Over 2500 students from the “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi (TUIASI) participated to The Graduate’s Day organized on the occasion of International Festival of Education (IFE 2013), on the 20th of June. They thus proved that “TUIASI = Moldavia”.
They gathered in the Tudor Vladimirescu campus with pancards, vuvuzelas and all kinds of ingenious contraptions and slogans, proving that the energy and creativity are both on the march.
The enthusiastic engineers, alongside their teachers and vice-rectors of TUIASI, have formed a human serpent slithering on the city’s streets to meet their mates from the other four universities in the front of the National Theater. Reunited, they blended to exchange flags, share experience and shout out lord the joy of being graduates of the academic Iasi and celebrate the education as show.
The over 5000 youth clogging the “Steven the Great” walkway assisted to a ceremony where the robe clad rectors, ministers of education, the mayor, the prefect, the Bishop and the Metropolitan of Moldavia gave their blessings to the young graduates to proudly and boldly walk through their lives. As the evening got older, the students held their hands high, sang and danced at the concerts held by Vunk and Antonia.
Read below an article by Mihai Andrei for Opinia Studențească, as he joined the students of TUIASI to the events:
The engineers have been left dry
There is quite a ruckus in “Tudor”, even though the graduate’s march is to leave to the “Steven the Great” Boulevard in over an hour. The parking space near the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Protection is already filled with students dressed in white. More and more youth with “engineer” printed T shirts join the crowd, much like ants to a picnic basket. Once in a while, small group separate from the “colony” rushing to the kiosk in front of the T 17 hostel. They are rapidly returning carrying beer packs or PET’s, candidly smiling to the police officers waiting the engineer’s departure.
Razvan and Toni, packing flags and vuvuzelas, are waiting as well to start the march. However, they are practically glued to Irina, the red table near the shop in the bus station. Toni tries to bear along his friend toward the parking lot, with small chance of success though: “Are you daft? I’ll be done with my beer till I’ll get there, and then I’ll have to come back”, says the small lad. Once on the move, however, the students’ march seems to be an enormous rattle snake, hissing and howling. Balloons with the TUIASI logo are glistening once in a while, not unlike round white scales on its back. While the serpent’s body is white, its head is red. A student – donning a blood red cap with two Coke cans attached and prime as a rooster – is trying to order the engineer’s army. His mates hardly believe there is soda in the cans upon his head – as hearty as he appears to be – and begun to bet whether these are filled with wine or brandy.
“Cuza, Eat your heart out the TCM rules”
Once we near our destination, the young engineers make up all sorts of limericks. The most popular seems to be “Die, fight, and overcome … the beer”, as even the girls from Textiles, Leather are shouting it between the laughs. The serpent shows its full length only when we reach the Cuza Voda narrow street, with its small fronts. Although the first students have reached the Philharmonic, the serpent is still dragging its tail near the Golia Monastery.
The Rector of TUIASI greeted the students in the front of the National Theatre, where the engineers’ column stopped to wait the graduates from Copou. “They’re the last even when walking”, joked Alexandru, a fair-haired boy with glasses, student in the last year at the faculty of Hydrotechnics. As the waiting is beginning to take its toll on the youth patience, some of the engineers begin to eye the girls standing near the fountains in the front of the theater. Sneaking with catlike skill, they fill their helmets with water and begin splashing the young ladies. Much to their dismay, the girls don’t seem all that impressed.
The serpent is rapidly reforming with the news of “Cuza” students’ arrival. The engineers tighten their ranks as a welcome committee, leaving only a narrow space for these last ones to reach the front of the stage on the “Steven the Great” walkway. They could not help themselves showing those from Copou who rules.
