Last Monday evening, a group of students, who were involved in the pro Palestine protests of last academic year, were followed by two security guards. Radboud University firmly denies this.
A remarkable sight in the Elinor Ostrom building: two employees from private security companies sitting on a couch in the kitchen of the Ondergang on Monday evening. It becomes clear from a conversation with these security guards that they came across a group of pro-Palestine students around half past five during their standard route. The guards followed the group until the students went into a room under the Elinor Ostrom building to have a meeting. The two men continued to sit on the blue couches just outside the room for the entirety of the meeting.
The men said that they ‘just recognised’ some of the students’ faces, but other students were recognised at the hand of reports that had been shared with them. They also mentioned that the office of Student Union AKKU is being monitored extra closely, due to their support to the protestors. This office was opened up to pro Palestine activists during the encampment, to allow them access to the sanitary facilities in the Elinor Ostrom building. Security left the Ondergang around nine o’ clock.
According to the security guards, their action was meant to be ‘preventive’. What kind of behaviour they were attempting to prevent, they did not want to say. They did mention a lot of vandalism has been taking place on campus since the Palestine encampment in May. They also said that the placing of any kind of stickers is no longer desired after years of tolerance towards it. ‘Given the events of the past year’ this type of vandalism will be cracked down upon, according to security.
‘Standard procedure’
Two students* who were attending the meeting, react indignantly to the behaviour of the security guards. ‘The room was booked in the name of Student Union AKKU. Through targeted surveillance, the union is being suspected’, one of them says. ‘At this point it’s standard procedure. We are being profiled’, another student adds. ‘What does this say about the state of democratic decision-making at university, when security is monitoring the student union?’
The second student also shares worries that reports of individual protestors are indeed being shared among security members, as the security guards admitted earlier. ‘I know most of the security guards. It’s a small group and we talk to them often. However, I haven’t seen these two men before. If the people from security hadn’t shared images of activists with each other, these two would not have been able to recognise us.’
Nevertheless, the activists remain willing to fight back. ‘We will not let surveillance stop us.’
Responses
‘This type of intimidation and monitoring is foul play and not beneficial to an open academic climate’, the board of Student Union AKKU states in response. ‘This incident is a continuation of a line that has been deployed before, for instance when a lecture series about Palestine was blocked. As the student union, we worry about our own privacy and safety. We will take on this matter in the University Student Council.’
A spokesperson for the university says in a response that there has been a reconstruction ‘with the involved colleagues’ about what happened precisely on Monday evening. ‘A different image emerges from this, as we expected.’ According to the university, no students have been followed. Instead, security was notified of something happening at Elinor Ostrom and only shortly went to see what was going on. The spokesperson says that after this, the security guards continued their usual route. However, multiple students of different student organisations witnessed the presence of security in the hallway for hours.
Interestingly, the security personnel themselves said to have recognised certain students. After inquiry among others that were involved with the Palestine encampment, there were students who did recognise one of the security guards. Radboud University states that this is not possible: the two security guards were, supposedly, only recently employed.
In the response, the university spokesperson emphasises that the following of students by security would not be in line with university policy, and also not desired.
*the names of the students are known to the editorial board.