The primary mission of METKA is to be the advocate for Metropolia students, but maintaining and developing communality is an essential part of METKA as well.
There are events that have become important traditions among the students, such as the annual Freshers Parties for new students and METKA’s Week of Wappu. Also MetroSport, an event focused on sports and wellbeing, has been organized all through METKA’s existence, for 12 years.
Alcohol and student events
There is no denying that traditionally, student events have been quite alcohol-oriented. The university student culture has gradually spread into the Universities of Applied Sciences – for example pub crawls, sitz, and the patches collected and sewn to overalls.
Consuming alcohol is deep-rooted in our society’s foundation, and it is still more common to drink at a party than to be sober. However, over the past few years new trends have been developing, and they are slowly starting to affect student events as well.
Studies show that nowadays young people are less interested in alcohol use than before, and sports and wellbeing are becoming a bigger interest. The same trend can be observed in the event survey done by METKA in Fall 2019.
Results of METKA’s survey concerning events
The event survey was open for two months in the Fall of 2019, and it got 136 responses altogether. In the end of 2019, METKA conveyed also the METKA2020 Survey that collected information about all METKA operations, events included. Overall, the responses on METKA2020 Survey were very similar to the ones this article is going to take a closer look at.
Majority (75 %) of the participants were 20-29 years old, and most participants (80 %) are in a Bachelor’s Degree study program. The next graph shows how ages and study programs are divided among the participants.
75 % of the participants were 20-29 years old, 18,4 % were 30-31 years old, 3,7 % were 19 or under, 2,2 % were 40-49 years old and 0,7 % were 50-59 years old.
80,1 % of the participants are in Bachelor’s Degree daytime study program, 17,6 % are in a Multiform study program, 1,5 % are doing their Master’s Degree and 0,8 % are exchange students.
One of the open questions was: “What kinds of events do not interest you at all?”. The question got 61 responses, of which 28 stated that alcohol-oriented events are not interesting to those participants. In addition, seminars and study-oriented events were mentioned a few times. The next graph shows how the responses are divided into themes.
The graph shows how the responses to “What kinds of events do not interest you at all?” are divided into themes. “Other” includes answers with no common theme such as “overall patches sewing events” or “computer games”.
Another open question “What kinds of events interest you?” got many wishes of events where alcohol would not have such a big role. This question got 102 responses, and after dividing the responses into themes, it can be seen that especially sports and wellbeing-oriented events were emphasized.
The next graph shows how the responses were divided into themes. The graph separates the number of responses that specifically wanted non-alcoholic events.
The graph shows how the responses to “What kinds of events interest you?” were divided into themes. “Traditional” includes all traditional student events such as pub crawls and freshers parties. “Professional” includes events focused on working life and certain line of business.
However, almost all events related either to wellbeing, culture or professional matters can be bundled into non-alcoholic events. In this light, the total percentage of non-alcoholic events is much higher than in the previous graph.
The graph demonstrates how the portion of non-alcoholic events is bigger, when all the wellbeing, culture and professional related events are put together.
Developing events
Based on the responses in both METKA surveys, and the new trends shown in studies, it is safe to say that some updating is needed in terms of student events. After all, the events are organized for students, and METKA is constantly figuring out ideas how to respond to the current wants and needs.
The cultural change is slow, and implementing new traditions takes time and patience. Moreover, METKA has to make decisions based on the budget – when is it a good decision to organize pilot events with possible deficit, if the concept might pay back in the future?
The current events have made an economic impact also on METKA. In the future, METKA plans on cooperate more with different companies, and through this create new event concepts for the members.
METKA’s Week of Wirtual Wappu and feedback
This year the traditional Week of Wappu was organized virtually due to the exceptional circumstances. We wanted to be there to maintain the sense of community and offer the students something fun to do during Wappu.
This was all very new to all of us, and we are not collecting feedback. Each event has its own feedback form, and they will be open until 12.5.2020. Thank you for your help!
Links to the feedback forms:
1. Demoni ry – Remote Sea Cruise
2. Myro & Albo ry – Interdisciplinary Wappu Quiz
3. ESN & METKA’s Head Tutors – Grapeyoga
4. MysteRy – Mystery Games
5. 4Towers – 4T Wappugames
6. KaMA – Musical Quiz and surprise event
7. TXO ry – CoronAppro
8. METKA – Doughnut Frying -live
This article was written by Aura Päiväläinen, Specialist of Event Management.
Read all METKA2020 articles here!
This post is also available in Suomi.