Presidents' Updates - December 2011
M Alexander Shimmings - GKT MedSoc President
Things at GKT have been very busy of late. November saw the return of the much-despised-byKCLSU event ‘Beaujolais Nouveau’. For those not in the know, this French event celebrates the bottling of the new Beaujolais grape, which at GKT (and previously St Thomas’) we traditionally celebrate by buying as much of the year old vintage we can find in the Hypermarches of Calais and shipping it back to London. Consumption of copious amounts of this wine, combined with french fancy dress and seemly endless quantities of cheese, bread, onions and garlic results in what can only be described as primitive biochemical warfare. All who attended left with a feeling of fulfilment and soft cheese clinging to their skin.
St Thomas’ Rugby Club has recently been revived for a tour down to Southampton to play their medics, which they won. GKT Hockey Club also managed the feat of a tour to Edinburgh.
Progress is being made with KCLSU regarding increased health school representation in Student Council. Also on the cards is a referendum which should secure the future of separate GKT sports teams, allowing us to focus our attention on the infamous BUCS issue.
George Ryan - BL President
Last weekend Birmingham hosted the National Medsoc Conference, an event which saw medical Students’ Unions from all corners of the UK descend upon Birmingham Medical School for a weekend of key note speakers, hot debates and some good old fashioned debauchery. One topic was the movement towards implementing a national exam for all final year students, something the audience of medical representatives were unanimously in favour of. However, the practicalities have not yet been ironed out. Barts and The London is one of 13 schools involved in developing this exam. The first set of questions which could make their way into the exam were released to all 13 schools and the overriding feeling from BL is that these questions were below the standard we set for our final year students. Agreeing to take part in the process as it is would only lower the academic standard of our students.
Sunday afternoon of the conference saw both BL and ICSM make a bid to host the next conference and I’m very proud to announce BL were successful. This is a huge opportunity to bring medical representatives from all over the UK to London and showcase what we have to offer, I’m looking forward to it already!
Nana Adu - SGUL President
This week has been cold! I have no heating in my office and my wardrobe is full of shirts and light hoodies. Despite the cold, a lot has been going on at George’s. We have had our ‘Diwali Show’ and it was epic. The acting was superb, the dances were slick, the singers were in tune and the crowd were more than pleased.
My next memorable outing was ‘The Battle of the Bands’ It’s amazing how for such a small university, we have more talent than the all the other universities in this spread combined. You would think the I’m joking but if the talents of the other presidents are anything to go by, then let’s just say there is a lot to be desired for. ‘The Fashion Show’ is currently happening as I am writing this. Just like the Diwali Show they have been putting in crazy hours of hard work and it is nice to see everything come together to form an awesome show.
To top off an amazing year, we have pure entertainment lined up by ‘The Revue’. So essentially, we have had a dancing, singing and acting galore at St Georges whilst I have been freezing! My only wishes this Christmas is that RAG goes well next term and that our sorry excuse for a website magically changes.
Gareth Chan - RUMS Senior President
By the time this edition goes to print, we will have kick started the festive season with our sell out RUMS Winter Masquerade Ball. I can confidently say that it will be the highlight of the year so far! Our RUMS Sports teams’ tours have also kicked off in earnest with hockey heading off to Brighton, football to Sheffield and netball to Leeds. I hope life in our host clubs are slowly returning to normality!
Back in Bloomsbury, work is continuing with the medical school on the Raising Concerns website which allows students to highlight cases of unprofessional behaviour. With an up-coming meeting with BUCS and all the London Medical Schools in Cardiff, we will continue to lobby BUCS and our parent Students’ Unions for the continued presence and protection of medic sports teams and their independent participation in BUCS leagues.
Suzie Rayner - ICSM President
November has been hugely busy amongst the Clubs and Societies of ICSM and thus I am dedicating this column to their activities. I expect that December will follow the trend of Imperial continuing to annihilate all other UH med schools in the sheer number of events that we manage to run. They are not only of magnificent quantity, but fantastic quality as well.
Drama has been particularly active, managing to put on both the Freshers’ Plays and the Autumn Play of ‘Guards! Guards!’ within 2 weeks of each oth- er and both to an impressed audience. Music Society has also been very busy, with both Choir and Orchestra concerts performed and the Carol Concert coming up on Sunday 12th December. Light Opera are rehearsing hard to put on ‘The Producers’. Fortunately the cast are not quite as unPC as the show itself otherwise Fitness to Practise could definitely become an issue in the future. They will be performing from 5th-10th December at the London Oratory School.
ICSM has also opened its doors this month by hosting international conferences in the form of ICSM Surgical Society’s Trauma conference as well as providing outreach to prospective students through ICSM Vision’s Junior Conference.
So that you are all aware, it appears that future editions of this paper may have an ‘Imperial slant’ with the vast majority of the editorial team now coming from us – including the new editor-inchief (congratulations!). The rest of you need to pull your socks up.
Jeeves Wijesuriye - UH President
2011 has been a mammoth year for the United Hospitals. It has seen the new 9k tuition fees, the Health and Social Care Bill, the new pensions scheme and possibly most importantly, the New Old UH relaunch. We have fought together against a BUCS bid to amalgamate medical and dental sports teams, fought for clarity on situational judgement testing, and increased allocation of services to medical students in terms of not just welfare support but financially.
We are very proud of what we achieved this year and in fact are now consulting with Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cardiff and Swansea to create similar UH type organisations. We also headed to Birmingham for the National MedSoc conference, acquitting ourselves well and setting the standard for other medsocs in terms of effective representative organisation. Sadly Nana, our Georges president couldn’t be there: he cited ‘womens problems’ as the main reason. I would add my best wishes go out to Nana, I do hope the thrush clears up soon. Apparently it has been catching: Mark Shimmings had a similar problem, and I’m sure could provide both help and support.
I look forward to seeing you all in the coming year, and hope you will all be getting engaged with the UH campaigns and BMA events coming up!
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