Following a decade of campaigning, we are delighted to announce that the University of Warwick will finally host a ‘Week 0’ at the start of Term 1, which will take full effect from the 2018-19 academic year.

The campaign for a stand-alone Freshers Week at Warwick free from academic commitments has been ongoing for over 10 years now, and has a been a key project for successive Sabbatical Officer teams during this time. The current team spent a huge amount of time lobbying on the issue throughout Term 1, which ultimately led to the establishment of enthusiastic cross-faculty support for Week 0 which had not previously existed.

This long-overdue initiative will be vital in helping students adjust to the upheaval and stress of moving to University, as well as enabling better orientation around campus. A diverse programme of events will be in place to ensure the widest possible student participation during Welcome Week, while new and current students will no longer be forced to juggle academic commitments with club and society activities during the first week of term.

Although we are disappointed that the University are not able to deliver a full Welcome Week for 2017-18, a series of interim and pilot processes will be in place for the start of the next academic year.

As with the campaigns for a 24-Hour Library and Fossil-Free divestment here at Warwick, this victory once again shows the power of collective action and what the student body can achieve when they work together for the common good. We therefore want to say a massive thankyou to all those students, officers and staff – both past and present – who ultimately helped to make it happen!

The Sabbatical Officer Team