The Academic NESU society was accepted as a sub-association of TYY (Student union of the Turku University) very soon after it has been registered. Though many of our members are computer science majors there are no formal connections to any other associations. We have also members who have physics, math, geology, etc. as a major.
NESU is maybe like a fraternity. We have lot of activities that are usually related to sports and culture. Almost all of us are big fans of professor J.R.R. Tolkien. It is an unwritten rule that all the members should know at least his main work The Lord of the Rings trilogy but most of the members know many other works by him too.
NESU has had success also in participating university leagues in floor ball and soccer. Members are also interested in badminton, tennis, bowling, sailing and kyykkä. In the SKO kyykkä competition we had two champions in a row in years 1994 and 1995, but unfortunately this year we got only the silver and bronze places. If we had win three times in a row we would now own the challenge trophy.
Necathlon is something many people have heard of. It is our competition that is arranged 1-4 times a year. It is a playful competition having nothing more common with decathlon than the fact that every Necathlon has also 10 events. Unlike decathlon the events change from competition to another and are usually not very sports related. There have been 11 necathlons so far. Some events to mention are mini golf, pool, ski jumping, swimming, golf simulator, fencing, bowling, football, "throw a pig", poker, darts, waving, shooting, curling and sledding to name but a few.
Nezvestija(tm) is a table ice-hockey competition that is held once a year. It is arranged by Hannu Pajunen who has also won the competition twice. The Academic NESU society has usually paid the cost of the prizes for this competition taking place after Christmas.
Many people have asked what does the NESU stand for. There is no official answer for that though there are many tries, some are good and some are even better. In a beer relay few yeas ago one task we had for the contestant was to tell us what does it stand for. Here are some of the answers we got (more of these can be found in our www-pages http://www.nesu.org/nesu/nesu/nesuon.html):