Alissia Bevan - The Founder

More documents

Recommendations

Info

20 The Founder | Wednesday 21 October 2009 Features Why the cult of personality has never been so powerful How to survive without a student loan Verity Knight Still waiting for your student loan? Fear not, I can relate… Due to the dire situation involving student loans, many of us are still in the situation where we are answering many questions such as; “Are you going to go out tonight?”, “Have you bought your books yet?” and “Going to your departmental ball?” with the answer: “Not until I get my student loan through”. Many are forced to ask their parents for hundreds of pounds, and more are already going into their overdrafts provided by their student accounts. There are those who have taken gap years who are now dipping into their hard-earned money saved for Topshop to buy food and books. The real question is: how long is this going to continue? The government and the Student Loans Company are heavily relying on the generosity of parents and the frugality of students. What they are not taking into account is the high stress level generated by the financial difficulties that students have to cope with, which is not only unnecessary but counterproductive especially as students attempt to balance lectures, social life and budget but without a student loan. There are those who have partially received their loan and have received promises of the rest of the payment which will be backdated. But how useful is an IOU when you need to the money now? Personally I have been forced to beg my parents to sub me until I receive my loan, and until then I will have to ‘owe’ them. How is this helping the student body to feel independent after moving away from home when they still have to scrounge off their parents? To resolve the problem you must sadly ask someone to loan you the money until you can pay it back, however bear in mind the interest generated from loans and overdrafts, and possible emotional angst from your parents who may not understand the terrifying situation that you find yourself in. There are other options, such as begging the University for an extension on your accommodation and Please recycle this newspaper when you are finished Recycling bins are located at: Arts Building, The Hub, Gowar and Wedderburn Halls, T-Dubbs tuition fees, or getting the privilege loan from the university for emergencies, if you are in catered accommodation. Showing anyone who will look your letter proving that one day, you shall receive a student loan often helps a desperate situation. You could use your overdraft, but ensure it is a planned overdraft and remember how much of your overdraft is ‘planned’ because there is hefty interest if you go over. An additional solution is getting a part-time job; however that is unlikely to cover the cost of accommodation or tuition fees. These solutions will cover you for a certain amount of time until your student loan eventually comes through, backdated and in full. However, I am sure it will not include compensation for all the stress and emotional upheaval involved in finding yourself broke through no fault of your own at university. There are benefits involved, such as getting the lump sum of money that you have not spent through fear of debt and the relief involved when you are not penniless and endlessly owing money to people. Jack Lenox President Royal Holloway Entrepreneurs People have been making names for themselves for thousands of years. With notable examples of cults of personalities including such people as Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong, the connotations associated with the term ‘cult of personality’ are generally not positive. However, with the advent of the social media revolution, personality cults have become part of every day life; and the power wielded by some people today is now truly phenomenal. For entrepreneurs, building a cult of personality is almost a prerequisite for serious success. Take Pete Cashmore, the founder of social media news site Mashable. Pete has almost twice as many followers as Stephen Fry on Twitter. That’s 1,636,388 people and counting. He can literally drive millions of people to his site (or any other site for that matter) every day. Traditionally, building a reputation as an entrepreneur had its perks. One of the best examples is, of course, Sir Richard Branson. Branson decided at an early stage in his entrepreneurial career that he would happily trade dignity for customers. Indeed, it seems that being “utterly shameless” (as Doug Richard puts it) is a great asset to any entrepreneur. And yet, I very much doubt that Richard Branson dressing up in drag for Virgin Brides had anything like the sustained and direct impact that highly followed Twitterers now enjoy. Ironically, Branson is now a bit behind among the Twitterati with only a “meagre” 184,981 followers. So what’s the solution? Well, if you really want to go for it as an entrepreneur, start building your cult of personality. How do you do it? It’s never been easier. Get on Twitter, set up a blog (I’d recommend WordPress as a free and very easyto-use option), link it all up with your Facebook and you’ll already be making good headway. Yes, it probably seems quite egotistical to many people. But then again, as many reputable businesspeople have pointed out, being an entrepreneur is by its very nature an “arrogant” path to take. In deciding to take an entrepreneurial path at university level, you are asserting that for some reason you feel you can make a success of your business or social enterprise while bypassing all of the conventional career options. On the whole, this isn’t a bad thing. As long as you don’t get carried away with yourself it shouldn’t cause any major problems for you. But it is something you have to accept. All of that out of the way, it seems very clear that your chances of being a successful entrepreneur are greatly improved if you’re willing to be a bit shameless and just plug whatever it is you’re doing whenever you can. With that in mind, I implore anyone starting a venture to get on Twitter, get blogging and start plugging your activities as much as you can. Also, with that in mind, my twitter username is “jacklenox” and I’m currently working on a social network for aspiring writers called eNovella.co.uk. Why not check it out?! And thanks for reading! royalhollowayentrepreneurs.com
The Founder | Wednesday 21 October 2009 Sport tf www.thefounder.co.uk 21 Televised sports for all? Lucy McCarthy Sports Editor I turned on the television the other day and flicked over to the Sky Sports channels just to find out what was on. It is astounding that in the 21st century that women’s sports are hardly seen on these channels. Sport, I’m afraid, is a man’s world. Netball is the country’s, if not the world’s, largest women’s participation sport. Yet how many times can you say you have seen it advertised or watched it on TV? I imagine your answer is probably never or maybe once. This is the problem we have. By comparison to football, going to watch a netball match is not expensive, but the dilemma for girls to go and watch a high level match is that they have to travel a very long way. Sky Sports will televise the Co-operative Superleague once a week on a Wednesday at around one in the afternoon. The major problem with this is that most of the young girls who will be influenced and encouraged by these athletes are at school or at university playing in their respective BUCS games which are also on a Wednesday at a similar time. Netball has just formed a 20-20 cricket style competition - a perfect way for girls to watch However, the only times I found to watch it was ten at night or two in the morning. It’s not just netball that has this problem. Hockey gets almost no air time either. Both the women and men did really well in the European Championship in the summer, with the men winning the competition. Yet they got approximately 45 minutes worth of television coverage and this was only for the highlights! The women on the other hand came third and got absolutely no coverage at all. A statistic I found out just the other day said that hockey was the largest participation sport at senior level in the country. Yet again, like netball, have you ever seen any coverage on television? The list could go on; women’s rugby, lacrosse, women’s football, women’s cricket - there is not enough, if any, coverage of these sports. Surveys show that once women leave school, the number of them that continue playing sports drops dramatically. Wouldn’t this problem be helped if the sports channels took responsibility and gave coverage for these sports for at least a few hours a week instead of having hours of poker being shown? The problem with women is a matter of image. I’m afraid this is and always will be a problem that has to be overcome especially when you come to sport. Though the acceptability of women in sport is a vast improvement compared to forty or fifty years ago, we still have an atmosphere of people thinking ‘she must be a lesbian because she plays rugby’ or ‘she must be butch as she works out all the time’. This does not exactly help the image problem. The promising thing, however, is that as more focus is given to healthy lifestyles by the media, the more women want to get fit. This has been most apparent in the last few years as the number of women now joining and attending gyms has soared. Hopefully as we see that keeping fit is better for us in the long term we shall see more women going back to the sports they played at school and re-discover the love they had for them. The media is a powerful tool which cannot be ignored. The use of media in promoting sports should be just as important as winning trophies. Here we have a balancing act - to get women back into sport we need the help of the media, but the media want to show sports that will increase its ratings. Understandable. However, if the Sky Sportstype companies want to show sport there should be some responsibility to show as many sports as possible, whether it’s a major women’s sport such as netball or the biggest senior participation sport in the country such as hockey. sports@thefounder.co.uk STARS at Royal Holloway Lucy McCarthy Sports Editor Sport at Holloway is an important aspect of student life. Since 1996, the STARS (Student Talented Athlete Recognition Scheme) has supported over 90 athletes with world and national rankings. The scheme encourages a range of different athletes from cricket to rhythmic gymnastics and triathlon to softball to reach their full potential. STARS offers sports bursaries to full time undergraduate and postgraduate students who are either currently at the College or have been accepted on to a course for next academic year. To be eligible for the bursary the athletes have to be currently competing at junior or senior international level or show convincing potential to reach the international stage. The students who are supported by STARS are funded for coaching, essential sports equipment, entry fees for competitions and travel expenses to aid their development. Alongside this, the athletes also get free membership to the Sports Centre and use of the facilities for free as long as it is to assist their training. They also have the opportunity to guarantee halls of residence accommodation for the next academic year. Royal Holloway seems determined to help and support its most promising athletes and nurture them to hopefully extend their careers beyond the walls of the College. This scheme means a lot to the athletes who receive it. It doesn’t just support the athletes in monetary terms but also supports the athletes with their academic progress. The scheme works with members of staff together with the athletes so Continued on page 22 »
Page 1 and 2: E X T R A A Street Car Named Desire
Page 3 and 4: The Founder | Wednesday 21 October
Page 9 and 10: E X T R A
Page 19: The Founder | Wednesday 21 October

Alissia Bevan - The Founder

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?