© Helena Ligthert
Building their own training loft
Together with their fellow Argonauts, students Bas Beerkens and Koen van Niekerk built a new gym for student rowing association Argo. They laid the foundations, took care of all cabling and made sure the building was insulated, painted and finished. ‘At the opening, an honorary member who is involved in rowing around the country said that this was the very best indoor training facility in the Netherlands.’
Bar gets greener
Subjecting ‘green’ first-years to initiation rituals has been dropped for some time in Wageningen and has been replaced by going sustainably green. The number of sustainability committees (“DuurCos”) in student associations has increased; these committees are established to focus on sustainability. KSV Franciscus organised a sustainability meeting with the other Wageninger associations, and Ceres laid 104 brand-new solar panels on the roof of their clubhouse. The association also intends to ambitiously modernise the beer cooling system –an important step for a social association. ‘The current cooling system is dated, which means that a new one will help in lowering power consumption’, says Lennart Alderlieste, member of the Ceres DuurCo. ‘During the cooling process, one removes heat from thousands of litres of beer. We currently expel that heat from the building. Using heat exchangers, we can use the residual heat to partially heat the building.’ In short: cooling beer to heat the building. A great resolution for 2019.
New building Unitas
After years of roaming, Unitas finally found a new home in 2018. Herenstraat 31, previously known as Café Het Gat and later LUCA, has become the association’s new home base. Unitas chair Lucas Hoevers is very happy with the building. ‘A new era has dawned for Unitas, in which we hope to be able to offer Wageningers a lot – both students and other youths.’
*Lucas Hoevers of Unitas (on the right)
together with Gerard Swinkels, the former owner of Herenstraat 31. © Unitas*
New associations
A number of new associations also saw the light of day in 2018. Students of the bachelor’s programme Public Health and Society and the corresponding master’s programme Communication, Health and Life Sciences now have their own study association. These students used to be part of Mercurius, but they can now join Apollo.
There is also a new student association for students from India, appropriately called the Indian Association. Although all members come from India, the association is not introverted, says chair Kaavya Raveendran. ‘We want to share India’s rich culture with the locals and help Indians feel at home in Wageningen.’ They organise such activities as Holi festivals, Indian Kitchen dinners, attending cricket matches and a Bollywood dancing course.
Nji-Sri growth
Although the number of registrations for student associations generally declined, Argo and Nji-Sri grew. Eveline Massop of Nji-Sri is proud. ‘We inaugurated 58 new member this year. This number has never been so high since we returned to Wageningen.’ Nji-Sri was established in Wageningen in 1904 but was relocated to Deventer along with the Middelbare Koloniale Landbouwschool in 1912. The association returned in 2006.
More student achievements
Student achievements in 2018, part 3: personal success (and a pool table)
Student achievements in 2018, part 2: a great year for sports