Petition results

Petition to survey the VU community on their views of the Ph.D. defense ceremony rites

Initiative takers: Ruben Bakker, Ruud Rijkers, Judith Smit, Andrew Cronin.

Affiliated: A-Life institute, section ecology and evolution.

The VU is home to a diverse and vibrant community of which we are proud members. Contrary to other universities, the VU offers a “come as you are, and leave nothing at home” mentality: including your religious beliefs and personal convictions. The VU offers places of reflection and contemplation for its employees or students, which we believe are healthy habits. The religious background of the university is have caused tension. Yet, we believe the VU’s roots could form the foundation for something new, something to embrace and something to welcome. Luckily, the history of Protestantism can guide us in this transition. Instead of holding on to old traditions of the Catholic church, protestant preachers stopped preaching in Latin and brought faith to the people in their local language. Let us continue this tradition and learn how to reach the VU community, inspire it with our common values and break with traditions that no longer serve us. By gathering the opinions of the VU community, we will finally have the knowledge to do so. The VU staff council and management bodies should embrace the petition and following survey. When successful, the VU Ph.D. defense ceremony can be transformed from a point of contention and debate to a ceremony deserving praise and one that properly represents the core values of the VU: responsibility, openness, and personal engagement.

Below we provide background information, a summary of the findings of our petition, and our concluding remarks based on these findings.

0. What are the votum and doxology

During the Ph.D. thesis defense ceremony, the chair is mandated to read multiple bible verses.

At the opening of the ceremony the votum is spoken:

“Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” (Psalm 124:8)

After 45 minutes of questioning the Ph.D. candidate, the committee withdraws for their private deliberation on whether the Ph.D. candidate defended their thesis sufficiently to obtain their doctorate. Before their deliberation can begin, the chair needs to read out a self-chosen paragraph of the bible.

After the committee reconvenes with the audience, the ceremony is ended publicly with the doxology:

“Let the name of the Lord be praised, both now and forevermore.” (Psalm 113:2)

1. Characteristics of respondents.

A total of 342 individuals signed the “Petition to survey the VU community on their views of the Ph.D. defense ceremony rites”. Though we were unable to find a current census of the staff at the VU, we utilized the VU website “vu-in-cijfers” from 2020 to approximate the percentage of respondents in a Ph.D. position. We estimate that 25% of Ph.D. candidates signed our petition (160 out of 652 Ph.D. candidates at the VU in 2020). Although there are no numbers available to us for tenured positions, we do consider this group to be among the highest respondents. There are far fewer tenured staff than Ph.D. candidates. Yet, from all the respondents, 28 % were tenure trackers (97 out of 346 total respondents). We believe that this is reflective of the community members that are most affected by the votum and doxology, as they are often directly involved with the Ph.D. dissertation defense ceremony or equivalent ceremonies.

We found that the majority of signatories were from the beta-faculty. We attribute this to two factors: 1) the initiators of this petition were all within the beta-faculty, and 2) this petition was mentioned in the beta-zine, a widely read outlet for information and news within the faculty.

From all respondents, 231 (68 %) signed the petition with their name. Indicating a large portion of respondents did not want their name to be made available even when it is only concerning internal VU communication. Therefore, we recommend that future efforts collect responses anonymously.

2. The effect of communication channel’s audience on the number of signatures.

We saw that if the audience of the communication channel was broader, this negatively impacted the number of new signatures. Of course, the list is not exhaustive and anecdotal. Some important events might have coincided with other relevant events. However, in general we saw no to low impact on the number of new signatures by advertising through the monitors on campus or our interview being published in Ad Valvas, see figure 1 lines B and C. Our messaging was removed from the monitors on campus without notice. We do not know how long the message remained on the monitors. Nevertheless, most other media of communication had an immediate impact on the number of respondents. Therefore, we still conclude that the monitors had a low impact on the number of signatures.

Two major boosts came from beta-zine (line A) and our announcement to close the petition (line D). In particular, the newsletter beta-zine had the largest impact on the number of new signatures. We were denied publication by most other newsletters, i.e. “the zines”, even on the date of publication. We recommend that future attempts are allowed access to these newsletters. Another motivational factor to sign the petition was personal contact from direct colleagues. As indicated by an increase in new signatures after the closing announcement.

Closing the official communication channels to our messaging might seems prudent. However, we predict that the current establishment, by exercising their gravitas and control, will lose this grip controlling future efforts. By hampering access to official communi3. The effect of collective free days on the number of signatures.

cation channels, future efforts will focus on publication and messaging elsewhere. We already had to use Google From and other Google associated apps that are freely available. Future “grass-roots” led efforts (i.e. not officially led by the VU) are encouraged to use unrestricted social media outlets, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, to get their message across. Simply, these media are the only ones available to them. We have in large part not considered these media, to prevent polarization and further hardening of the debate. If employees remain barred from public speech by blocking their access to official communication channels at the VU, we predict the current establishment will lose its grip. Resulting in a more democratic, but less civil debate.

Figure 1: the daily number of signatures (A) and the cumulative number of signatures (B) during the petition duration. Shaded light grey areas on the panel’s background are holiday or free days. The black lines on the panels mark important events and are labelled as follows: A: beta-zine (28^th of April), B: monitors across the university advertised the petition (10^th of May), C: Ad valvas was published online 18^th of May, D: closing announcement (24^th of May).

3. The effect of collective free days on the number of signatures.

Fewer people signed the petition during collective free days, holidays or weekends. Although the petition was online for more than a month (48 days) more than half were free days (27 days or 56 %). We recommend that future attempts do not survey the VU community during the months of April and May.

4. Effect of required login on the number of signatures.

In our experience, after the website launched we received fewer emails asking for support to login on the website. We understand the login process could be challenging. However, we wanted to ensure the validity of the signatures and prevent abuse by using a required login. We received emails by concerned colleagues at faculties where the newsletter, “zines”, did not communicate the petition. In particular the medical faculty is not represented in the petition findings as their email-extension did not receive access until the final days of the petition. We had asked for a VU-net environment to host the petition so we could more readily collect signatures but our request was not answered. Hopefully future efforts will be given access to the resources and infrastructure of the university.

5. Conclusions

We believe, based on the findings of our petition, that the VU university management and staff council should initiate an official inquiry into the Ph.D. defense ceremony rites, and focusing on, but not limited to, the votum and doxology. This survey should ideally be carried out via a neutral third party. Any survey created should be made available throughout the entirety of the university, through the use of the university’s “zines”, and via an online portal within the VU net infrastructure to remove barriers for people to access the survey. With this survey, we believe that the VU will be provided with a thorough understanding of the diverse opinions and beliefs held by members of the VU community. By better understanding the diverse beliefs and opinions held by members of the VU, this university will be able to act appropriately in order to continue to foster a responsible, open, and personally engaged community.

Figure 2: a pie chart representation of the respondent’s willingness to stay in touch, willingness to disclose their names, their role at the university and their faculty. The first question asked respondents whether we could send them follow-up emails and updates about the petition. The second question resulted in a table of names already sent to the staff council. The third question asked respondents for their role at the University and their faculty, a table is provided below.

Table 1: The questions asked in the petition, the respondents answers and the tally.