Following another great elections working group I made my way down to Oceana to work with Xtreme station manager Will Long on the preparations for their 40th birthday celebrations. Xtreme has brought so much to numerous students over the years and my work over the last few months attempting to find former members has done nothing to disprove this fact.
Numerous former xtreme members have gone on to work in a variety of areas from medicine to journalism, retail to management but Xtreme has meant a vast amount to all of them. Whether in increasing their confidence or developing their talents Xtreme has helped numerous students in skills outside of their degree.
This year Xtreme celebrates its 40th birthday and what better way to do so than holding a dinner in Oceana with Zane Lowe for an after dinner treat!!!
The night went well despite a somewhat interesting (random) speech from former media manager Binda Singh. Zane Lowe was immense – but then who expected anything else!! Except for the slightly random mosh pit that developed when he played Noah and the Whale?
The next evening a fantastic team joined me for some more door-knocking fun! As we made our way to a number of prior problem areas it was extremely positive to have such a keen team who genuinely wanted to meet residents and discuss their problems. At one house Will and I were invited in and offered a nightcap!!! Whoever said residents don’t like students??!!
Leoni had planned a fantastic Domestic Violence Awareness campaign for the week and it was a real credit to the hard work she put into it. With an awareness talk with representatives from the Women’s campaign, women’s centre and sexual attack referral clinic, there was a real opportunity to understand the issues and the amazing work that goes on within the city and nationwide to tackle the problem.
In a survey commissioned by Nus Wales and Amnesty earlier this year, four out of 10 students knew women who had been coerced or pressured into sex by their partners.
But more worryingly a third of students surveyed felt that women were partly to blame for being raped if they were drunk.
Earlier in the week Leoni and I had put together posters with pictures of regular Swansea students with mock bruising. A variety of slogans such as “It was my fault, I shouldn’t have been drunk”, “Domestic Violence – not a student issue” –were used in an effort to both raise awareness of the issue of Domestic Violence in general, but more importantly challenging perceptions and highlighting the reality that it is an issue that affects students as much as it does married couples. Something which Leoni did fantastically well throughout the week with excellent support from a variety of helpers.
At the end of the week I attended a number of graduation ceremonies in the Taliesin centre – these were both for LPC (Legal Practice Course) and a variety of DACE (Department of Adult Continuing Education) courses.
It was a really great event to attend – both because of the buzz of being on campus, but most importantly the variety of ages represented. Numerous students had overcome time constraints of children, jobs and caring responsibilities and it was really great to see so many families in attendance, whooping, dancing and cheering their extremely hard working and deserving relatives!! I particularly enjoyed the two children right at the back who attempted to start a Mexican wave as their mum received the golden handshake of the Vice Chancellor.
