Every faculty at Tilburg University has a Faculty Council and so does Tilburg Law School. The Faculty Council is composed of students, professors and other staff members who are elected during the annual elections in April. They come together in a monthly meeting where a variety of topics affecting the faculty, students and staff members is being discussed. Current academic year, four students occupy a seat in this Faculty Council on behalf of Vrijspraak, student party of Magister JFT.

Last semester, we mainly focused on three main topics. These are the development and implementation of blended education, study pressure and the minor offerings. Blended education is a new way of teaching where there is more room for different forms of education within a course. Last year, this was applied for the first time in the first semester of the first year of the bachelor in Dutch Law. Other semesters and study programs will follow in the following years. Soon this will be evaluated by, among others, students from the Faculty Council. We contribute to the development of this new way of teaching and help evaluating. Therefore this is an important task.

The second important topic is study pressure. This is experienced as relatively high and we are looking for solutions to reduce it. Blended education could be a good solution but this will be discussed in detail during the evaluation of blended learning this spring. Ourselves and the party members of Vrijspraak are of the opinion that Tilburg Law School offers too few minors in the third year. Therefore we discuss together with programme directors what could be done about this situation. The will to change this is there so that is a good sign.

Outside of the Faculty Council meetings, we have been working on improving the registration procedure via Osiris. With the data we collected ourselves, through a survey, we and the system administrators of Osiris are looking on how to improve the registration procedure.

Besides the Faculty Council meetings, we, as Faculty Council members, attend a monthly Open Party Meeting of student party Vrijspraak. During these meetings important input is given to us by party members and we address these topics in the Faculty Council meetings. Being part of the Faculty Council of Tilburg Law School as a student is a great experience for many reasons. First of all you learn a lot about the faculty, policy and collaborating with others. Secondly you can exert influence in favour of the students. And last but not least it is a lot of fun to be a part of the Faculty Council.