What was supposed to be an easy night out in ‘The Spot’ ended up in a small drama, as a conversation was brutally kidnapped by a presenter. Bystanders described the conversation as friendly and interesting and always in a good mood, but critics mention it was naive to go out in the Spot at that time of night and describe the conversation to be ‘provoking’. Current investigations run to see if the hostage taker is also responsible for killing the debate that went missing earlier this week.
Monday evening started in a convivial mood, with a great group of people gathering and all kinds of conversations flourishing. These left as the presenter asked everyone to look on their phone.
Spectator E. recalls that at first people did not grasp what exactly was going on. ‘Although the presenter took the first words, it seemed that the conversation was going to be set free after a short sentence (…) but when after 45 minutes, there was still no signs of actual interchange of words, slowly people understood, that something was awfully wrong.’
From both sides, speakers tried to break the barriers the hostage-taker had set up. They even tried to negotiate with the presenter, and offered to talk about the student council another time. To no avail. After 1 hour, the presenter ruthlessly killed the conversation and cut it in little monologues.
Although the shock about the tragedy was wide spread, spectator B. said he did foresee trouble. The conversation was challenging, and was behaving provocative. One cannot just go out at night talking to WUR communications and expect nothing to happen.
A. agrees: ‘With the current microphone laws, things like this will always occur. (..) people see it as their right to carry a sound amplifier, but the risks are enormous.’ S. Vink from WUR communications strongly disagrees: ‘ microphones don’t kill conversations. Presenters kill conversations.’
WUR has agreed to put up a monumental dialogue center, to remember the loss of dialogues on campus.