[Seriously?] New year swim postponed until July

Because of the extremely cold weather in the past week, several Wageningen New Year dips planned for the second week of January have been put on ice. The organizers are now planning a big joint New Year Dip on 5 July.

‘It’s been crazily cold this week and it would be irresponsible to expose our members to such bizarre temperatures,’ says Yara van der Sloot, chair of Aquarius, one of the clubs involved. ‘I’m really disappointed that this event is a washout but it just wouldn’t be cool if everyone gets hypothermia.’ The other clubs that were organizing a New Year Dip got cold feet too. So the dip is postponed until July.

Collective dip

The various clubs have decided to join forces and make it a joint event. Van der Sloot: ‘Having all those different dips was muddying the waters a bit anyway. In consultation, we all agreed on 5 July as the date for a collective New Year Dip.

It would be irresponsible to expose our members to such bizarre temperatures

The risk of hypothermia is considerably smaller then. And the exams will be over, so it’s always a good time to go down to the Rhine.’

But isn’t cold weather an essential part of a New Year Dip? ‘Some older students were indeed critical of the plan,’ confirms Van der Sloot. ‘They think the whole idea is that it’s tough and called the plan “typical of the snowflake generation.” That feels below the belt to me. Life is hard enough. We didn’t take the plunge on this without giving it some thought and we stand by our decision.’

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