add cherries and/or
cherry juice.
4. If you have not already added the wine, add it
now. Keep heat low.
5. Optional: add 3-5 spoons of extra alcohol of
your choice.
6. Strain and serve warm.
PHOTO BY
KARIN FLISWASSER
23
12/30/2013 4:37:41 PM
ABOUT THE ENCHANTING ATMOSPHERE OF
CZECH CAPITAL WITH ALL ITS DUST AND GLORY
TEXT BY PAVLINA PAVLOVA
PHOTO BY
PAVLINA PAVLOVA
I am approaching Prague at 6:00 a.m., where
even stepping out of the train is a brave act, as
everything around is frozen. Paths are impossible to walk on, and I am sliding the way to my
friend’s place. Entering the apartment, I am
shocked by the 26 degrees inside. Czech students apparently know how to enjoy winter time.
Even though, their Belgian counterparts would
immediately raise some economical and ecological concerns. Seeing the amazement on my face,
my Czech friend explains it is a communist legacy, when municipal steam heating was provided
at a very low cost. I am not complaining. Having
the knowledge that the temperature outside is
reaching its historical minimum, there is nothing
more calming than sitting inside in your shorts.
It’s a compulsory thing after meeting local
people to go to the nearest pub for a beer or
two. We are entering a local pub, where vintage posters of old Czech movies catch my eye.
Their poetic slogans highlight the atmosphere of
timeless leisure. Although Belgium is world renowned for its beer, it is still just an apprentice in
comparison to Prague. To understand Czech nature, you have to irst look at its relationship with
beer. Going out to drink a beer is not an occasion
here; it is an inevitable part of one’s existence.
The beer culture is maintained on a daily basis by
meeting with friends, colleagues, or classmates
and discussing politics or just complaining about
24
daily matters. The Czech eternal passion for
beer makes me suspicious… there must be beer
circling in their veins instead of blood!
Comforted by Prague’s nightlife, we are leaving the pub and heading to the centre. The most
Christmassy atmosphere can be found in the
market on Old Town Square. As every single
day in the year, this historical hearth of the city
is lined by stalls and overcrowded with tourists
rushing around. We are joining the hive of tourists searching for some Christmas-warming hot
wine. The prices are far too high. Trapped among
German-speaking tourists, it is not dificult to
understand why. We are disappearing in one of
the many Old Town crooked streets. When my
Czech friend warns me that he can get lost in
this Babel even after ive years living here, I ind
myself subconsciously reaching for a map in my
handbag.
We are passing a local souvenir shop, where
Turkish music strikes me right away. The second amazement comes with all the matryoshkas,
Russian nested wooden dolls, featuring Russian
leaders that line the shelves. I am overcoming my
previous disgust and purchasing a fur hat.
“How do you do?” in Russian is the irst question I hear walking back in the streets. My friend
giggles, and I do not bother to explain I am not
Russian, and continue to fully enjoy my walk to
the Wenceslas Square.
Nothing compares to this place in winter.
What is a quite boring, dirty shopping street
during the day, changes into a vivid mixture of
blinking Christmas decoration, cheap pop music from hot-dog stalls, and the smell of roasted
chestnuts. I have an unstoppable need to hug
everybody and wish them a Very Merry Christmas when we are walking our way up to the
central statue. People place hundreds of candles
shaped into a heart for the commemoration of
Vaclav Havel, Czech dissident and last president
of Czechoslovakia. Standing there is a magical
moment. There is something indeinably sacred
in the atmosphere of mourning people joined together in a silent union. The moment makes me
feel so Christmassy, that on my way back, I no
longer mind some drug dealers standing in the
street corners and asking me “How do you do?”
with their cheesy smiles.
The next morning, we are standing at the
station waiting for our train to come. When
my teeth are chattering in the rhythm of “Jingle Bells,” I raise concerns that we actually may
freeze to death. Luckily, the train inally appears,
and I send my goodbye to Prague. There is a
strange thing that I am realizing while sitting on
the train. Prague is too enchanting to ever let
you go without losing a bit of your heart. Mine
is placed in one of the candles burning on the
Wenceslas Square for Vaclav Havel.
12/30/2013 4:37:41 PM
THIS IS INDIA
TEXT BY KAY WAYNE
On the side of the road I stand and watch cars,
rickshaws, and bikes rushing both ways, honking
their horns, and ringing their bells to get through
the congestion. People are yelling and stray dogs
are barking. The air is thick and muggy – the way
only India can be – and the smog makes it hard
to breath. It is around 10:00 p.m. in Mumbai,
but you wouldn’t know it looking around. There
are still people everywhere and the streets are
bustling. Lining the sides of the road are vendors
and hawkers of all sorts trying their hardest to
get passing people to buy their merchandise or
ride in their rickshaws. Sacred cows roam freely
but are incredibly underfed, while camels are put
to work pulling any number of the items for sale.
The sweat beads and drips from my forehead,
even though I’ve done nothing to exert myself
other than breathe.
Beside me a young girl taps my side and
stands with her hands open expectantly. I say
no. She bends down to touch my feet as a sign of
respect. She respects me, but she doesn’t even
know me. She just knows that I have more money
than she does. Or maybe it’s that she thinks that
if she touches me, in her next life she might be
born into luxury, or at the very least, subsistence.
I want to help her, but I know if I do, dozens more
will show up. I just don’t have enough rupees to
go around. I say no again. Most of these kids are
pimped anyway, and they won’t see any of the
money. That’s what I tell myself anyway to justify my lack of generosity as passing thoughts
of perpetuating a broken system low through
my head, taking any thoughts of sympathy along
with it and effectively removing me from the present situation. Eventually, she gives up, and I am
thankful to be rid of the nuisance.
Opposite me, on the other side of the road,
there is a bus stop. It is run-down, and if there
weren’t any people waiting there, I wouldn’t
know it was a bus stop at all. I survey the people
waiting, and I notice a man who has one leg on
a wooden crutch leaning up against the side of
a pole. He has just inished urinating against the
wall behind the bus stop. His lazy eye drifts, and
I can’t tell if he is looking at me, so I look away.
Beside him, a man dressed in a button-up shirt
and slacks, presumably a businessman, speaks
on his cell phone. He is yelling something. I only
know this because of his actions as the sound of
the street drowns out his voice. A little girl looks
up at him, and it is obvious she lives on the street.
Her hand is also open expectantly. The man on
the phone ignores her. He is used to this situation, and maybe he is savvier than I am. She too,
gives up eventually and turns back towards her
mother, who is lying under the bus shelter with
rags covering her pregnant body. She is sleeping,
or trying to. This scene should break my heart,
but it seems we have a way of pushing the suffering aside, especially when it is not we who
are suffering. Apathy is perhaps the strongest of
emotions.
Just a little to the left of the pregnant lady is
a bright red Honda generator. It is burning away
loudly, and it seems that the only thing it is powering is the Dove advertisement above the bus
shelter. The ad has a bright white background
with half of a pale face of clear complexion and
the other half of darker skin. It reads, “Give us
half your face.”
This is India: where the rich and the poor, the
well-fed and the hungry, the able-bodied and the
lame, walk – or at least try to walk – the streets
together.
PHOTO BY
KAY WAYNE
25
12/30/2013 4:37:42 PM
FACULTY VOICES:
CAPTURE YOUR FACULTY IN A PICTURE
TEXT BY KARIN FLISWASSER
For this issue, participants have captured
their faculty in a picture in accordance with their
personal taste. Their creativity shines through
the pictures they have taken. Congratulations!
For the FEBRUARY/MARCH issue, THE
VOICE encourages future participants to tell us
a random joke about something that happened
in your faculty, or share something peculiar that
you have ‘spotted’ at your faculty.
Submissions should be sent to the magazine’s
e-mail address, [email protected], no later than
the last week of February 2014. Any submission
which represents your faculty in a funny or weird
way will deinitely be published, so keep in touch!
Faculty of Economics and Business
PHOTO BY
DN
Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies
PHOTO BY
STIPE ODAK
26
12/30/2013 4:37:44 PM
Faculty of Arts
PHOTO BY
SERENA CORIO
Faculty of Social Sciences
Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa
PHOTO BY
KALINA DE BLAUWE
PHOTO BY
27
12/30/2013 4:37:46 PM
PROFILE:
MEET PROF. THEO D’HAEN
PHOTO BY
SERENA CORIO
Our understanding of plagiarism as an immoral act dates back to the Romantic period. Originality as an ideal became prevalent in Europe
only as late as the 18th century. Can you tell us
more about the background of its emergence?
One has to distinguish between plagiarism
in literary and scientiic ields. We have to bear
in mind that the call for originality is not a condemnation of plagiarism. In the scientiic ield,
there was always the courtesy and honour to
acknowledge other people’s ideas. This acknowledgement was formalized in the form of copyright laws during the 19th century. In the literary scene, an emphasis on expressing oneself
emerged in the Romantic period. While before,
it was more relevant to say old things in a new
guise, claiming something new became important in Romanticism.
The changes witnessed in the 18th century
were speciic to Europe. In today’s world, we can
observe cultural variations with regards to plagiarism. Other cultures do not perceive plagia-
28
rism the same way as we do. The Western scholarly conventions have developed, and plagiarism
is nowadays considered as unacceptable.
If it emerged only out of the changes in the
Zeitgeist of a speciic period on a speciic continent, we could assume that plagiarism is not a
universally acknowledged act of immorality. Is it
then feasible to plagiarize if one does not abide
by the spirit of Europe in the 18th century?
Plagiarizing is not necessarily about being immoral, but it is illegal. In the Western context, it
is important not to plagiarize as people should
be able to know what others have been able to
think and formulate by themselves. One’s work
might not be judged by the same standards in
other cultures.
One of the core reasons why plagiarizing is
discouraged is because we want to advance
science and scholarship. It means that scholars
have to add something to the reservoir of already available works. Those who can contrib-
ute by adding to that reservoir are appreciated
more. Deterring plagiarism precludes stasis. For
this reason, our institutions of higher education
have codiied that students shall not plagiarize.
Apart from motivating students ‘internally’
to not plagiarize for the sake of advancing science, they can be motivated ‘externally’ as well.
The restrictive measures of KU Leuven against
plagiarism range from failing a task to expulsion
from the university. How are these measures
implemented? And how do they encourage students to write original papers?
When I was a director of the European Studies programme, I came across a student who had
handed in a published article of another author
with her own name on it! She was expelled. The
rule is, if you use other people’s materials or
ideas, no matter to what extent, it will be considered as a case of plagiarism. Plagiarizing a thesis
is usually punished by expulsion. However, no
one is expelled for one or two copied lines. I’m
not sure anyone notices it at all.
12/30/2013 4:37:48 PM
cussions] is hardly possible. For example, the
numbers are relatively small in classes on Italian
or German literature, while English and Dutch
literature have too many student and few electives. The number of attendees is therefore high.
Even though Belgium is not unique in overloaded seminars, the US and the Scandinavian countries are much closer to the ideal. Also Chinese
universities allow a maximum of 25 people in a
graduate seminar.
We could conclude that prestigious universities in other regions are often able to manage
the overload of students better. Isn’t that disconcerting for the university oficials?
Today’s situation is a result of democratization
in Europe, where the number of staff members
has not kept pace with the increasing number
of students. In sciences and engineering, money
is brought to the faculty through research projects. Additionally, doctoral and postdoctoral
scholars are engaged in teaching, which means
that there are more seminars on offer, and the
size of seminar groups reduces.
Apart from the external restrictive measures,
how do you think intrinsic motivation can be
built up to encourage students to be original in
their writings?
The eficacy of these measures depends on
the number of teaching staff identifying plagiarized material. Particularly graduate seminars,
where students are obliged to hand in a paper,
consist of maximum 25 people. The teacher
should have enough time to exchange ideas with
students and get to know their capabilities. In
such cases, the restrictive measures would be
very effective, as any attempt at plagiarizing
runs a high risk of being caught.
How many students do you have on average in
your bachelor and master courses?
I have had bachelor survey courses with a
maximum of 130 students. These are mainly
knowledge-transfer classes, where students
write an exam and are evaluated for absorbing
information. But in the case of master seminars,
the pedagogical goal is completely different.
Students have to learn how to formulate their
ideas, and discussions play an important role in
this process. I have graduate seminars with 60
to 100 students, in which the concept [of dis-
Inner motivation is culture-bound and dificult
to create. I have noticed that Chinese students
have dificulties in abandoning ideas that have
been already expressed in published articles. In
the Eastern cultures, authority of the mentor as
well as the written word is still respected. But we
cannot claim that only non-Western students
plagiarize. Flemish students probably plagiarize
as often as their foreign counterparts, but their
reasons are more individual than cultural. Our
vision is that students need to learn arguing with
the written word. They should use someone
else’s arguments only to develop their own ideas
and therefore contribute to the discussion.
With the increasing number of international
students at KU Leuven, one could expect the
cases of undetected plagiarism to increase as
our programmes are unable to detect similar
structures cross-linguistically. Practically speaking, there is almost no way to detect whether a
work is a translation or whether it is an original
paper. Have you come across a case of interlingual plagiarism?
No, I don’t have any personal experience with
inter-lingual plagiarism. It’s very possible though
that it has happened. I would have to knowingly
look for it, even if the translation had been done
from a language I speak. For example, if a Flemish student writes something in English on an
American author, it would be dificult to ind out
plagiarism if he used Spanish sources.
Plagiarism detectors at KU Leuven are unable
to detect an equivalent or similar string of words
in other languages. They become less effective
with wider distances between language families.
Style breaks are one method to identify plagiarized material, but if the entire work is translated
from a published or an unpublished source, then
it is impossible to detect plagiarism this way.
What is your personal perception of plagiarism? Would you take it personally if you realized
that a student had plagiarized?
They wouldn’t have been disrespectful to me
but to other fellow students, the profession, and
the institution. It is like asking to be judged by
different standards, while others play an honest
game. My main feeling would be disappointment
with the student for not playing by the rules.
What methods do you employ in your classes
to discourage your students from plagiarizing?
I set tasks that require students to think for
themselves, tasks for which they would not be
able to ind something rough and ready to submit. I don’t want just a piece expressing an opinion; I want a paper that demonstrates an ability to discuss their indings with other scholars.
Moreover, a suficient bibliography should contain a certain number of both printed and digital
sources.
To create intrinsic motivation, have you ever
offered to help students with publishing their
papers if they are good quality?
I know some colleagues who have, but I
haven’t personally done so. Things have changed
since we began to work with the 3+1 system. A
bachelor’s paper is short by deinition and the
master’s thesis is written in one year instead of
the previously preferred two years. The depth of
the work is not the same. If people write a good
thesis, you encourage them to elaborate it into a
Ph.D. project. As far as I know, the chance of getting a doctoral scholarship for Belgian students
is roughly one out of ten. This motivation should
be suficient for students to turn up original,
well-researched works.
29
12/30/2013 4:37:49 PM
TEST:
CAN YOU HANDLE EXAM STRESS?
TEXT BY LIMIN LIANG
Four choices:
A. exactly like me (THREE POINTS)
B. somewhat like me (TWO POINTS)
C. not quite like me (ONE POINT)
D. not at all like me (ZERO)
Look through the questions, put the right letter next to each question, and add up all the points in the end.
Level of anxiety:
I feel idgety several days before exams.
I have an upset stomach (or worse!) while studying for exams.
My body trembles before I get an exam paper.
I always feel distressed before exams.
I always lose my temper before exams.
As exams approach, I always constantly thinking, “What if I fail?”
As exams approach, I ind it hard to concentrate.
As exams approach, I have no interest in doing any sports.
Before exams, I always feel that my exams will be a catastrophe.
As exams approach, I have dreams and nightmares about exams.
I am extremely anxious on the irst day of exams.
I feel nervous before entering the classroom.
My brain works slower than usual during exams.
I feel nervous when I see that the exam has lots of questions.
My hands become ice-cold during exams.
I am extremely nervous seeing the exam on paper.
I worry about failing the course when I have unsolved questions.
I am absent-minded during the exam.
I cannot recall even the most basic information during the exam.
During the exam, I sometimes start daydreaming.
During the exam, I always need to use the bathroom.
I always sweat profusely during the exam.
My body trembles during the exam.
I usually misunderstand exam questions, even if I’ve seen something similar before.
I get headaches during important exams.
I panic if I think I won’t have enough time to inish all the questions.
I feel frustrated if I make mistakes on what I should have known.
Right before important exams, I get diarrhoea.
I am tired of taking exams.
I like taking exams only when they are not graded.
0-24 Calm, good psychological state
25-49 Mild anxiety
50-74 Moderate anxiety
75-96 Severe anxiety
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Relax, there is light at the end of the tunnel!
PHOTO BY
DANIEL MIRANDA
30
12/30/2013 4:37:49 PM

Study Special - The Voice Leuven

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