O Week students take to Tauranga streets
Chanting students turned shoppers’ heads in Tauranga as they celebrated the start of a new year with O Week celebrations.
Bay of Plenty Polytechnic students flooded the streets of Tauranga in colour for a traditional O Week celebration.
More than 100 students dressed up in colourful, crazy themes to parade through the main streets of Tauranga on Thursday afternoon, chanting and dancing to attract as much attention as possible.
Student Mark Gordon was one of the many. “It’s just for a bit of fun, a chance to show Tauranga what we’re about,” he said.
“We were dancing to attract attention. The loud music corresponds to a chant and a theme. Ours was Thrift Shop by Macklemore but instead of thrift shop, we used sports clothes,” he said
Radio stations also joined in the fun with the Edge, Mai FM and ZM Black Thunder tooting their horns and blasting their stations for the students to dance to.
“I loved going to the Save Mart at lunch with a bunch of mates from class,” Gordon, from the level four fitness team, said.
“We were running around this big second hand barn in tears of laughter at some of the stuff we found. Shoppers couldn’t help but giggle at some of the things we were trying on.
“It was just an awesome chance to put on a mask and act crazy for an hour. I don’t know about the other classes that participated but fitness definitely enjoyed ourselves.”
Each group competes throughout the parade to win $200 dollars toward their course.
Gordon’s team failed to meet the mark set in previous years. “We were aiming to win. The level four fitness classes have won the previous two years, but we lost out to Maritime. It was still a blast.”
