So, I've not blogged in a while, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy!

Cash Machines

When NatWest left campus a few weeks ago, they decided they were also going to board up their 2 machines in the atrium, despite telling us a week before that they would continue to service the machines until a new tenant is found. So, for the time being, there will be queues for the cash machines at the crunch times. 

The bank spaces are leased by the University, and they are currently engaging other banks to try and find a new tenant - one who would hopefully also operate the same two cash machines. If they are unsuccesful in finding a new tenant, we've begun looking into alternatives, such as providing our own cash machines. There's a whole host of issues around cash security, costs to the Union and operational issues to sort out, but if it came to it, we'd make sure somehow that the cash machines that have been lost will be replaced as soon as they can.

Rest assured, we're dead against having cash machines that charge those using them as well, even if it means we have to foot some of the bill.

Summer Party &Summer Events

The summer events are all on sale, and hopefully the rain is starting to leave to get you all in that summer vibe. Make sure you pick up your tickets and don't miss out on these events, which really are the only way to celebrate the end of your year, or, if you're a finalist, the end of your University life!

Annual Allocation

Chances are, you have no idea what those two words mean, but they have consumed my working life for the past 2/3 weeks. Every year, the Union must submit our 5 year plan and a supporting paper to the University's financial planning committee.

While we are independent of the University, they are our key funder, contributing us with around 26% of our annual income. The annual alllocation bid is our opportunity to pitch to the University to continue their support of our existing services, as well as explore the potential for them to fund services which we currently don't offer. 

We are meeting the committee next week to present the paper and plan, so I don't want to go into too much detail now, but once we have heard back I will do another blog post just about what we asked for and why!

The launch of the graduation ball has, as usual, ignited a fierce debate about how it’s so expensive, how the SU is completely out of touch, and how ‘other Unions do it better.’

Well, it is, we’re not, and they don’t.

We’ve already taken tickets off sale because we realised pretty quickly we’d made a mistake and a lot of students have cash flow issues at this point in term. Sorry! They’ll be back on sale at the beginning of term 3, once your student loan has arrived.

I apologise as this is a bit of a long one, but I felt it deserved the attention. If you’re in a hurry and/or don’t like reading things, then skip to the summaries for each question.

“£68 a ticket? You must be having a laugh…”

We’re not, really. It’s a lot of money. There’s no two ways about it. However, the Graduation Ball is budgeted to be completely non-profit. That is to say, at 1150 tickets sold (the number of attendees last year, give or take) we break even. To put this into context, when societies put on any event, including balls, we ask them to budget for a break even at 65% attendance, to avoid making losses. That means the Graduation Ball is a fairly big risk for the Union to take, and one that we don't take lightly. We do it because we know it's going to be a brilliant event, and something to remember your University life by, but 'brilliant' does not come cheap.

We don’t attract any sponsorship for this event, so we can’t subsidise the costs at all. That means that your £68 covers the four course (delicious) meal, transport to and from the event, décor to transform the venue, entertainment to add a unique and unforgettable twist to your night. We’re not planning on making money out of you; the ticket price is literally what it costs.

Summary: £68 goes in, £68 value comes out. It’s expensive, yes, and if you don’t want to pay it – don’t go.

“Other Unions do it better…”

“…my friend goes to the University of Narnia and they had Freddie Mercury performing, gave them pure gold to eat, and actually paid them to go…!”

Some Union’s may do it better, but we think we’re actually pretty near the top. We’re lucky to have an experienced, dedicated entertainments team who really know what they’re doing. Besides, most unions have stopped doing a formal dinner because they simply can’t make it viable. Most other Summer Balls that you may hear your friends going to or see advertised are much more similar to our Summer Party than the Graduation Ball, and from what I’ve seen of those, they’re all considerably more expensive than the £38 you’ll be paying for the Summer Party.

Just to give a couple of examples of how other Union’s really don’t do it better sometimes…

Two years ago, Nottingham lost £70,000 on their version of the summer party. - http://www.su.nottingham.ac.uk/news/article/6001/2306/

Last year, Imperial Union made a £120,000 loss on their version of our summer events. (To put it into context, this is double what our planned surplus is for this year) -

http://www.london-student.net/breaking-news/imperial-summer-ball-makes-100000-loss/

Summary: You might find a couple of Unions who do it better, we’re not saying we do it the best. But we do it pretty well, despite the risks that are evidenced by the two previous links.

What the hell is with the medieval theme? What have you guys been smoking?

First things first – the Grad Ball will always be a sharp, glamorous black-tie affair. The theme is meant to add a bit of a twist to a night and make it something you will never forget. It’s obvious that some people have read into this theme as though they will be expected to dress up in medieval garb, which was never the intention at all!

We’ve still got plenty of time before the graduation ball, and, importantly, plenty of time before we re-launch the tickets. So here’s your opportunity to put some feedback in about the theme and give us an idea of what you want. Here's a question I've asked on facebook: www.facebook.com/questions/10151408081205201/?qa_ref=sa

If you don’t use facebook then just drop me an e-mail [ udo@warwicksu.com ] or comment on here!

Summary:  We realise the theme has created quite a few misconceptions. Take your opportunity to say which of the themes you would like to see at the graduation ball.

Too long, didn’t read summary of the whole thing – we’re not perfect, everyone makes mistakes. Hopefully you can at least respect the fact that we’ve taken immediate action to address the concerns that have been raised to us, and take this opportunity to give us your views!

So you voted in record breaking numbers last week -  a grand total of 5,883 voters across all the elected positions. But who did the the voting?

Approximately 88 percent of voters were undergraduates, with just 8 percent of voters defining themselves as postgraduates. 38 percent of voters were first-years, 27 percent second years, 27 percent third years, and 7 percent fourth years.

Significantly more male students voted than female, with 54 percent of voters identifying as male.

The department with the most voters was Warwick Business School, who comprised 10 percent of all voters, closely followed by Economics with 9.94 percent of the overall vote.

However, these figures on their own don't tell much of a story, so I grabbed a copy of the academic statistics yearbook for this year and I’ve done some slightly more useful analysis of the voter demographics. Rather than saying how many of the voters were ‘x’, it is more insightful to see how many out of group ‘x’ voted, when compared with the global average, which was 28.22% of the FTE (full time equivalent) student population, in itself a 22% increase on last years figure.

However, this figure is massively depressed by our lack of engagement historically with PG (postgraduate) students - the global turnout for UG (undergraduates) is 41.5%, while for PG students it is a mere 7.38%

Having said that, PG turnout increased by over 40% on last year, and since one of the key aims of the PG officer is to engage PG students within the Union, there is huge potential for this figure to rise further.

There is implications that second year students are remaining more engaged with the Union than in previous years, with an above average rise in the number of voters in that group (27% vs 21%) Overall, 57.2% of 1st years voted, 40% of 2nd years, 47% of third years and 37% of 4th years.

Faculty wise, a shade over 50% of arts students voted, with only 31% of science and 25% of social science students voting. Again, these figures are distorted by the fact that we have a far higher proportion of UGs in the arts faculty, and most of our PG students fall into the science and social science faculties.

Male vs female (53% vs 47%) - The proportion of female voters has actually slowly increased over the past two years, nearing on the 50/50 split that there is campus-wide. However, SocsFed has a slight bias of a percent or two towards men, while the WarwickSport demographic is markedly more male than female (57% to 43%), from which one could infer that male students are more likely to be engaged in extra curricular activity, and hence vote, albeit marginally.

Non-british voters comprised 23.5% of the vote, which seems low, but again this figure is depressed by the fact that international students are disproportionately PG students also. In fact, at UG level, only 20% of students are from overseas, and given that 88% of voters are undergraduate, this makes our international engagement pretty much spot on.

While the largest departments to vote in absolute terms was WBS, their turnout figure represented only 13% of their student population. The highest rates of voting were to be found in Classics, French, German, Italian and History all over 50% of their population (all Arts departments) and Maths, Politics, Philosophy, Economics and most other Arts departments between 40% and 50% of their respective populations.

Recently I've been working on solving a mystery. Many students seem to have misunderstandings about the state of the SU finances, which I'm hoping to clear up.

Is the Union "in the red"? No...

What does the Union spend money on?

Where does it's money even come from?!

To kick this project off, I sat down with our finance manager and we categorised all of our income and expenditure. The product is the Prezi below (full screen it for clarity) which shows the income and expenditure for 4 years of existence. It uses our actual financial results from last year, and the budgeted figures for this year and the next two.

**NB, all the information shown in this diagram relates to 4 years worth of activity!**

As you can see, we're not in the red! (This is the most frustrating misunderstanding from my point of view!) We are, however, finely balanced to to provide the best services we can with the money we raise.

So, what's next?

This information is being adjusted to sit on paper and will then be displayed in the Atrium for students to read at their leisure. If you think we're spending money (or, for that matter, receiving it) in the wrong place, then you can get involved and make a difference.

To complement this work, I'll now be doing a 'value for money audit' of each of our outlets, with the aim being that simple, easy to understand diagrams can be displayed in each outlet, showing price comparisons to local competitors and explaining the range of options available to you, our members. 

If you have any comments or thoughts on this (or anything else, for that matter!) then just drop me a line, either as a comment or via e-mail (udo@warwicksu.com)

George.

In no particular order, here are my responses to those of you who submitted rants during rant week, anonymously. If you attached a contact address to your rant you should have received a personal reply – if you haven’t then please let me know!

We received hundreds of rants at the end of last term, and they're so useful to us in maknig sure that we're doing the right thing, and that we're up to date with the issues that are bugging students, so thanks to all of you who got in touch!