Not sure about the whole 'Welcome Week' or 'Freshers' Fortnight' thing. Lets go with both.
It's been been one hell of a week so far. You, our members, are back and raring to go, and we are excited to help you get your year off to the best possible start. Last week saw us open the new Media Centre, where we have invested money into providing our Media Clubs & Societies with state-of-the art equipment. We had a bit of a photo-finish with our Concert Hall refurbishment which has now had its first ICU Cinema screening. The amount of work that students and staff poured into these projects is staggering, so a huge thank you to all involved.
I spent my Saturday and Sunday at the Mingles and Lite Mingles, and was lucky enough to chat to a couple of hundred of our new members before the formalities of the week set in. I’d like to point out that one Sabb, Alex Savell, deserves a medal for driving minibuses at 3/4am to assist Wardening Teams in getting their students to and from the Mingles . It takes a really decent human being to spend your very-early-morning driving a minibus, especially when it was his birthday on the Sunday.
Monday felt like baptism-by-fire with nine Welcome Talks to the Great Hall, full to the brim with people every time. It was a really special opportunity to welcome our 4,000 new students to the Union and to the College. It feels as though it was worryingly recently that Scott Heath, President in 2011/12, was welcoming me to Imperial, and I was a wide-eyed, excited Fresher.
Huge congratulations to Abi and the Student Activities Team who put on the biggest, best ever Freshers’ Fair on Tuesday. Every Club, Society or Project that I have spoken to has reported huge sign-ups, which is truly exciting. I was then lucky enough to manage to see the comedy that was happening on Tuesday night in the h-bar. All the Postgrads I was chatting to down there were having a really great time. The comedians were on form, including our very own Nas, from Imperial College Comedy Society. Coming up, we have our Freshers’ Ball on Friday and our Postgraduate Mingle on Saturday, to celebrate the mid-point of the first fortnight of term.
We are really excited to be kicking off next week with our first ever alcohol-free club night. DRI will be happening on Monday 13 October from 7pm, and whether you can’t or don’t drink, or if you just fancy a night of something that promises to be unique, then this is for you. We’re doing soft drinks only, and have a great range of games, music and food to make sure that everyone can have a great time and meet new people.
As for the plan for the year ahead, I’m having some very exciting conversations with staff in College to continue work on our Affordable Imperial campaign, as well as getting the General Election hype going. We carried out a small survey at Freshers’ Fair on what political issues our students care most about. We are going to carry this out again at the fairs we will be attending at other campuses before announcing what we found.
Hope to see lots of you soon; I’ll be at the Postgraduate Mingle this Saturday and DRI on Monday, so come say hi!
