By Freddie Nathan and Alex Finnis
A step been made towards York Sport president Sam Asfahani’s ultimate aim to scrap the basic £40 York Sport membership, namely encouraging the 23 sports clubs which do not use university facilities to hold off paying their York Sport fees.
The membership enables YUSU to pay for free core training sessions, club grants, and crucially, access to the sports centre, the JLD, 22 acres and other university facilities as well as overhead costs such as staff to clear up the sports centre.
For clubs such as clay pigeon shooting or sailing and windsurfing, who go out of the university and therefore never use in-house facilities, Asfahani believes there is simply no justification for a £40 membership fee.
“As it stands, it is simply unfair that clubs pay membership for something they never use, they are not getting their moneys worth”, he explained.
Asfahani hopes to know within the next couple of weeks whether the clubs will be officially exempt from the membership fees. The money will have to be found elsewhere, as it is vital for providing and maintaining sporting facilities.
A fair portion of the membership fees used to be used to cover insurance, but it has become apparent that this can now be covered by YUSU itself.
“It makes no sense to charge clubs like skiing, canoe polo and mountaineering that aren’t using the sports facilities. It isn’t fair”, claimed new head of sport at the university, Keith Morris.
With the respective heads of YUSU and University sport working closely together on this issue it is hopeful that the University will soon have a fairer sports membership system in place, one that is on the way towards the ultimate aim of free membership next year.