- Campus
- 21/08/2026
Cleaning up and afterpartying
It’s Friday morning, the day after “Doorhaaldonderdag”. In the city center, a group of first-year students is making its way toward campus. One of them is unable to keep his food—or, more likely, whatever he drank—down.
When the Cursor students ask the group if they want to tell them something, the answer is clear: “We’re really not going there right now.”
At SSRE, Esther is walking outside. The student is a member of the association’s social committee. “Normally, I work behind the bar, but there’s a lot going on during the Intro, so you have to make sure, for example, that people don’t go inside to smoke and that underage students don’t start drinking. I spent almost the entire night at the door, checking that everyone who came in was actually an introkiddo.”
According to her, the night was a success. Artist Def performed, and both rooms were packed. “We kept going until 5:30 a.m.”
Now, only the association’s committees are still there, either cleaning up or partying themselves now that they no longer have to keep an eye on things. The partygoers have gone home or headed to campus. “I mainly saw a lot of Mechanical Engineering students heading to campus.”
Pancakes and burgers
There are indeed plenty of Mechanical Engineering students on the Fluxveld. In the watery morning sunlight, they are eating hamburgers for breakfast. A few intro participants are lying on the ground (see main photo). One of them went to Demos, while another is indeed coming from SSRE. He has been awake all night and is now trying to get a little rest.
“Hopefully I can sleep for ten minutes. I have to stay here, though, because we’re organizing breakfast through Simon Stevin. Around 10 or 11 a.m., we’ll start cleaning up, and then I can finally go to bed.”
Mentor Jan was at SSRE first and then went to E.S.C. “We ate pancakes there first, and then we got kicked out. After that, we came here.”
He is remarkably energetic, especially compared with his friends lying on the ground in front of him. “I’m not even that tired. It was a really fun night. Everyone really goes all out on the final night, as you can see.”
University Professor Bert Meijer has just arrived at Ceres. Seeing all those students sitting in the sunshine on the fields, reminds him of his own Intro in 1972. “It doesn’t look like much has changed.”
Two students are already on their way to the train station. They spent the entire night at Knights of the Kitchen Table, playing board games. With occasional breaks to get some rest.
Slight regrets
“Do I regret my decision to stay awake?” one of them asks himself. “A little. But I do feel like it was the best place I could have spent the night.”
The other intro participant is feeling fine: “I don’t even feel any more tired than I have the rest of the week. I’ve just been in a kind of tired state all week.” He has to catch a train home soon. “It’ll probably be difficult to stay awake.”
They don’t want to pose for a photo looking exhausted, but for the occasion, they are willing to walk poetically toward the sunlight for a moment.
Behind Atlas, a group of GEWIS students is still giving it their all on a field, dancing to Kassa Remix, a song that a former student once made using a toy cash register.
It’s not entirely clear whether the song is simply on repeat or just very long. But every so often, everyone loudly joins in with the music coming from the speakers: “Play the same song!”, and then they start jumping again.
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