Home Students' Association Consultation

Now that my dissertation's in out the way I've had a chance to look over the replies that I had from the Home Students' Association consulation. Over Christmas I sent out a few questions to the email contacts that I had for home students. One of the major problems that the HSA has is communicating with its members because we don't receive any contact details for home students from the University. Despite sending it out to 100+ people I only got five responses, which was disappointing to say the least but I think that in all honesty it speaks volumes. The idea of the consulation was to gage students' views on the HSA and find out what it is that students want from it. Of the five replies that I got only one of these people had been involved in the HSA. The main reasons that people weren't interesting in being involved with the association were academic demands, travel restrictions and a lack of publicity of and information about the association.

FocSoc was also included in the consulation to see if students had been involved with them in their first year, which all of the respondents were. Therefore, it seems that there needs to be more information about the HSA channelled through FocSoc at the end of students' first years.

Activities that are inclusive also appeared to be an issue, with the need for more non-alcohol related events, especially from FocSoc. This is important as not everyone enjoys or is comfortable with events in which alochol is present. Over the past year though, this is something that FocSoc have addressed with a greater number of events which don't involve alcohol, such as the summer BBQ, safari park trip, cinema trips and laser quest.

A greater level of representation of home students is needed from the HSA but the only way that this can happen is for the association to communicate with its members so that they can tell the committee what they want from them. A greater presence within the Guild through publicity would help in acheiving this, as home students can only tell the HSA what they want if they know that they are there to represent their needs and interests.