Glasgow University Students Representative Council

Hello there! It seems like several years since my last blog post last November and we have achieved a lot at the SRC since then. It’s again over to me to tell you about what I’ve been doing as your Vice President Student Activities.

Club and Society Review

We are in the process of reviewing and reexamining club & society support, which includes everything from making affiliations more streamlined, the type of training that we put on for the student leaders in the club and society community and how our processes and engagement can be improvement. to help make the club and society committee experience as good as it possibly can be. We have recently put on a couple Club & Society Mixers from which we gained some valuable insight and feedback, and if you didn’t get a chance to attend these mixers or were too busy networking with other clubs & societies (which is totally fine by the way), then we would welcome any thoughts or feedback on the club & society committee experience sent over to me!

Refreshers Week

In January we welcomed another intake of students to the university as part of the various International and European entry routes available to students overseas, and as such we once again put on a varied and successful Refreshers’ Week as part of a collaborative effort between the four student bodies. The highlight of the week was once again the Refreshers’ Fair, which we expanded on this year to allow for more sports clubs, societies and university departments to attend to meet the needs of new and returning students alike.

Volunteering, Clubs and Societies (VCS) Awards

The Volunteering, Clubs and Societies (VCS) Awards have come and gone, and 8 worthy winners have been crowned after a year of solid graft and hard work. We had some magnificent nominations this year and it was incredibly difficult to decide the winners of each award. The standard was truly superb and hearing about the work that our clubs, societies, media organisations and volunteers have been putting in over the last academic year was enlightening and humbling – it really shows that we are a university of World Changers indeed.  Find out the shortlisted nominees and winners here.

Thank you to all the came and congratulations once again to the winners! If you fancy watching the ceremony GUST filmed the whole night and that will be available to watch soon!

Exam Destress

We once again worked collaboratively with the student bodies to put on our semesterly Exam Destress campaign in December. From giving our Exam Destress packs full of goodies and protein balls, to handing out tea at our Tea Stress stall, to bringing in some furry friends with Paws for Stress, we are very pleased with how successfully the campaign went. A new addition this year was the Level 3 Library wall which saw students in the droves engaging and doodling on the wall with supportive messages for other students. We are looking at developing everything we did in December and adding to it with the Semester 2 exam destress campaign which will last a bit longer due to the longer exam period. We’ll be announcing this semester’s destress activities soon so keep an eye on our social media!

Raising and Giving (RAG) Week

This year for Raising and Giving (RAG) week we managed to raise over £3000 for Refuweegee a Glasgow based charity set up by a UofG Alumni which aims to provide a warm welcome to forcibly displaced individuals arriving in Glasgow.

The week was a grand success and we put on some of our staple events such as Drag Bingo and Alpacas on Campus to name but  a large portion of the funds generated this year was raised as part of the ‘Library Fines’ initiative jointly ran with the Library, which saw droves of students squaring off library fines over the week in the knowledge that it was all for a good cause! A big thank you to the library for donating the fines paid in over the course of the week to this cause, the funds raised will go a long way for Refuweegee I am sure of it.

Things to look out for

• RAG Committee Applications
  • As the semester winds down we will be looking to recruit our next set of budding raiser and givers for the 2019/20 academic year. If you are a fan of fundraising and want to be part of a unique group of students whose sole job is to fund raise and put together charitable initiatives across the whole university as part of the SRC, then consider applying. Keep an eye on their Facebook page.
• Freshers’ Helper Applications
  • In a similar vein, we will shortly be releasing our applications for Freshers’ Helping 2019 including our Meet and Greet Team and PG Helpers! Freshers’ Helping is by far one of the best things to get involved with in the SRC and is one of those weeks that you will remember for the rest of your time at University! Information will be available on the SRC Website soon

Signing off…

That’s everything for my last blog post of the academic year. It’s been a crazy year with the SRC and I have thoroughly enjoyed every single minute of it. For all of the sabbatical officers, it seems like our first day on the job was years ago, but alas the time spent in this job goes so quickly and now we are very near the end of our tenures. As cliché as it sounds time truly does fly when you are having fun as we have all thoroughly enjoyed our roles and representing students. If you’re returning to the university for another year of study I look forward to keeping you informed on all things SRC as your next President, and if you are heading off for pastures new and graduating from the University, I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely wish you the best for the future as a member of our next class of world changers.

To find out more, or if you have any questions relating to anything that I have touched on in this blog post, please don’t hesitate to throw me a line at vp-activities@src.gla.ac.uk and make sure to follow my dedicated Twitter account @GUSRC_VPSA!

Have a fantastic summer folks and good luck in all your exams if you are taking them!

Scott.