Dear fellow Critical Students,

We are announcing that from today, KSU is no more.

After 7 years of organizing and self-education, we decided that it’s time for us to graduate. We have all finished our studies, are doing PhDs or other work, or have simply dropped out. But even though we are no longer students we haven’t stopped being critical. Critical about the commercialization of scientific research, the democratic gap and the increasingly high barriers preventing universal access to higher education…

However we will no longer be organizing activities aiming at solving these issues and bringing higher education in line with the ideals of social justice. We leave these struggles to the next generation of students that will take our place.

Since the beginning in 2010, KSU has been involved in many ways fighting against neoliberal developments in higher education. We organized and participated in numerous demonstrations throughout the country, we organized occupations at the Uithof and at the Drift, we hosted countless events on education, politics, and society. In our efforts to build a student movement from below we withstood the chilly winds at the ever bleak Uithof handing out hot coco and talking with our peers.

During the last couple of years we started focusing more and more on issues that were not directly related to education, but concern all of us as active citizens. We contributed to the 2dh5 festival, campaigned around the disappearance of the students from Ayotzinapa, the ‘Black Pete is Racism’, and the blockade of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

Even without KSU we will keep being active in organizing and protesting.

The Bastas! will go on. We will keep organizing discussions on topics that are either ignored by the mainstream debate or offering a different perspective than the one we are commonly faced with. Also, we have given much of our space at the Kargadoor to our sister organization, Critical Collective who organize there many interesting events.

And we will of course keep sharing interesting texts we read or write on our facebook page.

Last but not least we want to salute all the Critical Students that have committed themselves throughout the years to the goals of social justice and free and democratic education for all. This goes as well for all the student groups from Serbia to Chile, Quebec to Amsterdam. Without your inspiration, enthusiasm en solidarity there would never have been a KSU. We won’t forget.

Here’s our new Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pg/thinkbasta/