There were eight categories in total, like ‘Best part-time board’ and ‘Most active student’. The host for the evening was the charismatic Dutch TV presenter Dennis Weening, a familiar figure from the Belgian and Dutch TV Series ‘So You Think You Can Dance’. The event kicked off with the introduction of the jury members: Mirjam Bult, vice president of the Executive Board, Mike Verkouter, startup ambassador of Novel-T and Thomas Remmerts, member of the university council party UReka.
The event quickly moved on to the voting of the nominees within each category. That was not only up to the jury, but also up to the audience. To vote for their favourite nominee within a category, the crowd held up green, orange and blue cards.
While the jury was discussing which nominees to call out as the winners, student band Ciska de Rat made sure to keep the audience grooving during the break, by covering songs from Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga and many more artists.
The winners
- Best part-time board: Space Society Twente
- Best event or committee: Culture Festival
- Most entrepreneurial student: Ives van Hoorne
- Sportbokaal: Paulien Verhaar
- Best fulltime board: Green Team Twente
- Henk Zijm internationalization award: Muhammad Hamza Riaz
- Cultural award: Ganzenveld
- Most active student: Saikiran Samudrala
Saikiran Samudrala, the winner of the ‘Most active student’ award felt overjoyed after receiving the prize. ‘Last year, one of my friends was also nominated for another award and I thought – what should I do to get this? – and now I have it!’
Samudrala helped organize his own Kick-In, organized parties at the Vestingbar, was president of the Indian Student Association and was also a board member for the Connecting Hands committee and UniTe, the umbrella of the UT world associations. ‘I was inspired by the fact that the university provides a platform for being a part of associations and doing something more than a degree. I want to do something next to my studies all the time – that’s what keeps me motivated.’
