Publications 

Allow me to start with a clumsy analogy, but one that I’m sure you’ll get: imagine you’re renting a  flat with friends, and one morning, dangerously close to Christmas, you’re walking out of your room still groggy, and you find your landlord cordoning off part of your flat. As he readily lets you know, he decided to sell your living room.  You’re in shock for a second, but only for one,  since although this is incredibly upsetting news,  it’s also surreal, downright nonsensic

I hate to break it to the 5% of people on campus who aren’t aware of the frequent scabies epidemics and mono outbreaks, but, sadly, they do exist. For many reasons, people try to keep their symptoms on the down-low, causing outbreaks of these diseases on campus. This is a part of living on a campus where hooking up is as easy as it gets (but, hey, it's okay if this isn’t the case for you). It is due to the uneven gender ratio, the relatively short walks of shame, being fresh

With around 800 people pressed into around 65.000 square meters, our campus often feels less like a  university and more like an elegant, slightly chaotic experiment in applied mathematics. The  experiment features a residential community, three academic buildings that double as housing, a quad that everyone must cross, and a population density that guarantees  you will run into someone you  know within seconds of leaving your room. In a closed system like this, probability b

The oversimplification of social media gender archetypes I, an Instagram Reels user, tend to lag behind a bit when it comes to internet trends. That’s why, when I first arrived at UCU, I didn’t understand what people meant when they joked about ‘performative males’. I quickly learned, however, that a performative male is an internet meme referring to a man who performs feminism, progressivism, and emotional sensitivity as a means to trick women into liking him. This man carri

The Boomerang Winter edition has finally arrived, and that means we’re swiftly moving towards the end of the first semester of 2025/26. A great moment to look back and reflect! Although a lot has happened in the past months, one thing mainly caught my, among many others’, attention. There seems to be a significant mismatch between campus’s perception of the UCSA and their own. This creates distance between them and the other students. Let me start by emphasizing that UCSA des

by Anonymous TW: Sexual assault Since I was young, probably around the age of 13, I have been made aware of the disgusting hold the male gaze has on myself, my friends, the media, and the resolve of the Western world. Intertwined with the patriarchy’s governance, the male gaze tears into my back until I bleed. One vivid memory that I feel I carry unwillingly, attached like a parasite, is when I moved to a British School and was made to wear a school uniform. Rolling up my sk

Out of 314 new students, only 14 Dutch men were accepted into University College Utrecht in 2025, the lowest in years. On the first day of the introduction week of University College Utrecht’s 2025-2026 academic year, 314 eager first-year students flooded the dining hall. Amid the chatter in Dutch and English, one figure stands out, not for what it says, but for what it represents. Out of 314 first-years, only 14 are Dutch men.  The gender gap at UCU has long been pronounced.

A response to Logan Janssen’s “The Souls of Small Creatures” You’re laying in bed, but you can’t sleep. Your room is certainly warm enough, dark enough, and yet, it seems abuzz with activity. The pitter-patter of small steps above you makes you question if you’re imagining it or if it’s real. Frustrated, you make your way to the kitchen for some water. From the dark crevice between the fridge and the stove, you’re being watched, you just don’t know it yet. So, you reach for t

Despite upcoming finals, many students at UCU were willing to take the time out of their day to speak with me about the importance of DH to them. Many reiterated the points Bence makes in “Let’s Talk Dining Hall,” but this is an overview of some of the other topics and questions that came up.  Many students were unsure whether there were any logical alternatives. (This included UCU’s budget, but, to clarify, the sale would help cut UU costs and does not directly impact UCU’s

One of the defining features of a Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) education in the Netherlands is the promise of small classes. At our university college, no class is larger than 28 students, and many advanced courses, especially at levels 2 and 3, are much smaller. Some have six students, others four, and sometimes even three, and the reason lies in the distinction between following a track fully or treating its constituent courses as electives. In theory, these settings hav

Abroad in Utrecht *This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental. I had been dreaming of studying abroad since high school — an idea instilled in the American mind as the idealized experience one hopes will change their life forever. Given this pressure, choosing where to live for five months was one of the hardest decisions of my life.  So, naturally, I asked ChatGPT. Yes, SuperStickySurfaces, you were r

I remember learning of the Roman Republic for the first time as a child and being utterly captivated by the knowledge, wholly novel to me at age five, that there had been entire civilizations that began and ended long before I stumbled into the world. In some ways, it was the mystique, the strange unknowableness that millennia bring, but that was not unique to Rome; I’d already become plenty obsessed with dinosaurs, and they have a lot more than mere millennia in that departm

There is something that has long felt unfair to me about the way things are ; it is the fact that the more comfortable you are with yourself, the easier it will be for you to connect to people. In some ways, for those of us who are on the shyer side, it almost feels like the universe is punishing you, like it’s all some divine humiliation: what you crave the most is being understood, but the very thing that you need to do to get that connection is to go against what you have

Little bee, good friend, hello! Do not mind me taking a seat in the grass as you climb through sprouts of lavender with your friends. I do hope I am not interrupting. I have someone I’m meeting here soon, but the weather is nice and you are here, so it is a good day to be waiting. It is pleasant to have found your company again. Indeed, indeed, I should let you get back to that, but I'm really sorry, I can't help myself. I just have to talk to you right now. There are so many