Dear fellow faculty, staff, and students of IPA,

You will have seen the announcements from our Deans and Boards: the Joint Meeting of the Central Student Council and the Central Works Council of the UvA has once again rejected the UvA/VU/SRON collaboration plans, and the Deans and Boards of UvA and VU have communicated their acceptance of the rejection.

No doubt you share our sense of dismay, disappointment, grief, and injustice over this disastrous course of events. Our plans were externally judged to be excellent, and there was broad consensus about them among us. Not only our staff, but also our students, defended the plans gallantly and with all their might. Most councils and representative bodies involved became convinced, and voted in favor. Even the councils opposing the total plan were positive about the IPA/SRON part.  And yet they were rejected, now for the second time.

As UvA faculty, both Daniel and Ralph in addition feel a deep sense of shame towards our colleagues of VU physics and SRON.

There was a curious tail to last Friday’s Council meeting: a unanimous vote of the Student and Works Councils in support of the participation of UvA in the HighTIF building to house SRON. Whether that signals a silver lining to today's very dark cloud we do not know. We can only say that we remain convinced of the merits of the IPA/SRON plans.

It is not clear how we should proceed from here. We will need time to digest what has happened before we can define our next steps. You can, however, rest assured that the current situation is not the end point of our collaboration: we will certainly not give up in pursuing our joint ambitions.

As you know, our deans have organized meetings on Monday (14h00 in KC-159 at VU) and Tuesday (12h30 in the central hall of SP904) to discuss the situation and hear your opinions. Karen Maex will attend the meeting on Tuesday. We encourage you to make use of these opportunities.

Best regards,
Daniel, Gijs, and Ralph

_____

University of Amsterdam
Institute of Physics (IoP), Faculty of Science

Dr. Joost van Mameren
Institute Manager

Science Park 904 | 1098 XH Amsterdam
T +31 20 525 5784 | F +31 20 525 5778
iop.uva.nl
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