The University of Aberdeen’s Freshers’ Fair is supposed to be a highlight of the academic calendar. A chance for societies to showcase themselves, for students to gather freebies, and for new arrivals to get a sense of the community they’ve just joined. This year, however, the decision to move the fair from the familiar Butchart Centre to Aberdeen Sports Village turned what should have been an energetic welcome into a logistical headache.
Let’s start with the basics. At midnight, on the day of the event, societies received an email with two unwelcome bombshells: booths would only be given one chair, and there would be no parking. Yes, you read that right, no parking, despite the fact that the venue had been moved away from campus. Anyone who has ever lugged boxes of flyers, banners, and equipment knows that parking is essential. The expectation that stallholders should carry everything across distances without even a drop-off point was baffling, if not downright careless.
Then came the chairs. The promise was that “some” booths would only have one chair. The reality? About 95% of stalls had just one. To add insult to injury, societies were told only two people could staff each booth. So where exactly was this second person meant to sit? On the floor? On their colleague’s lap? For an all-day event, the lack of basic seating wasn’t just inconvenient, it was disrespectful to the people volunteering their time to represent their societies.
And the tables. If you can call them that. They were so small that one MacBook could monopolize the surface area. Many societies, used to the more generous Butchart set-up from previous years, were left scrambling. When complaints were raised, the response was almost comical: societies “should have requested extra space.” How were they supposed to request more when no one warned them of the change in set-up until hours before? For three years, the fair had followed a consistent model. It’s only natural that people assumed the same arrangement would be in place again.
Now, the space itself. On paper, the Sports Village is larger. Yet somehow, it felt suffocating. Queues snaked outside, with some poor souls left standing in the rain. Inside, the atmosphere was stifling, every step leading to another shoulder bump. By the time many students actually got in, the freebies were gone. The sheer size of the crowd left people questioning whether everyone attending was even a student, it felt far beyond the university’s actual population.
To be fair, the AUSA team on the ground did their best. Extra tables were brought in where they were most needed, and staff were visibly trying to help. But the chair issue remained a mystery. Rumour had it that spare chairs were available, yet for some inexplicable reason, a strict “one chair per booth” policy was enforced. It’s hard not to wonder who made that decision, and why.
The move to Sports Village may have been intended to elevate the fair, but in practice, it created confusion, discomfort, and frustration. Freshers’ Fair is meant to set the tone for the year ahead. Instead, it left many societies and students questioning whether anyone had thought through the logistics. Whoever signed off on this change owes the community an explanation, and perhaps an apology.
