GM FORECASTS RADICAL CHANGE - The Founder

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20 LETTERS Monday 29 January 2007 thefounder Letters to the Editor Sir, It came with disappointment this week when I read of the latest revisions to the ‘back gate’ opening times. The ‘proposed changes’ [which are less proposed and more implemented without consultation] see the gate leading to Spring Rise open later and close earlier. How is this a solution to the supposed problems the gate is meant to cause? The gate did open at 05:45 daily and close at 00:45 in the evening. The new times see the gate open at 06:45 Monday thru Friday while it will close at 23:15 Sunday thru Thursday, and 00:45 on Fridays and Saturdays. Put the most simple way possible: CLOSING THE GATE IS STUPID AND DANGEROUS. The residents complain of ‘a great deal of inconvenience and disturbance’. I live in Egham; no matter if you shut the gate or not, I will be walking home through Egham. Some inconsiderate students will insist on being boisterous when leaving campus and this is disappointing, but locking the gate isn’t the solution. It won’t stop people being noisy and will only succeed on making the walk home longer surely creating more noise. One simple argument for leaving the gate open is this: By diminishing the opening times of the gate you are doing nothing more than creating a bottleneck. You are simply going to have a higher concentration of people use the gate when it is open. Also, If the gate shuts at 23:15, I will be leaving the bar at 23:00. That’s a whole hour you’re losing of my custom. Now multiply that by the number of people who don’t fancy queuing the usual half hour for a drink and the Union will be loosing even more money. And no, I’m not arriving earlier. The most pressing and urgent matter is safety. Locking the gate before the end of student functions at the Union or even Medicine means students will inevitably walk home down the A30. Inevitably a lot of these students will be in varying stages of inebriation and this, mixed with a busy A road, surely isn’t good. By denying the pedestrian friendly route through Egham the safety of many students is compromised; this from an institution who’s first and foremost concern in this matter should be the safety of its students. It shouldn’t be pandering to the unfounded concerns of locals. The safety argument is also directed at Rob Coveney at the Student’s Union. His involvement in this issue seems nothing short of weak and lackluster; Please correct me if I’m wrong. Many student’s live within a reasonable walking distance from campus and therefore have no need to use the bus that the Union provides; before that argument is trotted out. I have a group of friends who live opposite the gate; they have never complained of noise, disturbance or damage and they are as much residents of Egham as the locals. I live off Spring Rise and my housemates and I have also never witnessed any anti social behaviour. However, we cannot deny that sometimes this can happen. Random security patrols seems a more appropriate response to this supposed problem. What makes me laugh is that the busybody residents who insist on furthering the unfounded hatred of Royal Holloway’s students must not have noticed the 128 year old college, with its 7000 plus students, when they moved in. Funny that. Chris Owens. c.owens@rhul.ac.uk 2nd Year Undergrad, Modern History and Politics thefounder editor@thefounder.co.uk An open letter to the SU President and Security Manager, with a response from the President Dear Chris, Thank you very much for your letter regarding the revised opening hours of Spring Rise gate. I completely understand your position on this issue and on behalf of the students at Royal Holloway, I have spent three months on this, trying to argue for the gate to stay open. I feel that your accusation of my involvement in this being weak and lackluster shows a great misunderstanding in the work that has gone on to try and resolve this issue. Over the summer, local residents around Spring Rise and Ripely Avenue began to collaborate in order to try and make their voices heard by the College, as they were being kept up at night by the minority of students who create noise when leaving the campus. This resulted in a call for the local council to get involved, and a threat to attempt to revoke licences that the College and Students’ Union hold to serve alcohol until the times that we do. In the second week of August the senior management team of the College Facilities Management Department approached a number of people (including myself) to consult on the opening hours of the Spring Rise gate. Several suggestions that were close to being won were to close the gate every single night at 10pm and to close the gate completely, opening it only in emergencies. Our original proposal was to keep the gate opening hours as they were last term, but no matter how much we pushed for this to happen, the College did not feel this to be viable. Having gone through some very difficult negotiations, the best I could get was to close the gate at 11.15pm from Sunday to Thursday, and to 12.45am on Friday and Saturday night. Remember also that this is only a trail period. In the near future these opening hours will be reviewed again, and we will again have the chance to fight on your behalf. Chris, please don’t feel in any way that I thought that closing the back gate to the College early was a good idea. As you quite rightly pointed out, there is every possibility that the early closing of the gate will cause a bottleneck in other parts of Egham. In one meeting, I suggested to a senior manager that this proposal would not solve the residents’ issue of complaints, but merely move the issue to another part of Egham, namely the Malt Hill area. The response to this was ‘yes, but it isn’t the Malt Hill residents that are complaining’. Safety is also an issue that I brought up in such negotiations. This was knocked down with a response that said that the A30 route would be safer due to improved lighting and the presence of CCTV (before you ask, I haven’t got a clue where the CCTV cameras on the A30 are either). The Non-Res bus argument was, of course also batted my way. In short, the decision on closing the gate early was not mine to make, but mine to fight. Fought I did. The outcome wasn’t what I wanted, but it also wasn’t a decision to close the gate at 10pm every night. As I outlined in the General Meeting, my colleagues and I worked hard at this on your behalf. We also don’t think this should be the end of it. If you wish to see the gate open later, then you must also help us to argue this. Complain to Facilities Management, and give us a bit more ammunition to go to the College and renegotiate. Chris, finally I leave you with the closing paragraph of an email that I sent to Facilities Management senior managers on 21st August 2006, whilst we were arguing for the gate to stay open. If you still feel that I haven’t tried to fight enough on your behalf, then I suspect that you have elected the wrong president: “Although I completely understand that keeping the local residents happy is a direct factor to the college community as a whole, I must also bare in mind the reason why we all find money in our bank accounts at the end of the month.....students.” With kind regards, Rob Coveney President SURHUL
thefounder Monday 29 January 2007 LETTERS 21 Sir, Christian Union gets legal The Founder Issue 2, Monday 15 January I am writing concerning the article ‘Christian Union gets legal’ by Tim Ruffles. I would ask if the woman’s football society admits men? No? Then following that article’s logic it is breaching SU equal opportunity’s policy. I think that an equal opportunities policy should not be to exclude all discrimination but simple to exclude irrelevant discrimination. The simple fact that Exeter CU asks members to sign that they ‘believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and saviour’ seems very relevant. (as does asking members of the women’s football team to be women) I agree whole-heartedly that everyone in collage should be open to try any society and find out more and the Exeter CU meetings are open for anyone to come along to and if you’d check there website (http://societies.ex.ac.uk/~eucu/getinvolved) they actively encourage others, regardless of religious beliefs, to get involved in serving the community. I do think your article, with quotes from the Muslim society saying how they welcomed discussion, gave the impression that the Exeter CU excluded non-Christians from discovering more about the Christian faith. Whereas in truth they actively discuss with and warmly welcome others from the non-Christian community. The fact they ask members and committee members to be Christians seems like common sense for a ‘Christian Union’. Yours Thankfully Dave Dear Dave, Firstly, thanks for writing in; it’s good to know someone’s interested in the news we cover! To start off I’ll discuss your points on the article. The piece was written as an account of events, rather than an argument; it related the position of the Exeter CU without endorsing or rejecting it. Therefore your point about following the “article’s” logic is mis-aimed, you should be arguing with the Exeter SU here. If you’d like to write an opinion piece where you could expand on this argument, I’m sure John Hunter our Comment and Opinions editor would welcome it! In regards to your points on the debate I’d like to say you seem to have misunderstood the Exeter SU’s stated position. They argue that the CU’s policy is unfair for two reasons. Firstly: that all their “students fund our societies”. Secondly that the Equal Opportunities policy that the Exeter CU signed up to states that “all actives should be open to all students”. This means that the Exeter CU is receiving funds and related benefits (premises etc) garnered from every student, regardless of belief. It receives these funds and other benefits under an agreement that includes an Equal Opportunities policy. Therefore it is arguably unfair, and unarguably in breach of their accepted contract, for them to continue with their restrictive membership policy. A women’s football society should be in the form of a general football society, which might then contain both men’s and women’s teams; the point being that “all activities” should be available to all students. Both men’s and women’s teams would play football: the activities offered by the football society. The Christian Union is an activity and a society. If the policy to which the CU is a signatory is adhered to anyone should be able a member of the CU regardless of personal belief. If this is not the case certain students cannot experience “all activities” as they should be able to be due to the CU’s membership policy. Common sense in this case would be the CU should follow the rules it has set itself by becoming a member of the SU; as it does not, common sense states it that as the CU is breaking its contractual obligations it forfits the benfits it would otherwise receive. Many thanks for getting in touch, and we welcome all comments on our articles! Sharing Toilet Seats: The best advice on finding the pefect accommodation Sir, Any chance you could include an unbiased account of commuting in from London, unlike that in the January edition of the Orbital ‘Sharing Toilet Seats: The best advice on finding the perfect accommodation Keren Simons Orbital Issue 4 Jan 2007 p.52’? I would be more than willing to help. What follows is my e-mail to the Orbital regarding this article. I hope you can help publish a true account of the various accommodation avaliable. Yours Katrina Finalist History “Dear Editor, Keren Simons and whoever else it may concern, RE: Sharing Toilet Seats: The best advice on finding the perfect accommodation Keren Simons Orbital Issue 4 Jan 2007 p.52 As a student who has spent the last 3 years at RH commuting from Hackney I would like to point out the glaring inaccuracies and gross exaggerations contained within Keren Simons article ‘Sharing Toilet Seats: The best advice on finding the perfect accommodation’ p. 52 in this months Orbital, I have included the main ones below. ‘When you think that we could live in London and commute down to Brighton for nearly the same train journey time as it is to Egham’. This is misleading, firstly Brighton has significantly more trains per hour arriving than Egham as well as better lines and faster trains, even so the journey still takes on average 1 hour. Egham has only 4 trains on average per hour from London and if you catch the ones at 20 or 50 mins past the hour (from Waterloo) the journey time is roughly 35 mins. ‘If you have to get to campus for a morning lecture you have to buy a peak ticket, which costs around £15 (and that’s with your student discount)’. Actually the cost from London to Egham return before 9.30am is £10.20 and it is impossible to use a young persons rail card. Between 9.30 and 10 the cost for a return is £7.80 but again you cannot use a rail card. Once the rail card is useable (after 10am) the cost of a return ticket is £5.15. ‘You truly realise how much time you’re wasting’. Technically a 35 minute train journey enables you to do a lot more work than a 35 minute walk from the Green or Egham. These basic factual errors could have been easily checked by a quick visit to www.nationalrail.co.uk. In future perhaps a more unbiased approach to campus accommodation should be used? Yours Katrina Barnard Finalist History” Dear Katrina As I found your letter very insightful, I thought I would publish it here as a first step to producing an article of a different stance than that featured in The Orbital this month. I can’t agree with you more on the points you have raised and compared to the train services back in my home county of Essex, it really isn’t too bad here. In Egham, we’re in a relatively small town and yet we have a train station with four hourly trains heading into London during off-peak hours. For me that sounds quite convenient! What’s more, as someone who regularly commutes to Brighton, I can certify that the journey down to the coast is close to double that of travelling from London to Egham. If you should wish to write more about this matter. I look forward to receiving it. All the best Jack Lenox Editor-in-Chief The Founder thefounder want to share your views? get in touch: editor@thefounder.co.uk Tim Ruffles
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GM FORECASTS RADICAL CHANGE - The Founder

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