Over 1000 freshers join unofficial Warwick Freshers’ group

An unofficial Warwick University Freshers’ group appeared on Facebook, gathering 1,000+ more members than the official Students’ Union (SU) group in early August.

The unofficial group, partially administered by Alex Bowen, has 1,300+ members in comparison the the SU page with under 300, as of the 9 August.

Much like the SU group, the unofficial page also offers links to freshers’ groups for halls of residence, the unofficial ones still gaining more members than those run by the SU.

As of 9 August, the unofficial page for Arthur Vick had 40 members compared to the SU’s seven.

The group also marketed a non-SU run freshers’ ‘Icebreaker’ event to be held at Coventry nightclub Kasbah, with students from Coventry University also invited.

Similar events are being held at other universities, such as Nottingham, Manchester and Oxford. The events are linked to the alternative freshers’ pages that have appeared online.

Members of the unofficial group are being encouraged to buy tickets for the ‘Icebreaker’ event quickly, with a post on the group saying:

“Tickets are selling really quickly this year for ‘The Big Freshers Icebreaker’ … get yours NOWW!!!”

The official SU group, on the other hand, encourages freshers to “beware of imitations!”Alex Bowen, part of the administrative team for many of the alternative groups told the Boar: “I came up with the idea when I was a student myself in halls…freshers’ events were sometimes not as organised as well as they could have been.”

He also emphasised the importance of students having “a choice of events”, but that these alternative groups and events were not intended to be “in competition with university SUs.”

He hoped that the groups would “create an area for freshers to meet” before starting at university.

The SU website states that:”Unfortunately at this time of year we are always forced to warn prospective students about a rash of unofficial Facebook pages which spring up….[some people] use these to gather students’ personal details to sell them products or events which aren’t associated with either the University or the SU.

“Students are advised to be highly cautious towards these, as we have received several reports in recent years of students and parents being conned out of money or given misleading information!”