Postgrads show little interest in SU elections

**Postgraduate students make up 45 per cent of all students at Warwick, but in the recent Students’ Union (SU) elections only eight per cent of voters were postgraduates.**

Of the 6,699 students who voted, 92 per cent were undergraduates, who make up 55 per cent of the student body.

Based on figures from 2012, approximately 8,000 students at Warwick are registered on postgraduate courses, yet only around 550 of these voted in the elections. This is compared with around 6,100 undergraduates out of a total of around 12,000 at Warwick voting.

Anna Chowcat, current SU postgraduate officer, commented: “I would of course have liked the postgraduate vote to be higher and we would like more postgraduates to be involved in SU democracy.

“However I think the reason is that there were fewer candidates for the PG officer position which is something we will definitely be working on in the future!”

International students also made up 22 per cent of the votes, while making up approximately 30 per cent of the student body, according to the figures from 2012.

Of the separate faculties, 40 per cent of the votes came from students of the natural sciences, 34 per cent from students in the social sciences and 23 per cent from the arts. The remaining votes were made up from students of the medical school or unknown sources, such as students on Erasmus years. abroad.