Vision says…
Welcome to all of you new students at the University of York! You’ve sat through all of your Facebook friends “amazing” photos from their respective Freshers Weeks’ across the country, been bombarded by flyers through the post and struggled through the desperately poor accommodation allocation system, but you’re FINALLY here. So, before lectures start and you finally realise you’re here to learn, make the most of it. Throw the reading list out the window, pull down that timetable your mum printed for you at home and go wild. Very rarely do you get the chance to spend a week trying out a variety of excesses with a bunch of strangers with a similar mindset. Don’t talk about your pretentious gap year, your A-Level results or the fact that you flopped at your Oxford interview, just enjoy yourselves! Discover the joys of Willow, join as many societies as possible, build up a bank of ridiculous stories about your new flatmates and try to scrape your way to 40% at the end of the year. Freshers Week, and ultimately Freshers Year, is one that people never feel they take real advantage of, looking back over their time at university whilst working over their dissertations, and from those who are currently in such a situation, take advantage of your time -it’s something you’ll never get to experience again.
Thumbs up to…
Those purveyors of justice, protectors of freshers, and paying volunteers at the parties across campus, Second and Third Year Contacts have been drawing praise from all over. After Kallum Taylor praised their “monumental efforts” and Bob Hughes passing on his own “massive kudos”, Vision want to edge in with our own praise for the boys and girls in the college-coloured shirts. On Saturday night, a Halifax STYC rescued a fresher from a fairly brutal fight with locals in town. There’s probably numerous other stories that we’d be proud of since going to print too. Aside from the bag carrying, car unloading and box unpacking, this exactly the sort of thing STYCs are there for – it’s a support network that York can be proud of and that new freshers should feel comfortable within. So, STYCing isn’t just all about drinking and partying with the freshers, much to the surprise of many – just don’t come running to us when one of them gets a little over-amorous after a few drinks and breaks their contract…
Thumbs down to…
The University of York Biology department who’ve been caught paying under the odds to students working for them on the University’s recent open day. At just £30 for a day’s work, their pay came out below the national minimum wage. Following last year’s publicity surrounding the Living Wage campaign and the University’s failure to pay a number of its staff at that level, this is a new low. A lot of students will already been scraping together the pennies for their £2 Willow entry, new textbooks and rent, typically waiting on Student Finance until the very last minute to provide them with much needed funds; so a couple of extra quid for the day wouldn’t have done any harm. Ultimately, it’s just disrespectful, and that’s without even mentioning the legal complications associated with such a low pay level. Next time the University are looking for students to brighten up the campus on an open day, they should first make sure they’ve got the money to reward them a[ppropriately.