Comment: Intro week should be a positive experience for everybody

The student introduction at Department of Political Science including the ‘warm-ups’ is thoroughly evaluated every year. We never stop discussing how we can improve the student introduction in order to give all new students at the department a good experience with their first year.

We are deeply sorry that some students feel that given activities of the student introduction have been bad experiences. We will never stop do our best to reduce the number of students who are left with bad experiences.

With this in account the tutors think it is important to remember, that the student introduction (including our ‘rustur’ trip) in general is evaluated positively by the new students at the department including the ‘warm-ups’. In last year’s anonymous survey 3 percent evaluated the ‘warm-up’ prior to the gala party negatively and likewise 3 percent evaluated that the first 4 days of student introduction (these not including the ‘rustur’ trip) were boundary-crossing in a negative way.

Establishing a constructive dialogue

The general evaluation of the student introduction is an important and serious part of the work that we do as tutors. The evaluations are the base on which the tutors make changes every year in order to optimize the student introduction. We are of course very attentive to the present critique and we have invited Jonas and Marie to join us in a constructive dialogue so that we in the future can create the best possible student introduction for the new students at Department of Political Science.

Our goal as tutors is to create a student introduction that all types of students will think of as a positive experience – also those who do not want to drink alcoholic drinks during their introduction. This is why the student introduction also contains numerous activities that do not include alcoholic drinks. This is why the rules of our student introduction do not allow any student nor tutor to drink alcoholic drinks before 5 pm in order to make social relations without alcohol.

Furthermore, the student introduction was extended with an extra day in 2013. This initiative was implemented in order to have more time for non-alcoholic activities. We hope this has helped us to give all new students at the department a good introduction to the fantastic world that The University of Copenhagen and the life at our department is.

By: The Contact Tutors at the Department of Political Science

universitypost@adm.ku.dk

See article: Rituals for new students involved profanity, sexism, degradation

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