Editor’s Letter: Speak up; we’re listening

This summer, the last of the £3,000-a-year undergraduates will leave Warwick. As of the next academic year, all students will pay £9,000 a year.

When a £10k total hikes up to £30k, suddenly the “not real money” argument doesn’t seem so easy, the idea of calculating the cost of each seminar not quite so hilarious, the value for money experience not quite so abstract a concept. Suddenly, the role the Boar can play in your university life takes on more weight.

Warwick is the kind of university that ensures “value for money”. We have over 240 societies, 72 sports’ clubs, amazing arts output and groundbreaking student research. We are known for having fingers in pies quite literally all over campus (and not just in the Dirty Duck). Warwick has been named as producing the UK’s most employable graduates, above Oxbridge; students happily walk into the arms of the brightest and best City jobs. Warwick has always been corporate heaven. Because it was a modern university that became successful fast, it pushed modern subjects, and these in turn produced successful and wealthy alumni who pumped money back in. Warwick Business School is one of the best in the world.

We aren’t just a university of employability, but of thoughts: of cutting edge thoughts that will go out to change the world.

All this is fantastic, but Warwick is also modern in the ideological sense. Ever since its establishment, its vibrant and erudite “Arts” doors and ‘60s architecture harbour radical ideas constantly bursting forth. World-renowned intellectuals are beavering away and rubbing brains together to make these ideas heard. We aren’t just a university of employability, but of thoughts: of cutting edge thoughts that will go out to change the world. As a friend of mine said, “It’s where you go to make your brain what you want it to be for the rest of your life”. Just as all our incredible scientists, mathematicians, businessmen and engineers are essential to our prowess, so are our readers, philosophers and historians. The University must not dismiss its thinkers in favour of its earners.

Similarly, I hope this inspires you to value your student paper. We are not “just” a student paper. We are a vehicle of change. The caller-outers, the whistle-blowers, the right-over-wrong seekers. The students’ voice and the students’ guard. It’s an exciting time to be at the cutting edge of this university, and for us to be producing your student paper. Use us. Work with us. Work for us. Speak up; we’re listening.

[divider]

Photo: theboar.org