• Intro

Intro 2022 | Cursor visits Casa Nova

Casa Nova is a very special student house. Ever since it was established – we’re talking about seventeen years ago – it has accommodated as many Intro kids as possible during the Intro every year, in addition to its usual occupants: six members and a pledge of the STROPDAS society. This year, it houses fourteen or fifteen extra students.

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photo Rien Boonstoppel
Upstairs, above the blue container, is the place to be

Cursor is paying a visit to the student house when the Intro attendees who are crashing at Casa Nova are letting loose at the WordLid! party. Therefore – from left to right on main photo – Gustavo Maduro-Vollmer, Stijn van Zandvoort, Rik Weersink and house cat Friso now have some time on their hands to tell us about the house’s traditions and particularities. The Thêta society house is located above a store on Hooghuisstraat, right in the city center, which means it’s an ideal place to sleep during the Intro. The contacts were established via Crash Place.

All photos | Rien Boonstoppel
Snoring

“We can clear the entire lower floor of this boathouse to make room for air beds and mattresses”, says Stijn. “This year, we have guests sleeping all the way up into the kitchen and hallway. We started out with twelve students, but we’ve let in the last few people who’d made a request as well.”

The hosts think the kids are having a great time, despite the fact that they had to put up with a loudly snoring resident (we prefer not to mention names, but it was Lars) in their midst one night. “He hasn’t made it to his own bed even once this week”, says Rik (and the twenty plates he was supposed to wash are also still there – Ed.).

Whoever rings this ship’s bell has to immediately SG a beer, even if you ring it “accidentally” with your head or when someone else is guiding your hand. The only one who has the legitimate right to do it is the cook of the day.
Kappa Mu Tau

None of the residents are Intro dads this year. However, the gentlemen have been very busy attending all the Thêta activities, if only to advertise tonight’s house party: the traditional Floors Party. “We call it Kappa Mu Tau and it is also known as the Tower of Power around here. The goal is to make it to the rooftop terrace. You get there by winning every game on every floor.” They’re all drinking games, like Flunkyball, Stairs and Keg stand. One of them involves half a cake. “If you lose a game, it’s no big deal, but you will have to play it again and again until you win. You especially don’t want to lose at that game where you have to eat half a cake. It happened to me once; and that was game over for me”, says Gustavo. “I didn’t reach the rooftop terrace that time”.

With this golden rain shower, Faber Heinsbroek’s dream came true.

After an hour and a half, once the power dynamics between the forty society members and the intro kids have been established, Casa Nova (famous among the ladies for the Casa Nova grilled cheese sandwich that the men like to serve them at night after all the cafeterias have closed) opens its doors to all the Thêta members. They are expecting a hundred more guests and have stocked up on twenty crates of beer, sixty cans and a keg. “And that’s just the beer.”

Faber once had to plasticize the nearly thirty Playboy posters at the Reproshop at the center of the MetaForum building. “Definitely a job for the newbie”, he explains.

Not a lot of crazy things have happened yet at Casa Nova this Intro. Apart from the fact that one of the guests had to chug a beer out of Stijn’s shoe. “He didn’t want to use his own shoe, so he got mine. That wasn’t a very smart move, though, because it was a two-year-old shoe that I wear to bars and parties.”

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