The end of this semester does not only bring the academic year to an end for the third year students who will graduate and go on with their lives, but also for our Aramark boss Mr. Paulik who will leaves in about 3 weeks. His future plans are to go to Hamburg, where he will work in a higher position of the Aramark hierarchy. His new challenge will be to feed 1500 people instead of 700.

Since he is an honorary member of Mercator College, the college, or more precisely the College Office and the college masters, decided to organise a farewell party for him. All students were invited as well as the vice-president Alexander Ziegler-Jöns, head of campus activities Marita Hartnack, IUB’s webmaster and member of the food committee Warren Laine and a few graduate students. Present were of course also the college masters, Resident Associates as well as the current president of the undergraduate student body, Ian Marshall, and as a representative for the food committee, Maria Kordonowska. Also some of the nice “Aramark Ladies” showed up to say their boss good bye.

Starting at 8.30, the common room of Mercator College slowly started to fill up and everyone was offered some sparkling wine. Around 9 our college master Klaus Böhnke started to hold a speech in honour of Mr. Paulik. He thanked him for always having an open ear for us and gave him a little gift which turned out to be a pen with his name engraved. Afterwards he turned to the College Office Team and thanked their manager Samuel Johnson for his great job of always being there and organizing such nice events.

After Klaus finished his speech he passed the floor to Prof. Ziegler-Jöns, Mrs. Hartnack, our president Ian Marshall, a graduate student, Prof. Bergholz and Warren Laine for short speeches. They all thanked Mr. Paulik for managing Aramark and the food at IUB well, with a lot of improvement concerning the quality.

Many of the speakers mentioned above also had little gifts for Mr. Paulik, a t-shirt by the graduate students, a book by Prof. Bergholz. Maria Kordonowska, a member of the food committee presented him with a a little present of behalf of the student body – a white working jacket where many students had signed on in different colors with farewell wishes. But the most original present was still to come: after everyone finished talking, she served him a delicious dinner which was cooked by her. Since Mr. Paulik provided us with food so many times, she felt it would be only fair if she cooks a little dinner for him in return, representing all students.

Overall the farewell party was a big success. Quite a number of students came to say farewell to Mr. Paulik and the atmosphere was really nice and relaxed, giving us some change before the upcoming finals.



You can find more pictures here.

(text written by Saskia Dewitz)