Valtio-opin opiskelijat ry (VOO)

Valtio-opin opiskelijat ry (VOO) - Students of Political Science - is an active association for political science students in the faculty of social sciences. The administrative organ is the VOO student board, which is elected every year. Its members take care of VOO with a passion and with deep commitment - good spirit is the key driving force in our association! You are very welcome to take part in our numerous activities. In autumn VOO organises for example a toga party and ”sitsit”, a traditional Finnish dinner including singing, drinking and cold food. In spring our association has its annual party, which is undoubtedly the biggest and most stylish event of the year. These are just a few of our activities: as a member of VOO you will always find some activity to join in!

In addition to parties, also sports and culture are an important part of VOO’s activity. Its prestigious football team, FC Jormat, has won the students’ futsal cup consecutively two times. A succesful team with enthousiastic VOO members has been competing in floorball as well. When it comes to culture, the selection has ranged from very sophisticated happenings, such as visits to the national opera, concerts and theater, to somewhat more relaxed forms of educating oneself. The latter category includes Oktoberfest (German culture imported to Helsinki!) and Kuppala Jam, a night of jamming with live music in the popular hangaround cellar. VOO has also a high-quality publication which comes out four times a year, Policy (usually in Finnish, though... but we'd love to have exchange and degree students write in our magazine).

VOO has a tradition of travelling, too. For many years the adventurous students have gone on a trip during the Christmas holiday. The objective is to go far from the dark north! The next group of students will be heading to Mexico and scatter all over central-America in December 2007. Also a new travelling project will be starting in the autumn. Every VOO member is warmly welcome to take part!

You can turn to your tutor with whatever questions you have about studies, the university, student organizations, life in Helsinki, or anything else. They are there to help you 24 hours a day and determined to make the beginning of your stay and studies in Finland easy and fun! And don’t hesitate to bring about any suggestions you might have e.g. concerning the tutoring, events, courses...

You will meet lots of new people at the beginning of the semester. We encourage and welcome you to attend the VOO activities and parties, and hope that you will make lifelong friends from both the Finnish students and also the exchange students. We want you to have the opportunities to get in touch with the Finnish way of life. We are eagerly waiting to meet you and we hope you feel the same way too. Let us learn a lot about one another, and of course, LET'S HAVE LOADS OF FUN!