The University of Groningen Alumni Song is a fact!

Wouldn’t it be great to have an alumni song to remind all our alumni of their time at our University and the city of Groningen? This dream is now a reality: a song to share with our alumni!

Revolutionary

Carina Bravo Plancarte and Bert Wolfkamp of Alumni Relations sought to produce a fun, exciting, catchy and original song that would serve as a reminder for all our alumni, as well as enhance our fundraising efforts and raise our profile as we make preparations for the celebration of our 400^th anniversary.

They wanted the commonalities of student life in Groningen to be presented in both song and video, therefore themes such as bicycles, the Grote Markt, beer and night life in Groningen had to be key features. Dr. Dicky Gilbers was approached to compose the music. The lyrics were written by Frank den Hollander, who was also involved in the making of the University lipdub video. Local hero, artist and University of Groningen student Bart van Overbeek and his band The OutTakes agreed to record and perform the song.

With the completion of this project we are now in the exclusive company of a small selection of worldwide schools taking pride in having an alumni song.

Groningen on my mind

The song was officially launched for an audience of hundreds of students present at the festivities as part of the opening of the Academic Year. After a slow start, the students quickly started moving and clapping to the rhythm. It is the kind of song that sticks in your mind. Particularly the chorus: “Oh Groningen I love you. Can't stop thinking of you. No matter what I do, Groningen on my mind”.

The fans on YouTube.com seem to like the song too, for the next day the video already had over 3,000 hits. In these last few weeks that number has even risen to 12,000! We can safely say the online response had been phenomenal.

Please judge for yourself – but beware, you will probably be singing the song for the rest of the day!