May 6, 2021
Students at the Amfi fashion school in Amsterdam have called for the resignation of the college’s director and senior lecturer for ignoring signals of abuse at the institute.
The union said it has received some 60 accounts to date from both former students and students who are still attending the school about lecturers making comments with sexual and racial overtones, humiliating treatment, and a climate of fear which prevented them from speaking out.
‘Students tell us that they need years of therapy after their time at Amfi,’ Maarten van Dorp, chairman of student organisation ASVA, said in a statement. ‘The culture at the school needs a complete overhaul. That cannot be done by a director and a senior lecturer who have consistently ignored signals of an unsafe environment for students.’