The grandiose opening stadium show of the University of Debrecen, dubbed “yoUDay – the day of the University, your day,” is becoming more and more popular year by year. Members of the university community, including students, lecturers, instructors and non-teaching staff can experience together the sense of belonging to the institution as well as the power of community and cooperation both on the stage and in the stands.
Of all the higher education institutions in Hungary, it is only the University of Debrecen that “opens” the new academic year in this special way. As ever, the organizers have prepared to treat the audience to spectacular productions and star performers. Carson Coma, Azahriah, Charlie Horváth, the band Abrakazabra, Gigi Radics, Jennifer Szirota, Évi Sári, and György Korda, to name a few, will all perform at the stadium show kicking off at 7 p.m. on September 14. The emcees will be two well-known employees of Debrecen’s Campus Radio Station, Árpád Burai and Betti Gábor. The 105-minute-long program is going to be followed by a breathtaking laser show and a special stadium disco.
At the Thursday press conference, Zoltán Bács, Chancellor of the University of Debrecen, noted that the stadium show opening the academic year is a unique tradition not only in Hungary, but throughout the whole of Europe.
“We wish to strengthen jointly shared experiences and the sense of belonging, as the drive to build a strong community has inspired us to organize yoUDay from the very beginning. This sort of stadium show is not available anywhere else in Europe, so it is a truly unique event. It is important for us that the “citizens” of the University of Debrecen, i.e., a crowd of more than forty thousand people, can enjoy the same experience at the same time and place, since these leisure activities at the university bond students together, and we are also happy to see that more and more international students take part in them. We have not forgotten about the high school students in Debrecen either. They can come and see the show under the same conditions as our students, so we hope that more and more of them will get to like our institution and quite many of them will later become students of the University of Debrecen. This event has never before been so topical and relevant as it is today because, due to the various challenges we face in the world, it is necessary to raise our voice to call for unity and togetherness. UD will definitely do everything in the current academic year for the sake of face-to-face education and contact classes, and we are also preparing yoUDay in the same spirit,” said the Chancellor.
István Csont, President of the Student Self-Government of UD, added that, in his opinion, more and more young people feel that yoUDay belongs to them, which shows that it is already a serious brand among students.
“It is great to be a university student in Debrecen. On the one hand, we carefully preserve and nurture our traditions, while on the other hand, we also try to create new ones. The University of Debrecen has two official openings of the academic year, which is not the case anywhere else in Hungary. It is a great pleasure to see that our students not only take part in the organization of yoUDay but also volunteer to act as performers in the show. This event is so popular that even the freshers coming to Debrecen look forward to it and can hardly wait to attend it,” said the president of DEHÖK.
According to Veronika Végh, the coordinator of the stage show, the diversity and uniqueness of the University of Debrecen is evident in the program of this year’s yoUDay. She also emphasized that we should all be proud of the fact that the university has such a close-knit community.
“Both the Hungarian and the international students will play a crucial part in the show. The latter will perform excerpts from the musical Hair, while the young talents of our Institute of Pop Music will also appear on stage, as well as the cheerleaders of DEAC, so the university will present its virtues and strengths on several levels. This year’s yoUDay is going to be full of hope, faith and peace, all of which is strengthened by student unity. Our most important message has got to be the importance of the preservation of peace, which has been as natural to us until now as sunshine, but it is in a painfully great danger now,” said Veronika Végh.
At the sixth yoUDay, the participants of the stage production will perform on an area of almost two hundred square meters, which ends in a catwalk and a smaller stage of thirty square meters. A novelty would be the number of the national flags paraded at the beginning of the show, which will come up to a total of 119, twice as many as last year.
“The sense of togetherness will culminate in joint singing, for which purpose we will display the lyrics of all the songs on the LED walls. We have also made sure that each national flag should be carried by a student coming from the respective country. In addition to them, yet another hundred and fifty students will participate just in the organization of the event, so a total of about three hundred students will work on yoUDay altogether. This year, the event’s website is now available in English for the first time, so communication with international students has been much easier, and a lot of them volunteered to join in the fun in a very short time frame,” said organizer Gergő Török.
You can buy your ticket(s) for yoUDay at this link.
Press Center - BZ
