Students’ Union

Avoid having your drink spiked

Yesterday, as I was looking around The Student Room, I found a post about the dangers of having your drink spiked.

Basically, I thought it wise to post on here today the advice I gave on the forum.

In any drinking environment, there are always risks that your drink could be tampered with or spiked. Whether with pills or with a few shots of vodka that you might not notice after you’ve already had a few drinks, it’s always possible. So here are a few tips to staying as safe as you can:

  1. Don’t accept drinks from strangers.
  2. Buy your own drinks. Try not to rely on others to get them in.
  3. Don’t share drinks.
  4. Don’t leave your drink unattended, even for a short amount of time. If you absolutely MUST (and I don’t think the toilet is often a MUST), then only ever ask a close friend if they can look after your drink. It’s still not a totally safe option, though.
  5. Don’t drink too much in the first place.
  6. Stay with friends so that you can get home properly with them. If you’re feeling unusually sick or drowsy, don’t try getting home on your own. Ask a close and trusted friend to look after you and help you get home. If the situation is bad, it may also need reporting.
  7. Men need to be just as aware of the problem of spiking as women. It can happen to ANYONE.
  8. I’ll repeat that. It can happen to ANYONE. You’re not immune and you can’t believe you’ll be one of the lucky ones. Neither should you bury your head in the sand and deal with any problems as and when they arise.

These websites may give you more tips, information and ideas on how to stay safe:

http://www.roofie.com/
http://www.alcotop.co.uk/

Students’ Union – Interview with an Entertainments Officer

Now that Freshers all over the country are settling in and experiencing their first taste of Higher Education, it’s time for another interview in the occasional Students’ Union feature. It’s now pretty obvious that entertainment is an important part of life at university. Why not, eh?

To give a flavour of what’s involved and how the entertainments are developed, I spoke to Anso Dietrichsen, Entertainments Officer at the University of Winchester Students’ Union:

Anso Dietrichsen

– Entertainment is obviously a huge deal for students. How involved can they become with the SU’s work in sorting out a successful event?

“One of the main points the SU tries to encourage is that it is a student union ‘run by students, for students’. All SU members are therefore either students or previous students. Any student can suggest ideas or new acts and can definitely help in organizing and running the events, although the final responsibility rests with the trustees. We do encourage students to be as involved as they can and to express any ideas they have.”

– What kind of communication will you give to students, especially the new intake of Freshers?

“We have a number of ways through which we aim to keep students informed about upcoming events. We have a fortnightly schedule called ‘What’s on Winchester’ aka ‘WOW’. This contains all the information e.g. “what’s on”, “where” and “how much” and can be found scattered around the SU. Other than that we have volunteers who help with flyering for specific or big events. The Union website also contains all the information. I will aim to be at most events spreading the word on any other upcoming events. A main source of information for freshers is via e-mail. At freshers fair we encouraged students to join our e-mail list which will enable us to e-mail them all the information.”

– Winchester is celebrating a brand spanking new Student Centre. How will this open up the possibilities for entertainments?

“The new building brings with it more space and capacity. This extrapolates to bigger and better acts and events. It also means tickets for Balls aren’t as expensive as we do not have to pay for the venue hire.”

– Your election manifesto highlights your strength in promoting activities and communicating effectively to students. What ideas do you have that will help raise awareness of what a Students’ Union does?

“I plan to visit all the student halls, not only to show my face, but to make students aware of what we do at the union. The union also provides assistance with academic and environmental issues etc. This is provided by the other Executive officers, such as the Academic affairs and the Welfare officer. The union is not just a place to go drinking!”

– Can you give a brief explanation of how an event morphs from an idea into the real deal on the night?

“I get ideas from students and put it to Gemma Burt, the Entertainments Manager. She then establishes whether it is possible to stage the event. Factors to consider include costs, popularity with the students and then, of course, health and safety.”

– How can students really strike up the perfect work/life balance? After all, university is just as much about having fun as it is studying.

“How to strike a balance in organizing time is a factor we also have to consider in our overall weekly entertainments plan. Even though the Union has a lot of events, it also encourages ‘non-drinking’ nights such as salsa, quiz night, movie night, etc. These nights do not go on for longer than three hours which leave students with ample time for studying. Our main clubbing nights also feature various music genres; therefore not everyone may be interested. By choosing which events to attend, students will be able to plan for study as well. Student services will also gladly help with advice on time management, should this become a problem.”

Many thanks to Anso for her time, especially as the uni’s Freshers’ Fortnight was taking place too. Entertainments are clearly an important part of introducing the new students to university. As an example, for some extra information on the role itself, the Winchester Student Union website explains that the Entertainments Officer shall do the following:

  • In conjunction with any relevant staff members, assist with the organisation and publicising of a variety of entertainment and other social activities to reflect the interests of all sections of the student body.
  • Assist the RPC Co-ordinator with relevant clubs, societies, companies, and organisations which may be advantageous to students.
  • Establish and maintain contact with relevant officers at other universities and colleges in the area.
  • Establish and maintain contact with NUS Ents.
  • Liaise with the relevant staff to ensure that all social activities are well publicised to ALL students, including those at other sites.
  • Carry out research with students at the beginning of the year and design an entertainments programme for the whole of the year on the basis of information received.
  • To ensure that entertainment events can be used as a medium to actively promote campaigns on a local and national level on student issues specific to Winchester Student Union or instigated by other affiliated and relevant organisations.

A lot goes on behind the scenes that isn’t always understood by the majority of students. Hopefully this helps to open up a bit about what happens to get things moving.

May all your Ents be great!

Top ten tips for students???

A few days ago, the Daily Telegraph had a Freshers’ Guide. It had some good info, including an article on homesickness, settling in to uni. I was impressed with the article and think they make a good point. A worthwhile EduLink.

I was less impressed with their ‘Top ten tips for students’. I think it needs explaining and a few corrections:

1. Join everything
There is an overwhelming number of clubs and societies you can join. This blog has already covered the difficulty and confusion in joining up for too many different groups. Yes, you can use them to get to know new people, but overkill tends to cancel out any benefit and replace it with confusion. As Nottingham University’s SU Societies Officer suggested, you should check the list of societies in advance (if possible at your uni), go to your Freshers’ Fayre with an open mind and enjoy picking a few societies that should help open up the possibilities to you.

2. Don’t drop people you know from home
I see no problem in this. But it’s always up to the individual to do what is right for them. Don’t feel pressured by people from home who keep wanting your company if you are having a wonderful time staying at university with new mates. Always weigh up the pros and cons to each situation.

3. Don’t put all your social eggs in one basket.
Apparently you should “avoid getting too “in” with one crowd right from the start”. This advice makes it sound as if you’ll be too late to make new friends if you spend the first few weeks with some brilliant people who suddenly turn out to be not so brilliant.

I have spoken to others who have had a similar experience to my own. From personal experience, my best friends who I still maintain regular contact with now were not the first “in” friends that I had. Things change and university is pretty reliable at allowing those changes to take place. I aim to write a bit more about making changes like this at some point in the near future.

4. Get a diary
This is actually good advice if you can keep a strict marker of things. It works even better if everyone else around you can keep track in a similar way. Unfortunately, it’s not always this simple, but I do agree that having a plan of what you’re doing with your time can help your work/life balance and give you the opportunity to shape things without resorting to hours of wasted time, trying to remember when a certain essay is due in and when you agreed to go out drinking with some different mates.

5. Get real (i.e. off campus)
I wasn’t sure about this one. The main advice is to mix with people outside of the academic world.

To be totally honest, I didn’t do that and I don’t feel I’ve missed anything at all. Okay, so I may be biased in that my passions lie in Higher Education, but it didn’t get in the way of my life after university and I still had a lot of fantastic opportunities. I didn’t feel like the outside world had become alien to me!

6. Get yourself a flattering mirror
In a nutshell, boost yourself in whatever way possible. This is sound advice, strangely given. Try boosting your confidence with these tips from Ririan Project, TheSite, To-Done, and iVillage.

7. Don’t go home every weekend
The Telegraph article says “It’s running away and it panics your parents”. I agree with this tip, because you’ll be missing out on certain aspects of student life if you ignore the time when lectures and seminars don’t much happen.

Weekend at uni can be a strange affair. You never know what’s going to happen…sometimes nothing, sometimes the whole scene kicks off as if it’s the last day we have on earth. And a quiet weekend, especially an empty library on a Sunday morning, can work wonders for your study.

Of course, if you have a special reason for going home every weekend, then please don’t let us stop you!

8. Don’t get drunk more than once a week.
Well, that depends on the definition of ‘drunk’. If you drink alcohol (and it’s fairly likely, let’s be honest), you know it’s going to change your mind and body to an extent.

If you get absolutely slaughtered on a regular basis, then your status certainly won’t remain at ‘hero’ level. And if you can’t remember what happened each night, how are you going to be able to argue with that?

But if you end up drinking a little too much, most of your friends won’t even notice, because they will probably have had one too many themselves.

Of course, I’m totally ignoring the health issues regarding alcohol. That’s a different matter. But in terms of status, you’d have to be on a death wish to be deemed a saddo. A sign of approaching saddo status is regularly falling over for no apparent reason during/after a night out. Another is when you wonder how you’ve gone from ‘dressed and ready to go out at night’ to ‘in bed with headache and still dressed in the morning’ without any sense of time passing.

9. Do wash
Maybe I just went to a clean university, but I didn’t get the feeling there were many people who had a problem remembering what a shower and a sink was for.  It didn’t stop them from using those facilities for various other purposes too, but we won’t go there…

10. Keep the booklet
Ah, I see. The Telegraph article has left the best advice for last. I, in fact, wholeheartedly agree that your student welfare booklet and any other welcoming/supporting gumph should be kept safely. You never know when you’re going to need it. And when most people need something like that, they haven’t a clue where to find it.

And if it’s a sensitive and personal matter that you don’t want other people to know about, you probably don’t even want to rely on the organised person who has kept everything.

Students’ Union – Education and Welfare

Continuing the Students’ Union feature, I wanted to find out a bit about what is being done to make sure you, the student, is looked after by your SU. In today’s interview, I find out about advice, politics, society, and what it’s like when you have a million-and-one things to do to at the same time. Speaking to me is Samuel Kasumu, Vice-President for Education and Welfare at Brunel University:

– You sound like a very busy man. VP for Education and Welfare, loads going on with the Afro-Caribbean Society (ACS)…you even said the first thing you’d do if elected to VP was have a big party. How do you cope with so many things going on?

“To be honest with you a lot of the times I am like a headless chicken. My memory is also not the best in the world, but one thing I do have is a big imagination. I believe nothing is impossible and that’s how a random guy like me can get so much done.”

– How do students go about promoting a good work/life balance? Do you have any tips from personal experience?

“Personally I am yet to fully strike the balance. Its still work in progress, however I think that organisation is the key. One thing I make sure I do now, is take weekends completely off in order to keep me sane. It is very easy to forget that you’re not a robot if you’re doing something that you enjoy and have passion for.”

– Your election video states that you’re looking for equal representation for all students, especially as things were sometimes getting a bit too cliquey. Is this a general product of university life in the UK that you feel needs addressing, or a bi-product of something more specific?

“I believe that cliques are a deeper issue that plagues our society. If you look at modern day politics it is no coincidence that a lot of the MP’s are from the Oxbridge ‘clique’. In universities it is the same thing, and the underlining reason for both is that politics to many people feels like something unattainable, and at times not too relevant. As a collective there is a need to show everyone that they can count. I won the election without ever really engaging with the student union before hand, and against some tough competition. It just goes to show that you can make a difference if you try hard enough.”

– Both Education and Welfare are wide ranging and hugely important topics. What will you deal with most on a day-to-day basis? How will you go about communicating things to so many students?

“As a student first, it is my intention to show students just how much politics effects who they are and how they function. I intend on developing a range of campaigns, from enterprise campaigns to sexual health awareness. The most important thing for me is that when I leave the work does not stop. Education and Welfare are important issues, and I guess no matter how much I end up doing, I would probably feel that I could have done more. As long as someone somewhere is helped or inspired, I’ll be happy.” [Martin’s Note: Samuel’s last sentence reflects exactly how I feel about this blog too. Passion is a great thing!]

– If a student is scared at first to seek advice or counselling, what processes are or will be in place to get help through to them?

“Here at Brunel we have the Advice and Representation Centre, which is independent from the university. This ensures unbiased advice is delivered. My office is also available for those who just want to pop in, as I was elected to serve. Hopefully I will have sufficient training to deal with the diverse issues that arise.”

– What gave you the passion to focus on Brunel’s Students’ Union? How intense was it to be part of an election campaign, especially one where you received 1000 votes?

“After running Brunel’s ACS, it was clear to me that the union offered a natural progression for me. I was also really upset about my treatment as a volunteer, and generally I get involved with things that have managed to tick me off. In my eyes to say that the student union was a clique, was very much an understatement. I may not have had the most knowledge in relation to the role, but I was confident that I had the character to handle any pressure. I hate to admit it, but the election was my political side at its best. I knew that even if I never ran in an election that my circle of influence had become so big on campus that I could sway any election. I ran with no fear, and thought that if I never won then something better would be waiting for me. My opponents were very strong and included the then Equality & Diversity officer. The election was a big challenge, but I thank God for the opportunity that he has given.”

For more information on Brunel’s SU, check out their newly updated site at http://brunelstudents.com/

Samuel Kasumu also runs Elevation Networks (Raising Expectations In Unity). For more info, check out the site and its MySpace page.