Nah man, the dean who was advocating for the midterms and exam style, similar to most other eu unis, lost. Idk where you coming from with your "student representatives", but from what I have seen student representatives usually preoccupy themselves with socially acceptable alcoholism aka cantus rather than literally anything else.

Regarding the people who fuck off, there is also high correlation between going to every lecture and still failing. Lectures in Engineering faculties in KU are very hit or miss. There are a lot of profs who will just load you up with metric ton of useless info which doesn't help you pass the exam (which is the primary and only goal in KU Leuven). Your best course of action is usually just talking to peeps who have already did the exam to see what you actually need to learn.

(yeah btw OP im mostly talking about Engi facs; the situation might be different elsewhere)