The social sofa, a colorful bench covered by students with thousands of mosaic stones, is the starting point for a walk through Randwyck. During lockdowns, walking was one of the few safe ways for colleagues and students to meet. To encourage people to do so, Bosveld set out a route of more than 5 kilometers (and a shorter version of 3.5 kilometers) along the university buildings in Randwyck under the name UM Strolls. Now it serves as an incentive to stretch your legs in the afternoon. The route can be downloaded via a QR code at the bench.
Schols is looking forward to the walk on Monday. “Come on, action!” she calls after her speech. The board wants to set a good example by walking the route themselves, but also wants to get in touch with the faculty. “If there is interest, we want to organize these walk and talks regularly, so that we hear from you what is going on.” And there also appears to be time for a small experiment: by comparing the number of steps afterwards, they can find out how many steps the route is at minimal. “Not everyone takes the same number of steps to cover the same distance,” says 'field researcher' Schols. Turns out there are at least 6,000 – 60 percent of the recommended 10,000 steps a day.