The Freshers’ Squash is always manic. As a first-year, I remember going and having bits of paper thrust into my hands everywhere I went as well as walking around several different buildings bewildered by the number of stalls, students and crowds. This year, as chair of a Society, it was a little different, but just as crazy.
We were delighted to be joined by the local MP, Ben Bradshaw, for an hour or so. In my experience, Ben has always been a diligent constituency MP and responded to a couple of my concerns with a helpful letter and a swift response. He was also a tremendous asset to have talking to students both at our stall and at others as I introduced him to some of the other societies that make such a contribution to student life on campus.
The Guild were concerned about his arrival and I volunteered to follow Ben around, but I did have to wonder about some of the health and safety issues. There was no water offered to people who operated a stall for six hours from 11am-5pm – that’s not counting the time you need to set-up and pack things away. You can do nothing about the sheer volume of students crowding around stalls, but I thought the actions of the Hunting Society (who, to my mind) aren’t members of our Guild Societies Association, were a little extreme to say the least.
Not only did they send some delightful people up to deface some of literature and signs, which merely advertised our presence, but they also stuck some ‘Fight the Ban’ stickers all over my clothes. Having already ripped up Liberal Democrat literature which was provocatively left at our stall before we arrived, I was determined to be nice to our political opponents. I asked them to leave our stall, was met with a torrent of abuse, before a few concerned students intervened to usher the delightful individuals away.
Other than that, we had a whale of a time. We signed up plenty of new members, which will give both the student society and the party a real boost ahead of next year’s local elections, and got plenty of signatures on our petition to ‘Make Child Poverty History’. It looks like this year will be very exciting, indeed.
Thanks to all those who helped out at the stall, especially Ben, Catherine, Natalie and Andy.
