Bekijk hier de toespraak die studentenraadvoorzitter Bavo Van Achte hield op de academische opening van 2010.

De toespraken van de andere sprekers kan u hier vinden.

CONSCIOUS STUDENTS

Dear fellow students,
Dear non-students,

Opening an academic year is easy.

However, closing an academic year is much more difficult. A critical vision is needed to be able to efficiently evaluate the previous academic years. This is a vision taught to GROUP T students on a regular basis, starting from day 1. A vision present in every student at GROUP T and evidently in the Student Council. We notice however, to our great concern, that visions sometimes get clouded, and that the focus on what is really important here is fading away. I would like to invite you today in my train of thoughts.

My time here at GROUP T has come to its fourth year, and these past three years have been great. This school clearly has its own character and the beauty of GROUP T is its open en clear philosophy that lies behind every course. This is at least the intention. A student who has struggled successfully through his first year at GROUP T is fully aware of what he is learning en knows what it will provide him later on in his life, both personally and professionally.
To put this in reference of the theme of today: GROUP T delivers conscious students

During the past couple of years a bunch of new and complicated challenges have risen for GROUP T. Some of these are the introduction of the new Credit Accumulation system, the shortage of internship-places for the teachers en the ever so much rising of the number of enrollments, while this building seems to be shrinking.
These matters still require the constant attention of the staff at GROUP T to ensure that the student doesn’t suffer from them.

The biggest challenge of them all is still being able to see the wood for the trees. And this of course in combination with maintaining the fundamental and typical GROUP T philosophy, which gives our diploma its added value.

Students sign up at GROUP T because of the solar car, the advertising campaigns or the beautiful building here at Campus Vesalius.
Students stay at GROUP T , not because they are interested in a harder or easier curriculum , but because they wish to obtain the best education available.
These students are the reason why this is the biggest challenge and why it requires the full support and co-operation of everybody at GROUP T: our management, our administration, our teaching staff and most of all our students.

Everybody at GROUP T, going from the IT crowd at module 14 to the basement at campus Comenius.

Yet we see, despite the fact that this philosophy flows deeply through our veins,that this co-operation between the various levels doesn’t always run as smoothly as most people would hope. In some cases it does not seem to run at all...

Is it not so that team dynamics, the course where students learn to function as one group, as one team, is taught as one of the very first courses here at GROUP T?

Is it not so that communication is considered to be one of the fundamental concepts at GROUP T?

Is it not so that one of the 5 E’s, environmenting, where they teach us to always look at the bigger picture and to put things in perspective, is currently being ignored?

It almost seems ridiculous to declare this academic year to be ‘opened’ when the people providing the right education seem to forget to abide by their own rules.
This is not how we learned it, how we wish to see it and how we want to move on in the future.
That is why we, the students and in particular the Student Council, wish to offer our complete co-operation in this daunting task.

To put it in short: we, the students, the reason why this institution is here in the first place, are worried. Worried about the quality of our lectures, the quality of our seminars, the quality of our exercises and the quality of our lab sessions.

Or to put it in other words (words that might sound familiar for some)
“ The students are the customers, and customers expect value for their money.