Headlines

The five Utrecht students who participated in the Olympic Gamesreturned from Sydney last Tuesday. Marieke Westhof, the law studentwho won a silver medal with the Dutch women's rowing eight wasgiven a festive welcome back at her sorority house on Oudegracht.Her housemates had festooned the whole house with orange paper andsilver aluminum foil. "I didn't expect this at all", Marieke said."In Sydney you had very little idea of what was going on backhome."

Licorice

Licorice is the Dutch's favorite candy. But it is bad for thehealth of those who indulge in it. Licorice not only increasesblood pressure, it can also lead to local accumulations of fluid inthe body. Such concentrations can be particularly harmful forpeople who suffer from constipation. These are the main licoriceresearch findings reported by Bart Ploeger in his PhD thesis.

Student grants

Relatively few high school students have any precise idea of howthey want to continue their education after they have left school.So, as every year in the past, many of them traipse through theJaarbeurs exhibition center, along the stands organized by theuniversity and other institutions of higher or further education.The Utrecht University information stand turned out the best of thewhole fair. It won the Information Fair Award as the mostinformative stand, said the adjudicators. Sebastiaan from theUU-stand thinks the university need not worry about attractingenough first-year students next year. The interest is much greaterthan he had expected. "A new high school senior appeared at mystand every five minutes, so there will hardly be a shortage ofnewcomers next year."

Hazing

Erasmus University in Rotterdam has started an investigationinto the hazing practices of the Rotterdam Student Society. It hasbeen alleged that prospective members of the society were submittedto grueling physical endurance tests and verbal intimidation at ahazing camp in the east of the country. The investigation should becompleted in a few weeks' time. The matter was brought to publicattention by cabaret performer Youp van 't Hek, who wrote a piecein the NRC Handelsblad daily newspaper about the hazing of hisnephew. According to Van 't Hek a senior university studentpresented himself as the "camp commandant", telling the prospectivemembers of the society, among other things, that their mothers were"fucking whores who earn a living as window prostitutes." Van 'tHek was also told that many of the prospective members were hitwith hockey sticks, baseball bats and umbrellas.