Reporter Carla Green finds out more.
Last week, student association staff were busy - really busy. But not nervous, events co-ordinator Luke Matsopoulos said. Never nervous.
‘‘I'm excited, to be honest,'' he said.
‘‘I'm pretty happy with the line-up, so I'm excited to see some of these bands.''
Mr Matsopoulos is one of a few people who have been working on O-Week for months - about five months, to be precise.
‘‘We've been chewing away for at least the past five months ... It's been pretty intense. It's been good, though.''
Mr Matsopoulos is new to the job. He started last April. But he is not new to O-Week; almost a decade ago, he remembers going to O-Week as a University of Otago undergraduate.
It was interesting seeing O-Week from a different angle, he said. But the festivities had changed since he was a student.
‘‘When I was [a student at Otago], I remember it being a massive, two-week experience,'' he said.
‘‘But ... now, it's confined to the one week [and there's] so much more organisation.''
Student president Laura Harris has also seen the week evolve, albeit over a shorter timeframe. She has been involved in the organisational side of things for four years, primarily in her role as ‘‘second-in-command'', student co-ordinator of the Are You OK? volunteer safety team.
‘‘It gets better every year - it gets more succinct, it gets more volunteers ... every year we learn from things that might not have gone as well as we hoped.''Still, she said, students never failed to surprise her.
‘‘You can't prepare yourself for every situation. There are things that happen every year that I'm like ‘I wouldn't have thought that would happen','' Ms Harris said.
This year, Ms Harris has a broader perspective on O-Week than she did as Are You OK? student co-ordinator.
And, as president, she wants to emphasise the elements of O-Week open to the wider Dunedin community - not just students who want to party.
In an 18-minute interview with Ms Harris and Mr Matsopoulos, the freshly-inducted student president brought the conversation around to community engagement several times.
Focusing on the intersection between students and community members was important, she said. And it was not a question of managing the reputation of the student population.
‘‘[We want to be] emphasising the community involvement [in O-Week]. And there'll be events that we hold throughout the year, as well, so Orientation's just the beginning,'' she said.
‘‘The university and its students are such a big part of Dunedin and what makes Dunedin what it is, so it's quite good for us to be able to have those opportunities to interact with members of the community, and for members of the community to interact with us.''
And even within O-Week, there were events where community members were welcome, Ms Harris said - the tent city; the rummage sale; the international food festival; some of the gigs.
‘‘It's not so much about changing the reputation, but just showing what it is we do from how we view it,'' she said.‘‘Because from the inside, it looks very different.''
