The following letter will be sent out to all Fife Park students for next year. Please leave any comments on this post. Thanks.
A message from the Fife Park Committee:
Hi,
Over the past 2 years I have lived in Fife Park, I have always felt that it had less social events than other halls, and that I was missing out. My housemates and I never even found out who our next-door neighbours were! We looked at the differences between Fife Park and other similar halls (such as Albany Park) and found that the one of the main differences was the lack of a committee. So, we had an election in March 2003, where 4 officials were elected. The positions filled were as follows:
Alex Rennie – Senior Student
Robert Hearn – Secretary / Deputy Senior Student
Alex Muir – Treasurer
Kirstin Leath – Ordinary Member / Social Convenor
So, the first ever committee in Fife Park was formed in its 30 year history. We were awarded a one off grant of £200 in May from the Students Union in order to run an inaugural event to try and gather residents together. This money, plus £100 donated from David Russell Hall (the adjoining halls of residence) was used to have a BBQ on the night of the European Cup Final. We set up an outside television and built a BBQ. Flyers were made and distributed around all 50 houses. The event was free to attend and we had enough food and drink for 40-50 people – which was as much as we could buy for £300. We prayed for good weather and waited…
The BBQ turned out to be a success. About 80 people attended, and it didn’t rain. All the food and drink was consumed, and the night was rounded off with the usual Wednesday trip to the Union for a drink, followed by the bus to Mardi Gras, a club in nearby Dundee. Although not everyone was happy with the BBQ before the event started, with worries about noise and litter – as well as safety issues, afterwards we received many complimentary comments, and no negative ones! But, the main thing I feel that was gained from this event was the residents of each house getting together and talking to each other finally! It was no surprise to me to hear such conversations as, “Oh, you live in house 18? But I live in house 19 and I’ve never met you!”
The only problem with this was that the residents were moving back home in a couple of weeks, so they wouldn’t be seeing their neighbours much longer. This is why we want to run such events next year throughout the year – starting in Freshers Week where we’re thinking of ideas at the moment to impress our first years and show other halls that Fife Park is a great place to live! Details of the initial party for Freshers (and all residents!) will be included with this letter – so hopefully this should persuade you to come along and have some fun. We have also paid for a website to be set up for Fife Park (www.fifepark.co.uk) and we hope to use this as another form of getting information across to students – and the Freshers Party will be detailed in here in the coming weeks when we are able to finalise more things.
We can’t do this however without your support. We need the residents of Fife Park to be interested in going to social events, and wanting to know others in Fife Park. We’re all adults now, and we don’t want to badger anyone into going to things. We hope that in showing them the fun time other residents are having they will feel that they should come along themselves! We also need the residents of Fife Park to contribute towards the costs of these events. We can’t rely on the Union to fund us again, it was hard enough getting the £200 out of them last year! Most halls charge between £50 and £75 a year subs (cash paid to the committee and used to hold events such as balls and so on). We realise that some people choose Fife Park because of it’s cheaper rent costs – and a charge such as this amount is simply not feasible for residents to pay. My opinion on the matter is that if I wouldn’t pay it, why should I expect others to? This is why we came to the conclusion of asking residents for a £10 subs charge next year. We don’t plan to fund a ball out of this money like most other halls do, because this just isn’t enough to do so, and we don’t have the amount of residents to do this. However, we hope to run 4-5 events throughout the year that all residents are welcome to, as well as various house parties. We hope that in meeting your fellow students, you’ll also organise events between yourselves. Many a night I have walked through Fife Park to find a good party happening in one of the houses!
So, we as a committee are asking (not demanding – like other halls) for a contribution of just £10 towards the cost of events in the coming year. If we receive this amount off the whole of Fife Park, 300 residents, we’ll have £3,000 to use towards having some really great parties! But, if we don’t we can’t do anything on the sort of scale that we would like to. We don’t want to exclude students from events because they haven’t paid because this defeats the object of the committee, to get people to meet each other, so if this method doesn’t work, we’ll have to rethink our ideas.
Read the plans for the first event, see what you think and give us some feedback – we want as much as possible from everyone living in Fife Park next year. Maybe you can think of some fun things to hire, or what food to cook, or maybe you want to help organising the event. Whatever it is, please contact us via e-mail, or send us a letter.
£10 isn’t much in a year - surely this is an acceptable price for what will be provided. We know it is the first year that this has been charged, and there will be resistance to it, especially from returning residents, but we can’t prove it to you unless you give us a chance. We can evaluate the committee’s usefulness throughout the year, and if we feel we are not achieving anything, then we will disband and return the money paid to us back to the residents. We don’t want to charge people simply for the sake of it, we feel it is a necessity in order to plan future events.
If we don’t run any social events, Fife Park will go back to the days of not knowing anyone (including in some cases your own housemates – strange but true!) and nothing ever being planned or done for the benefit of students within Fife Park specifically. If you are a previous resident, however opposed to the £10 charge, just think how isolated Fife Park can sometimes feel. Maybe I’m wrong, but I knew about 10 people in Fife Park, and compared to others I still considered it quite isolated.
So, in conclusion, we ask all residents, new and old to contribute £10 towards events for next year. I hope my reasoning in the letter wasn’t random or off the subject, and if you have any queries or problems, please contact us by e-mail (which is checked daily – and responded to!) or letter (Contact details below)
Please visit the site and fill out the online questionnaire on whether you are prepared to pay the £10 subs cost or not, and this may give us an idea for the future.
Thank you for your time
Alex Rennie
Fife Park Senior Student 2003/2004
Contact:
By E-Mail – committee@fifepark.co.uk
By Letter – F.A.O Alex Rennie, Fife Park Senior Student, David Russell Hall, Buchanan Gardens, St Andrews, KY16
Website – www.fifepark.co.uk