Assistant Professor Annemieke Klijn wrote an interesting report about the role of the University Fund Limburg/SWOL in the establishment of Maastricht University. With her permission, we will present the report to you, divided into six short chapters. This is the fifth part.
‘‘In January 1969 a Citizens Committee (Burgercomité) was set up to promote establishment of a new university among the people of Limburg under the motto ‘Join us in building our Limburg University’. For example, signatures were gathered using cards depicting a symbolic brick and a space for a signature. SWOL disseminated these cards among all school children in Limburg. When on 25 March education and science minister Veringa paid on orientational visit to Maastricht, his deliberations with provincial officials at the Provinciehuis was followed by a ‘festive event’ in the Dominicans Church, which for this special event served as dining hall of the not yet existing ‘UiL’, the University in Limburg. He was shown a scale model of a building, which represented the new university. This scale model actually served as container of a quarter million ‘bricks’: the cards with 250,000 signatures. For the occasion of Veringa’s visit, the ‘fa. Cok en Co’, a group of artists from South Limburg, had a special pop-art style poster designed with ‘UiL’ on it. SWOL was of course responsible for making the scale model, but it had also initiated contact already with Limburg contractors to design plans for a university building.
The next challenge was how to raise the pressure on minister Veringa. At this stage, Tans would play a crucial role. He managed to convince the Labour MPs to be in favour of Maastricht in early July. The MPs of the Catholic KVP subsequently had to follow suit, for electoral or party-political reasons, and shortly thereafter they also announced their preference for Maastricht. In August 1969 Veringa made his decision public: the eighth medical faculty would be set up as the first step towards a new university in Maastricht. Although it was legally not possible to have an isolated medical faculty, the decisive argument for Veringa was the need for regional diffusion of higher education in the Netherlands. On 16 september, when Queen Juliana in her annual address announced the establishment of the eighth medical faculty in the context of a new university to be set up, flags were flying in Maastricht.”
Text: Annemieke Klijn (Assistant Professor & Curator Art and Heritage Committee, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University)
Image: Affiche de UiL, 1969