As I stand here – now politically homeless, having recently and abruptly left my role as Vice Chair of the University Student Council (USR) – I find myself reflecting on an intense and revelatory journey. Having been at the forefront of student participation at VU Amsterdam for seven months, I witnessed a dramatic and concerning increase in the polarisation around us.
This tension is not merely about the substance of our debates, but the sentiment behind them. We are witnessing the rise of something called ‘affective polarisation’, a phenomenon where political differences transform into personal hatred and animosity. It is no longer about being “right”, but about viewing the ‘other’ with deep distrust and contempt. It marks the shift from debating different ideas to debating the moral character of the people who represent them; we are going from disagreement to resentment and moral judgement. Recent events on campus are merely symptoms of this shift. Both political extremes have become increasingly loud, and over the last few years, we have seen institutions within our university gradually taken over by this kind of behaviour.
Reflecting on this year, these are the lessons I challenge every student – engaged or not – to consider:
Four percent does not represent the majority
First, we must realise that extreme groups on both the left and right do not represent the student majority, despite their claims to the contrary. The data speaks for itself. Research indicates that in the Netherlands, extremes on the left and right account for only about four percent of the total population. In this context, “extremism” is defined as the fundamental rejection of the liberal democratic state and the values of pluralism, characterised by a “claim for absolute truth” and the construction of “friends-and-foe images”.
Applied to our campus, that four percent represents roughly 1200 students. Currently, this small minority is not only holding the megaphone, but they are also sitting in the front seat of student representation making their voice heard, while the remaining 96 percent are primarily concerned with other matters like their education. This is not intended to delegitimise the concerns of those 1200 individuals – in fact, we may agree with many of their points ourselves. However, it is misguided to think to say they represent the opinion of the students at large. Should our decision-makers prioritise the voices of the few over the voices of the many? It is time we ask if our attention should be on the loudest room, instead of the largest.
A warning for our institutions
The danger of the “loudest room” paradigm is the change of the fundamental aim of representation. Furthermore, this shift happens silently taking place of a representative system which used to be representative of the students at large. Our silence as the majority has consequences. When the middle ground is abandoned, we leave a vacuum in the governance of our university. In this void, institutions of representation like the USR are drawn, and later hijacked, into narrow ideological interests.
While the student union, SRVU, serves as a space for activist expression, the USR on the other hand must remain a representative governance body. To be clear, the USR is not ‘apolitical’. Deciding to prioritise mental health funding or student housing is a political choice driven by values. This is exactly what the WHW (the Dutch Higher Education and Research Act) intended with student councils: to provide space to represent students in the university’s budget and policy. However, extending that mandate to global geopolitics is a choice – and a polarising one. It crowds the limited space we have to influence student life on campus and to create tangible change in relevant matters for students. I saw this firsthand when an internal debate over an international flotilla paralysed the council for more than a week, leaving us fragmented and incapacitated. The result? Our actual legal duties were put on hold, vital dossiers were delayed, and scrutinising each other’s personal opinions was prioritised over the legally mandated work. In this environment, seeking nuance or not wanting to issue a statement taking a side was seen equated with complicity. It is impossible to justify how this serves the student body. It is the abandonment of our responsibility to the 31,000 students who rely on us to govern.
History at the VU shows exactly what happens next. We can look at the recent decline of the SRVU to see this pattern in action. As reported before, the SRVU saw a dramatic exit of board members and lost half its votes in a single election. The result was indeed institutional paralysis: indecisiveness, ideological administration, and a perception that “one topic” had swallowed the entire agenda.
By moving from broad student representation to a narrow activist wing, they lost the voice they were trying to make heard. This is precisely what we fear is happening to the USR. The USR is not, and should not be, a protest group; it is a governance body. It is the only functional and legally mandated bridge between students and the Executive Board. If we allow the USR to become a stage for global geopolitics instead of an institutional tool for students’ actual needs, we will lose the only tool we have.
At that point, student voices will not just be unheard, they will be effectively extinct in the rooms where decisions are made. This is because governance relies on a partnership of trust. When the USR shifts from a representative body to an activist group, the Executive Board will stop seeing us as a partner to negotiate with and start seeing us as a PR crisis to be managed. In other words, you cannot sit at the table that you have just set on fire.
The extremist litmus test: why the middle is silent
If the stakes are this high, why is the majority not speaking up? Because the extremes have created a climate of fear. The reason this “exhausted majority” remains silent is not due to a lack of conviction but a lack of space. In the current climate, the middle is not seen as a place for nuance but as a site of disloyalty. Nowhere is this more evident than in the most painful discourse on our campus: the Israel-Palestine conflict.
In this debate, I have found myself politically homeless because I refuse to choose the side of a false coin. I believe Israel has the right to exist, just as I believe Palestine has the right to exist. I condemn the Israeli genocide in Gaza, just like I condemn the atrocities committed by Hamas. To those at the extremes, these statements may seem contradictory. To me, they are the only way to maintain my empathy for everyone involved.
Being able to hold two truths simultaneously is a strength, not a weakness. When we reduce complex human suffering into a simple binary, a safe and nuanced dialogue becomes impossible. As we approach political extremes, one thing becomes clear: offering nuance and prioritising professional governance over party loyalty leads you to being labelled as the ‘other’, a ‘puppet’, ‘sympathiser’, or even ‘complicit in genocide’. Where do we belong, then, if not in this seemingly empty space we call the middle? Being in this middle takes courage. In a polarised room, both sides will label you as a traitor or an apologist. It is a lonely place to stand, at first. But that loneliness fades the moment you realise you are standing with the 96 percent. We will have our disagreements – of course, we are not a monolith – but we can also have discussions. Let us not allow the shouting at the extremes to silence the conversation in the middle.
From shouting to building
While individuals are responsible for their own actions, we are all responsible for the culture of our campus. Activism is a vital democratic tool, but it lacks the constructive capacity needed to govern 31,000 people. We must decide what we want the USR to be: a partner in negotiation or a target for management. When our representatives choose megaphones over dialogue, they lose the ability to be heard in the first place The louder you scream, the deafer the people around you become. Extremism prevents results and promotes polarisation, which in turn feeds extremism.
It is time for the “exhausted majority” – the 96 percent – to reclaim the middle. This means demanding a student council that prioritises student needs and interests over ideological battles. It means looking past the slogans of the upcoming council elections and discovering which parties aim to represent the student body as a whole. We have seen firsthand the breaking of the institution. It is now time to stop shouting at each other and start building something better for each other.
The author is co-founder of ConsensusVU, one of the parties partaking in the current student council elections.
Isn’t their candidate VSP?