The Norwegian Fadderuka – can you gain student competence through intoxication?

Based on a qualitative study of the Norwegian context, where 14 students – both new and experienced- were interviewed in the year 2020, we identify three effects of the introduction week;

(1) Fadderuka functions as a crash course in student life;

(2) the alcohol culture is understood as partying and peer drinking pressure; and

(3) that the period serves as both inclusive and exclusive for new students.

Further on, we suggest the concept student competence as a result of the introduction weeks´ practices, and as resource for succeeding as a student, both academically, practically and socially. The importance of maintaining such inclusion rituals is demonstrated, at the same time as the central role of alcohol in the period is problematized.

Student competence: Introduction week as a ‘crash course’ in student life

Fadderuka is a voluntarily and student-driven series of activities where the aim is to make the transition into university more including for new students. Arrangements such as rebuses, city-walks, park gatherings, in addition to parties at night, are typical for the period, and participants are divided into groups consisting of new (fadderbarn) and experienced (faddere) students. By participating in the introduction week, the first group is raised as students by the latter, carrying forward practical knowledge about student life. These insights can vary from how to get the cheapest second-hand books, where the best places to have a lunch is, to which bus or bike route that takes you to campus.

In order to gain access to higher education in Norway, a formal study competence is required, functioning as a certificate of completed upper secondary school. Distinctively different, but equally important for succeeding as a student is the informal, silent, and more diffuse student competence, related to how to make a livable student life, both practically and socially.

Statements such as

“you get a ‘crash course’ on how to live as a student”, and

“the period offers a lot of inside information that you don’t find at the uni´s web page”

are examples of answers newcomers gave when asked about the role of the period. Thus, the introduction week gives students a hint on what to expect in their new role through shared knowledge and access to unwritten rules. This also involves the students (liminal personae) first meeting with the (in)famous student parties.

Student life between class and cocktails

Imagine yourself in a room of people you don´t know. The only thing that is certain is that these people will form the basis of your social life for the next three to five years. And then the party starts.

An important part of the introduction week´s narrative is the various party activities that take place throughout the period, both day and night. Led by the experienced students, the parties typically involve drinking games aiming to establish new relations (for example name games and beer pong). After spending most of the evening with pre-drinks at the ‘vorspiel’, the student group meet up with the larger student community at pubs, bars, and nightclubs.

When talking to the students it is clear how the role of alcohol is central for making introduction week a specific setting. In addition to fulfilling a set of expectations, drinking as activity is highlighted as beneficial to “let one’s guard down” in a situation that many experience as somewhat stressful and awkward.

When you want to make new friends and are placed in a random group of 20 people, you feel safer when you drink. It is not embarrassing to say or do something (Fadder)

Similar arrangements – or licensed carnivals- can also be found in other parts of the society, such as e.g. colleagues at a work party, where social relations are strengthened by breaching some of the norms of expected behavior that applies in everyday life. Thus, for many of the students attending fadderuka alcohol can be understood as a social glue, and as a ritualistic way of experiencing collective effervescence, where the meaning of the individual dissolves in favor of strong community feelings.

However, while drinking might shift nervousness into dancing and joint singing, these gatherings isn’t necessarily experienced as inclusive for all participants. Numbers from the national student survey for higher education in Norway shows how that 49 percent of the students responding reports that it is too much drinking in the student community, and that many (61 percent) are calling for more alcohol-free offers in social activities. Students in the project also gave examples on both implicit and explicit forms of peer drinking pressure, where quotes like “introduction week means drinking all the time” and “come on, you need more” is typical for the student´s social interactions. Despite the desire for less intoxication in fadderuka, the period´s organizers tell of how people do not turn up at alcohol-free events, illustrating how the practices over time have been objectified to a social institution centered around festivity.

Introduction week’s future and the way forward?

The stories from fadderuka are ambiguous; on the one hand, cohesion is highlighted, and the period is understood as important for students’ integration into a student community. On the other hand, student life throughout the period is objectified as a phase characterized by high alcohol consumption, which for some can be perceived as alienating and limiting for an extensive inclusion of new students.

However, also other transitional party practices are characterized by intoxication, such as the Norwegian high school celebration (=Russetid) and youths nightlife tourism, and it is important to emphasize how the introduction week in contrast represents a non-commercial and more inclusive rite of passage aiming for integration. In between the debates of noise in studentificated areas and concerns about intoxication among youths, from a sociological point of view, the attention must be drawn to the to the introduction week as an integrative measure voluntarily driven by the student community. A measure that must be taken care of in a time where loneliness is documented as a growing problem in society, not least among students. Meanwhile the student organizations should work further on how to reduce the central (and exclusive) role of alcohol in the period, it is important that the educational institutions and their local communities see the value in, an facilitate for, such ritual integration practices.

The article is written by Marius G. Vigen, PhD Candidate in Sociology, NTNU Department of Sociology and Political Science

on the request of PopNAD