Christian student society Navigators Wageningen (NSW) had a full 80 sign-ups during the introduction days this year, more than twice as many as any of the last three years. But due to lack of space NSW is unable to welcome all these potential new members. When it became clear during the AID that the number of new members was going to be so high, NSW went looking for new group leaders and a larger location for meetings. Unfortunately, it was still not big enough for all the newcomers. By means of a lottery, 16 of the 80 new students were turned down for membership this year. ‘Very annoying,’ says secretary Ieke
van der Wel. ‘It goes against the grain, because we want to welcome everyone to join.’ The board is going to look for a larger location of their own. Ieke: ‘We’ve had this plan for a while, but it is still only on the drawing board.’ There are now a total of 158 members of Navigators.
Big three satisfied
Of the three biggest societies, Ceres attracted the largest number of new recruits. Ceres instated 189 students of the 210 who has registered provisionally, giving the club the lowest dropout rate. KSV Franciscus boasts 136 new students out of 203 provisional registrations. SSR-W, for which 201 students signed up, has now welcomed 134 of them. For all three societies this means an increase in the total number of members. Ceres chair Koen Weenink sees this as ‘very positive’. Kim Duintjer, chair of SSR-W: ‘We are very satisfied with this number.’ KSV is happy too, all the more because its new members are so active: ‘We are seeing a lot of our new members at our bar nights,’ says club chair Marco Vogelzang. The growth is in line with that of the student population, he says: ‘Every year we hope that about 10 percent will join us and to our delight, this happened again this year.’
It is striking that the smaller societies are growing relatively fast. Along with NSW, Nji-Sri has grown considerably. The agricultural society had 50 provisional sign-ups, 60 percent more than last year. In the end, 38 of them joined. How rowing club Argo has scored is not yet known, but it expects to have recruited 162 new rowers out of 215 sign-ups.