The beginning of the academic year at Glasgow University is preceded by a week dedicated to welcoming the newest students to the University, the Freshers. It’s one of, if not the liveliest week of the year at the University of Glasgow. This year’s Freshers’ Week took place September 14th to 18th.
The week’s events are kicked off by the Freshers’ Address in Bute Hall, where high-ranking members of the University staff, the heads of the student unions, the chaplains and the rector welcome the new students to the University. The Address has a secondary purpose for the students unions, as they have a further opportunity to convince the new students to join their union, as demonstrated by the Freshers’ Helpers from the unions sitting on both sides of Bute Hall, with the GUU on one side and the QMU on the other (GUSA and SRC are on the sides too, but to a lesser extent and in smaller numbers), chanting away and hurling witty abuse at each other over the heads of the Freshers.
For days two and three of Freshers’ Week Bute Hall is turned in to a hub for the societies to set up a stall and try to recruit new members for their respective societies, during Freshers’ Fair. Due to the huge number of societies, there was also a tent in the East Quadrangle for the societies that didn’t fit in Bute Hall.
I spent both days of the Freshers’ Fair at the Politics Society stall, recruiting new members and occasionally running around and taking a bunch of photos of everything that was going on around Bute Hall.
Along with the student societies and services, outside companies and especially brands, clubs and bars were out in force advertising their products and whatnot. Here’s some more photos of the events and scenes around the University:
I’ve also created four collages of the photos I took during the first four days of Freshers’ Week (there was really nothing going on on the fifth day. Click on the thumbnails below to see the collages in larger versions on Flickr.
More photos from September 2009 on my Flickr page.
Cross-posted at JaniHelle.com
