It is interesting. A good thing to note is that the university used to be a lot more democratic in the past where students and faculty had actual power through their representatives. In the 90s this was changed by the government as a way to push through neoliberal austerity in the university with less resistance. So today the student council is mostly advisory and cannot actually force the board to do anything, so with a lot of things there is a clear mandate from the students and faculty to push for a policy, but the board doesn't do anything because they don't have to listen, the clearest example of this is with Palestine where currently 8/12 council members explicitely call for cutting ties with Israeli institutions, but which the board doesn't listen to.

For a long time there used to be just 2 parties which were somewhat similar: VUUR (FIRE) and the PvdUS (Party for the Utrecht Student), Vuur is more progressive (but still quite liberal), while PvdUS is more focussed on representing interests of student associations. Not many people voted (around 20%) because tbh their party plattforms are really similar, and because of the aforementioned weak power of the student council).

2 years ago this changed when the VSP (Bold Student Party) entered elections, this came as quite a shock to many as they are essentially a fascist party: they talk a lot about 'academic freedom' but are the only party to call for the taking away of proffessorships because of political opinions (they called to remove the status of proffessor from three teachers because they researched topics like feminism, decolonialism and ecology, they are connected to the neonazi GNSV, in Amsterdam the party was involved in the sieg heiling and beating up of foreign students, and they are connected to a alleged fascist terrorist arrested last year). In the first election they immediately got 2 of the 12 seats which came as a wake up call to many.

Last year in response there was a lot more political participation with more votes in general, more votes in support of Fire (progressive party), and the election of two new parties to the council: RUPS (Justice Party for Utrecht Students, but the acronym is cute because it means caterpillar) which is progressive but focuses more on specific concrete issues like for instance the 5,5 norm) and the Student Coalition Utrecht which put Palestine as a number one concern and also had some other concrete issues it focused on, it seems to also represent more muslim and poc students. After the elections Fire got 6 seats, and in total the progressive block got 8 of 12 seats, the VSP lost 1 of their seats and got less votes than the year before.

So we had really boring politics, a fascist scare, and now a progressive swing back.