Week 1 – STALL AT FRESHER’S FAIR – SIGN UP! - Thurs & Friday
Please please please come and see us at our brilliantly decorated stall at the Societies Fair – We’ll have loads of information, leaflets and smiles to get you interested in gender, women’s issues and campaigns that we’ll be running in the coming year! It’s your chance to sign up and become a member of the team!
Week 2 – CULTURE GROUP – TV SHOW BREAK DOWN!
To kick off this term’s WASS Culture Groups, we’ll be holding a top secret screening of a television programme. We’ll then have a mini discussion about any issues raised by the afore-mentioned programme, before heading up to the Grad for a proper knees-up and chat!
Week 3 – WELCOME TO ANTI-SEXISM – THE BIG MEET! Thur 18th So.17 7pm!
Aha! After having a chance to meet us all and sample ONE of our regular activities, this week we thought we’d do a more official introduction to WASS, explaining what we think WASS is or could be, and getting a chance to meet other academic or key figures in WASS who aren’t involved directly with the society but are interested in the same issues and concerns. This is where you can see what area of gender issues concern you, and get to grips with equal pay, discrimination, sexual harassment, abortion, feminism (in its many forms), and so many other campaigning ideas to choose from.
Although WASS can’t run campaigns for all the many inequalities and problems in the world, we will do our best to provide information and we will hopefully have a special table dedicated to How To Run Your Own Campaign, and How To Get Involved In Making Zines.
After this buzzing start, we will hopefully be having a huge social with the members of Pride, a society which shares many of our concerns surrounding sexism, gender stereotyping and general gender-based prejudices, and who also happen to be lovely people!
Week 4 – T-SHIRT MAKING – SUPER SLOGANS! Wed 24th Meeting Room 3 (Union North) 3:30pm!
Back to some artistic roots! We’ll be making our own übercool feminist/anti-sexism t-shirts! You’ll be stencilling and scrawling powerful (yet so chic) slogans - either time-honoured phrases, such as the Fawcett Society’s “This is what a feminist looks like” or making up your own! This is a chance to get messy and get creative, all in the name of anti-sexism!
All you need to bring is a t-shirt of your choice – they have some cheap ones in Tesco if you’re stuck) – but I’d go for a lighter coloured one so the text stands out! You are free to modify, colour and put text on your t-shirt in any way you choose, we’ll do our best to provide a range of colours in paints/pens, but if you want to do anything fancy, bring along your own stuff in case we don’t have it. If it goes to plan, we should have some tried-and-tested stencils and they will look awesome!
CAMPAIGNS MEETING!
Also this week (week 4) we’ll be pulling up chairs to have a chat about possible campaigns that we could do and get involved in this year. This is where YOU get involved! Come and spread the word about what you are motivated by – whether it’s a particular issue or a really striking campaign that you’ve seen somewhere – we want in!
This is probably the most important meeting of the year, where we get started on campaigns that we will be running for the next two terms!
Week 5 – SUBVERTISE!
Last term we tried out a brilliant idea – taking advertisements and then altering them to say what they are suggesting by ridiculous innuendo, yucky pictures and fiction-as-fact taglines. The results were pretty cool (you should have seen them at the Fresher’s Fair), and we’re hoping the results this time will be just as stunning! This continues our on-going barrage against the media and marketing arenas, hopefully combating the skewed images and bizarre lifestyles that we are supposedly meant to live by. This event was loads of fun last term, lots of cutting up and sticking on, and everyone can do it! Seriously, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to get your word-play going!
HALLOWEEN TRICK OR TREAT – WE WANT YOUR COPPERS!
Every year we raise money for Coventry Women’s Haven, a support centre for women who have suffered some kind of abuse and need somewhere safe to stay. These kind of centres are under pressure to shut, so it’s really important that we raise money for this one to stay open. As part of this, we’ll be trooping around campus in Halloween costume, asking everyone we find to donate their unwanted coppers, and anything else they’d like to give, for that matter! It should be wild, and charity-boosting fun, frolicking around under the stars!
Week 6 – CASUAL SOCIAL
Yep, it’s reading week for some of us, but being the eager bunnies we are, we’ll still be around for that all-important ‘casual social’. After all that razzle dazzle of the first couple of weeks, we’d like to take this moment to relax, have a couple of bottles of J20 (Apple and Mango flavour) or whatever, and chill out in the Grad with all our campaigners-in-crime. Lush.
Week 7 – Supporting Amnesty Week
We’re always down with getting involved with other societies, and Week 7 has been commandeered by Amnesty. They have a special day dedicated to stopping abuse against women, and this is where we step up and try to share as much information as possible to raise awareness of horrible things that sometimes people try to forget/ignore. We’ll be having a nicely decked out stall, brimming with leaflets, and we need as many volunteers as possible to come down and talk to as many people as we possibly can!
Week 8 – Reclaim The Night Mini-March Around Campus!
How exciting! A first taste of campaign-based marching! I did this for the first time last year, and it was unbelievably thrilling! Reclaim The Night is something of a traditional feminist march, however it has since evolved into a stance for all people who feel they are in the minority and might be at danger when they walk at night. This is simply not on, and the Reclaim the Night March is a way of saying ‘No, We Won’t Be Scared’. Look out for more information on this – it will be brill!
Reclaim The Night March In London!
If the mini-march fuelled your marching spirit, we’ll be organising a group trip (yay!) to join in the HUGE march in London!!! This will provide a neat opportunity to meet loads (and I mean loads) of other people who are fighting for similar causes, and from the photos I’ve seen, it looks totally thrilling. Hopefully we’ll be meeting up with Lauren, the president of WASS last year, and be staying over in a London hostel!!!! Ooh, sleepover!!!
So, those are the events we’ve got planned so far! Are you tempted? We’ve tried to cater for everyone – from the die-hard campaigner to the complete beginner to those with a passing interest in gender debate (ooh, talking of debates, we’ll be having some of them week 9 or 10). If there’s anything you want to know, anything you think might be beneficial for us to know, or anything you think would be good as a future WASS event, tell us!!!!
wass@sunion.warwick.ac.uk