The whole thing started when Julia Henkel, journalist at local newspaper Twentsche Courant Tubantia, noticed the advertisement on a website and wondered: Can you do that? `I called the Anti-Discrimination Bureau Overijssel to find out. Obviously with the remark: if you do something about this, that's news to us. They were the ones who filed a report with the police.'
Huize Beurd has taken the house website down for now. According to Beurd resident Taco Potze, `Our advertisement was pulled completely out of context, and we don't want pictures from that site to be distributed along with it.'
Looking back, Potze is also unhappy with the phrasing. `But I do not understand the discrimination charges. They are completely without merit.'
Why the problematic phrasing? `We are a very tightly-knit community. We eat together, go on vacation together, go out together. We keep seeing each other even after graduation. It is a very traditional house and people really have to join the group. Most foreigners leave after two years. We do not want to become a “new-blood house”.'
Just to be clear, said Potze, the ad did not say `no foreigners.' `Moroccan or Turkish boys are more than welcome to apply. Until recently we had someone from Poland. He spent five happy years here.'
Martin Verheijden of the Anti-Discrimination Bureau: `What matters is: how do others interpret it? It does not matter what their intention was. Furthermore: there are more elegant and less offensive ways to make it clear what kind of resident you are looking for.'
The residents of Huize Beurd wonder what the limits are. Potze: `We are a house for men, which rules out half the population. Do we discriminate with that as well?'
Huize Beurd has not yet heard anything formally. `We're waiting to see what will happen, but we would be surprised if this really was brought in front of a judge. It's outrageous that it came this far.'
Trans. Jeroen Latour
