SU Spring Elections 2026 Interviews: Adam Skrzymowski, VP Societies

In the run-up to the Warwick Students’ Union (SU) Spring Elections, The Boar offered all Full-Time Officer (FTO) candidates the opportunity to be interviewed.

Adam Skrzymowski, current SU Vice-President for Societies, sat down with The Boar to discuss his campaign for re-election as VP Societies, highlighting the larger changes he could make on campus with a second term.

Why did you decide to run for this position? 

Having held the position for just over half a year, Skrzymowski emphasised that while he has been able to implement some of the smaller changes he envisioned in societies at Warwick, a second term would enable him to see through “larger pieces of work that [the SU] need to do in societies to really make the experience better for everyone.”

What is your personal experience with societies at Warwick?

Skrzymowski detailed his diverse range of society experience, spanning his executive roles on Warwick Student Cinema and TEDxWarwick alongside involvement in academic societies such as Computing Society.

He also mentioned his work with media societies, including his show on the student radio station RAW, and finished by saying his work as current VP Societies has “topped it all off” to leave him with quite “wide ranging” experiences.

We have over 250 societies at Warwick. How, as VP Societies, would you make sure that everyone feels welcome at one or several of these societies, regardless of their background? And how would you foster a sense of inclusion within all these societies?

Before delving into his ideas, Skrzymowski first highlighted that the sense of inclusion is built by societies themselves. He subsequently said that “the SU getting involved can somewhat damage that.” The current VP Societies then went on to outline that the role of the SU is to “facilitate and enable those societies to create that inclusive environment.”

To specifically achieve that aim, Skrzymowski wants to ensure that societies are clearly highlighting on their SU page how to to get involved beyond buying a membership.

When considering barriers to accessing societies, he first emphasised his key campaign pledge of getting rid of the Society Federation Fee. While there are currently exemptions based on certain protected characteristics, not all societies have this so Skrzymowski is looking to just get rid of the fee altogether.

He secondly wants to evolve the role of Welfare Officer in all societies to ensure they are also looking at inclusion, as this is “becoming quite a large issue in a lot of societies”.

How will you continue to help people feel like they are not priced out of societies?

Underlining one of his other key campaign pledges, Skrzymowski detailed his idea of introducing a participation fund. Drawing a comparison to the VP Sports Bursary, he called attention to how most student unions have an access fund for societies to apply to, to cover the costs of membership or participating in activities, trips, and balls.

He said: “[This] is probably the best thing we can offer to make sure no one can miss out because of finances.”

After the Warwick Conservative Society scandal, the SU enforced mandatory anti-Semitism training for all of its club members, as well as Islamophobia training for exec members. Do you think that all clubs should be forced to do more in terms of educating their exec members in order to avoid incidents like that ever happening again?

While he said that “it is the exec who are the only ones who can do something about” preventing such incidents, Skrzymowski emphasised the importance of such training in ensuring that exec members are both aware that they have the responsibility as well as feel empowered to be able to put a stop to such incidents, instead of panicking.

This interview, along with all other interviews for Full-Time Officer positions, can be watched in full using the link here.

You can also view a list of all candidates and their manifestos here.