After two difficult years in which the AID was forced to hold (part of) the programme online, this year, the AID is a party once again. Two thousand two hundred fifty students registered for the AID, comparable to the ‘normal’ years 2018 and 2019.
The new students have plenty to do this week. In addition to getting to know the campus and Wageningen’s student association life, there is a sing-along, a sports day, street theatre and the traditional open-air cinema. The programme kicks off with the Campus Games today.
Assault course
AID-committee chair Joris Krol is looking forward to the programme. ‘It is a strange feeling, though; this is what we’ve been working towards for almost a year, and now, it’s time. That causes some stress, but once everything gets underway, the stress will gradually disappear.’ He is particularly looking forward to the assault course on the Generaal Foulkesweg on Saturday morning. ‘That is a new item on the programme this year, which we have organised in collaboration with the army. It took quite some effort to get this organised, so when everything is in place tomorrow, it will be quite the climax.’
Cantus new style
The traditional cantus (Tuesday evening) has been revamped into a sing-along. Krol: ‘A cantus is associated with the glorification of alcohol. We no longer want that. We want to stress that drinking is not required, so we serve alcohol-free beer, Radler, water and soda in addition to beer. AID participants who are under-age are identified with a bracelet in a different colour and are not served any alcohol. We hope this will be the largest sing-along so far. We have increased the capacity to 2200 so that almost everyone can join this year.’
Krol does not expect many issues as a result of the difficulties with public transportation that result from the lack of trains this month. ‘We communicated the alternative travel recommendation to the AID participants and the university also stressed this issue. There is not much more we can do.’
