Orientation kicks off season of student festivities

Smiling face: First-year students in the humanities faculty started their orientation this week, a happy time of welcomes, tours and events unfolding in the lead-up to registration.

It was a case of old hands and new on campus this week. Lifelong students, enjoying the smorgasbord of offerings at UCT's Summer School, mingled with an eager clutch of first-years, trotting after faculty orientation leaders.

The humanities faculty kicked off first on Wednesday with welcomes from the dean, the Students Representative Council and the Department of Student Affairs, a programme interspersed with canvassing from various cultural clubs and societies and tours of facilities like the libraries.

There were handbooks to sift through, computer training sessions to attend and a mini workshop on how to construct a curriculum, a timely jolt to earth for wide-eyed first-years.

The week opens a season of student-centred activities. Orientation Week runs from 9 to 16 February. SAX Appeal will hit the streets on 14 February, with a, you guessed, Valentine's Day theme.

This year's slogan is SAX Sells. As if students needed any reason to dress down.

The Big Bash, presented by RAG at the Old Biscuit Mill on 15 February, is touted to be the biggest student party in the Southern Hemisphere.