Collegiate Credentials

Collegiate universities are rare, they’re old-fashioned and, if you’re not familiar with the idea, they seem a little pointless. When I talk about my college to friends at home, they struggle to see how Langwith, James and Alcuin signify anything other than the names of different halls of residence. Of course, there are those universities like Durham, Oxford and Cambridge which take their collegiate credentials very seriously, where rivalries run deep and college loyalty is still going strong long after graduation. At these universities, socialising within your college is a priority, not just an option.

To students at York, colleges are nothing out of the ordinary. While our enthusiasm for the system may fall short of that of other collegiate universities, our colleges are still important to us. While the slightly unsettling love-in that Derwent students spend their university years in is an exception, it is undeniable that even far less excitable college spirit is an important motivator in a wide array of university activities, from sport to fundraising to testing for chlamydia.

Where college spirit struggles to break even, however, is in the arena of college social events, nearly all of which have consistently struggled to break even in the past two years. When a ticket to Volume is more expensive than the door-charge of Tokyo’s, JCRCs are put under incredible pressure to deliver high-quality, profitable events. At the same time, they must refrain from risking precious funds spending money on extravagant crowd-pullers which could easily leave crowds un-pulled.
Until now, YUSU have helped out with the cost of college events and supported JCRCs by allowing them to utilise YUSU’s contract with JSS and TSS for sound and productions. But it is not a student union’s responsibility to step up to a role that ought to already be filled, and if college events would be impossible without YUSU’s interventions then why should we continue to make a distinction between university and union events? YUSU and university colleges ought to be connected of course, and that the two groups overlap considerably is obvious. But for them to be so closely interlinked that one group is dependent on the other only exacerbates the issue of growing college alienation from the university administration.

University spokespeople tell us that to finance college events from Heslington Hall is too difficult, as it would cost at least £40,000 in purchasing costs alone with additional expenditure needed to hire and train technicians. We’re all aware that £40,000 is a huge amount of money by any standard – mainly because it’s only £13,000 more than it’s expected the average university student will be forced to pay in tuition fees next year.

The University of York prides itself on being a collegiate university, and espouses the benefits of such a system enthusiastically all over its website. Moreover, much of the university’s appeal to prospective students lies in our colleges – it sets York apart from other top ten universities in a way that makes us totally unique. Students deserve to reap the welfare, network and facilities benefits that the university website claims they will, and that they do is the responsibility solely of Heslington Hall. What we are currently receiving is a set up in which colleges are dependent on an administration that is unwilling or unable to support them financially in what is arguably one of their primary functions, and certainly the one that places most financial stresses on JCRCs. The University needs to start taking responsibility for the colleges that belong to it, or it needs to stop representing itself as a university in which colleges are valued and supported. For too long Heslington Hall has cashed in on our collegiate system and yet failed to deliver the benefits it promises.