Dear all:

DAE Administration, Educators and Executive Board, and the 2026 Graduation Show Team,

We are writing to you urgently to raise our concern with the decision, of which we were informed yesterday, to not give Dutch Design Week full access wristbands to presenting graduates this year. The precedent set by Design Academy is to provide graduates, participants of the graduation show, with this ticket. Your communication on this matter has been unprofessional and disrespectful; verbal reassurance and receiving pickup instructions by email wrongfully set our expectations. You highlight the importance of experiencing all of Dutch Design Week for the DAE community in your pick-up email, yet immediately negate that sentiment by providing all of the current students with wristbands and actively excluding us, the participants that represent your institution during this week. Because of this, we feel your actions exclude us from the DAE community.

This is not in line with the Dutch Design Foundation’s values of participation. The DAE Graduation Show has long served as a foundation of Dutch Design Week, and it feels exploitative to collect our money, €420 each, to fund the show while not providing wristbands for further access of this city-wide event. The Graduation Fund webpage does not offer concrete transparency into the breakdown of how our money is allocated, even if only 6% of the total budget.

Although this may seem like a small issue that does not warrant such agitation, we feel that it further exposes a pattern of failing institutional operations that we all have observed over the duration of our studies. With every new term, the school has consistently delivered less for the same fee, with the same unreciprocated commitment on our end. To name a few: reduced workshop and library hours, reduced tutoring hours, and of course the shrinking spaces for activity in school.

Like the decision on the wristband, these decisions are delivered last minute, feeling like an intentional choice to withhold information for students present and incoming. Your student body feels taken advantage of by your institution. Your alumni feel taken advantage of by your institution.

We ongoingly voice these issues- with our degree coordinator, our department coordinators, and heads of department - and the popular response is to detail plans for the future, emphasizing things going on behind the scenes. We strongly feel that these matters should not be our burden to bear. It is not our role to share the load with the institution, nor to find “creative” solutions for the school’s allocation of funds or lack of planning. Many of us uprooted our lives and traveled halfway across the world in order to participate in DAE’s unique educational proposition. As students we simply ask that the school delivers what it promises. We voice our solidarity with the current student cohorts, who are experiencing these longstanding patterns as further magnified by the building transition.

We demand immediate action from the school, the executive board, and the 2026 graduation show team, to provide DDW wristbands to all participants of the graduation show in line with the school’s set precedent, and to give a transparent cost breakdown of the graduation fee.

With urgency,

The 2026 BA & MA graduates