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STUDENT NEWS
Students’ Union
RVC SU President 2018-19, Gorprit Singh reflects on his year and the achievements of the RVC SU.
This year in office has been one of immense self-reflection for the organisation. Our focus for the year was ensuring we adapt our services to the changing demographics of the student body. Considering this, we decided to form our very first RVC SU Strategic Plan.
The achievements of individual SU Officers is quite astounding. Here are some highlights our SU Officers have achieved this year:
The year started with our Freshers' events, which included an increased number of non-alcoholic events – these were very well received by the students. Freshers' Fair continues to be a critical event for showcasing all the opportunities available to our students. The drop-in talks held by BVA, BVNA and the Royal Society of Biology were deemed very useful by the students.
RVC vs Surrey varsity, which was led by our VP Activities and Campaigns was an immense success, and I am very pleased to announce that we
maintained our winning streak, despite the shield somehow ending up on the coach back to Surrey...!! Some photos from the event can be seen on page 34. We have continued to build on our Sports and Societies Ball to celebrate the incredible impact of the work by
our clubs and societies, as well as extraordinary individuals who well and truly go above and beyond to maximise the experience of their colleagues.
This year’s sporting and societies highlights include our Tri Club, which won the 151-year-old United Hospitals Shield in the London Colleges Indoor Competition for the first time ever (you can read more about this on page 31). Our RVC Boat Club courageously undertook two incredible fundraising challenges. One of these challenges involved rowing 100km from Reading to London, where they incredibly surpassed their fundraising target (read more about this on page 30).
Some other sporting highlights include: our men’s and women’s football teams winning their leagues and being
promoted, the men’s hockey team winning their league, our Equestrian team placing well in their regionals with the A and C teams competing in April to reach Nationals. In addition, our Performing Art Society put on two shows: a pantomime at Christmas and later the very popular ‘Urinetown’, and the Music Society
has put on several performances and collaborated with the RVC’s Advice Centre for University Mental Health Day under the theme “Find Your Voice” (read more about this on page 56).
This year has also seen the opening of our Activities Studio in Camden as part of the major refurbishment works. This is a student run facility which provides a variety of classes ranging from Ballroom to Yoga and provides a space for many student groups to meet and train or rehearse.
We have two student Sports Assistants, trained to carry out gym inductions and put on classes throughout the year and this has been a great success.
Our course reps training by our VP Representation and Communication has increasingly been described by our reps as essential and truly engaging. We now annually take them all on a weekend training session once they have been elected in November. Our course reps benefit from professional training via
an external facilitator and they are also invited to social events organised by our VP Rep Comms throughout the year.
Our VP Welfare has been busy organising events such as mug
painting during Freshers' week with
the chaplaincy, welfare ‘care packages’ for students to pick up, and recently a very successful Salsa booking. We also hosted many events for our students during the stressful exam period, including the ever-popular puppy days.