No Kick Off this fall. That’s the news all fadders were given in the middle of the summer.
But the large amount of overall wearing students hanging out in the city the past weeks has hardly passed any Jönköping resident’s eye. Students at JU started organizing their own get-togethers at the end of august, without the school’s knowledge, as an informal way to introduce new students. But this week, the school’s official “corona-friendly Kick Off” started.
The Student Union has put all their efforts into being able to offer an alternate way for new students to get to know each other. Instead of the standard ten days of non-stop Kick Off, this year’s introduction for the new students is made up of fewer events spread out over a couple of weeks.
There is also – naturally – a lot more guidelines to follow, such as students from each class not being allowed to interact with students from other classes during the events.
“More responsibility lays on us fadders”
Matilda Nilsson is one of the headfadders for the New Media Design crew at JTH. She is very happy with the “corona-friendly Kick Off” solution. The events differ somewhat from each of the four schools, but for her and the rest of JTH, the events are overall ceremony, Jönköpingskampen, pub crawl and night mission.
– I’m so glad that we are able to have some kind of Kick Off, even if it’s not a standard one. I had such a good time on my own one and really want to give that back to the new students. That’s why I applied to be a fadder in the first place.
When comparing her own Kick Off with this year’s, she finds obvious differences.
– Being a fadder this year could be seen as both easier and harder. It’s easier because we get some rest in between the events. It’s harder because everything is planned pretty much at the last minute, and more responsibility regarding the guidelines lays on us fadders. Keeping the motivation up among the fadders when everything was cancelled and unsure was also challenging in the beginning. But now I think it’s going great!
Despite the fact that there has been a lot of uncertainties, she is very satisfied with the way the first event, which took place this week, played out.
– The sexmasteries did a great job planning for it and all the fadders did a great job following the guidelines. Overall I love the three events solution – and looking back at it now I even think we could have managed this from the beginning and have the same kind of Kick Off before school started. I’m really grateful though that we have the events so that the new students can get to know each other under controlled circumstances!
