FocSoc up for FOUR Guild Awards!

It's the Guild Awards on Tuesday and FocSoc have been nominated for three group awards and one individual award. They're up for:
- The Award for Most Improved Student Group;
- The Martin Strawson Memorial Award - The Award for Most Oustanding Residents Association;
- The Award for Best Event for the summer BBQ; and
- Charlotte Ward (VP Enertainment) has been nominated for The Ross Barlow Memorial Award - The Award for Most Oustanding Individual Student.

Fingers crossed!

Lifting the Cap

Many of you will have seen the news today about the BBC's anonymous survey of vice-chancellors from across the country showing the VCs being in favour of lifting the cap on tuition fees. The thing that struck me as interesting from the BBC's article on it was this:

"More students than ever are living at home while at university - with surveys suggesting that perhaps a fifth of students continue to live with their parents.

This in turn means that more students, particularly from less well-off families, are choosing from universities close to where they live"

As our uni currently has a home student population of around 30%, the increase in tuition fees could result in more students staying in the Midlands and coming to Birmingham. As the BBC point out, those from poorer backgrounds will be forced to choose from the universities closest to them, which is why home students in the West Midlands are lucky that we have such good universities on our doorstep to choose from in Birmingham and Warwick.

Guild Officer Elections

From a home students' perspective the e-voting system that's being used for the elections is absolutely fantastic as it means that unlike two years ago we don't have to be on campus to vote. The ease of voting this year in comparison to last year will also hopefully mean that turnout is pretty high; so if you haven't voted already, log in to your my.bham portal and VOTE, VOTE, VOTE!!!

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.