Student Life and Culture
The student life at METU is marked with activities of student societies, frequent political protests, and festivals. The Cultural and Convention Center continually hosts a wide spectrum of cultural events and also regular occurrences such as the METU Jazz Days and METU Art Festival. The event with the largest number of participants is the annual METU Spring Festival, a five day long series of open air concerts and exhibitions held at the main campus.
There are various traits shared by METU students, including the usage of an English–Turkish jargon (METUrkish, ODTÜrkçe as once named by an alumni artist in an art project) which apparently stemming from the fact that English is the language of instruction covering academic processes and student life (and blending into campus language similar to Persian, Arabic and later French in the past blended into Turkish to form Ottoman technical language), which reputedly is not liked much by the students of other universities; and the omnipresent word "Hocam" (meaning "My Teacher"), which is used by METU students to address anyone from bus drivers to senior faculty members. Underneath this phrase lies the philosophy that everyone has something to learn from each other.
The main campus has dormitory capacity for nearly 6,000 students who benefit from the shopping center, banks, post office, and a wide variety of sports facilities, including gymnasiums, tennis courts, basketball and football fields, jogging trails, olympic-size indoor swimming pool, and an outdoor swimming pool.
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