Warning all freshers

As an active participant in sport at Warwick, it seems pretty unusual to start with a column outlining the darker side of some sports clubs.

However, please heed my following warnings: picture the scene, you’re at a school disco and a pack of ‘cool girls’ pick on a random female, call her a “slut”, pull her trousers down and intimidate her inexplicably to the point of tears. Well that was what actually happened at Warwick SU last year, and the perpetrators were girls in their twenties; prominent members of a popular sports team.

The usual boring excuse was wheeled out: “they were drunk”, which seems to justify everything, the top trump nobody can beat, the Charizard of Pokemon cards. Other enjoyable encounters for me include a girl gleefully telling me that she “doesn’t talk to poor people,” the president of another club telling me, unofficially, that only attractive people were allowed in their club, and endless petty rivalries between teams, ridiculously justified and religiously passed on to easily indoctrinated new members. This behaviour derives from a misplaced sense of ‘over-importance-big-timer syndrome’.

Some sports team members are under the delusion that within the microcosm that is Warwick Uni., they wield the importance of mafia dons. An importance that unsurprisingly evaporates if you step beyond the campus boundaries.

There can sometimes be a tendency in life, and in sport, for people to take on leadership for no other reason than they shout the loudest, and appease the right people currently within ‘the clique’. Such individuals can have a massive impact on a club’s reputation, and the group psychology of other members less strong willed.

Freshers need to make sure these hierarchies best serve your and the club’s interests. So if you don’t like a club’s trajectory, make sure you speak your mind. It may be hard, but you’ll be surprised how accommodating Warwick clubs can be.

So to make it very clear I should state to all young freshers that sports are an important part of my Warwick existence and they should also be part of yours. There’s no better way of meeting intriguing new people, or galvanizing your university existence.