Union campaigns to increase society membership

On Monday 16 January, the Students’ Union (SU) held a Refreshers Fair in the SU Atrium, which aimed to recruit more students to join societies and sports clubs, as well as promoting the businesses of external exhibitors.

External exhibitors included Rate My Placement, Teach First and NHS Blood and Transplant, as well as Domino’s Pizza. Free slices of pizza were handed out to those attending the fair, as well as carrier bags of free merchandise from various retailers. Societies and sports clubs exhibiting at the fair included Argentinian Tango, Mixed Netball, RAG, the _Boar_ and World@Warwick.

Matt Rogers, the SU Societies Officer, estimated that over a thousand students attended during the course of the day. On the day of the fair, over 600 students had confirmed that they were attending on the fair’s Facebook event.

Rogers commented that society membership would “definitely increase”, as students were “buying all day”. He added that this was partly due to the “reduced Societies’ Federation fee”.

He stated that “societies were doing a great job of advertising themselves” and he was pleased to see the “newly formed societies getting off the ground, such as Robot Wars, Darts Society, Fifa and Philosophy and Literature”.

Student opinion about the relevance of the Refreshers Fair at this time of the academic year was varied.

Suryansh Nagar, a first-year EPAIS student, commented that: “I didn’t go as I didn’t need to. I signed up for my societies at the start of the first term.”

However, one first-year History student said that: “The fair was useful, as I was able to join societies that I hadn’t thought about in Freshers’ Week.”