RBIANEWS FROM

Issue 620 Jan 14

NEWS AT A GLANCE

f /SUBUBOURNEMOUTH SUBUBOURNEMOUTH@

www.SUBU.ORg.Uk☎ 01202 965765

FOR LOADS MORE, SEE:

YOU’RE BRILLIANT AWARDS

BAKING SOCIETY

SELLING THE STUDENT LOAN BOOK

VP COMMS ON PAYDAY LENDERS

+MORE

INSIDE!

LOCK IT OR LOSE IT

WHAT’S ON

2014 AND BEYOND

HOME SWEET HOMEMON 10 FEB-TUE 11 FEB

For the biggest one-off event in sport, every-body becomes an American football expert and crams into Dylan’s for a late night of beer, nachos and the infamous half-time show.

SUPERBOWL IN DYLAN’SSUN 2 FEB

The Florida rock band bring their high energy pop punk back to The Old Fire Station to tour their 4th album. For tickets, visit: oldfirestation.co.uk

MAYDAY PARADETHUR 23 JAN

FULL TIME OFFICERNOMINATIONSMON 3 FEB - FRI 28 FEB

With the Student Centre set to open in 2015, you could be one of the 4 Full-time Officers that lead SUBU into our exciting new future. Find out how at: subu.org.uk

NATIONAL STUDENT SURVEYMON 3 FEB - WED 30 APRIL

Opportunity for final year undergraduates to share opinions on their student experience and help inform future prospective students on life at BU.

HOME SWEET HOMEMON 10 FEB - TUE 11 FEB

SUBU Advice and BU Lettings are on hand in the Atrium to make sure you get the best deals and information before signing up for a private housing contract.

HOME SWEET HOMEMON 10 FEB-TUE 11 FEBMONEY MATTERSTHUR 13 FEB

Managing your money at uni can often feel like a juggling act, which is why SUBU Advice are offering sensible budgeting tips and ad-vice in the Atrium.

It’s a new term and time to shake off the Christmas hangover and start looking for-ward to what 2014 has in store. For most,

January will be a time of exams, assignments and resolutions - all to be done and dusted by the 1st February.

To celebrate the fresh start, we’ve created a welcome back pack to reintroduce you back to BU in style. Alongside SUBUrbia, the pack features issue #4 of our award winning Nerve Magazine, a term 2 planner with a full list of

events we’re running and SUBU’s 2013 impact report infographic with our performance over the past year. It also features loads of free giveaways and vouchers, from group parties at Lollipop to free coffee in The Loft.

You’ll also find a Bournemouth Students’ Together’ wristband and fridge magnet frame to forever immortalise your favourite night out photo. This is our ongoing campaign to emphasise student safety in the community, so look out for it across the term!

ClubsQ&AThis WeekLIZZY WALLISBAKING SOCIETYPRESIDENT

What can students expect from the Baking Society for the rest of the year?We hold weekly sessions where groups come along to bake something tasty! To name a few, so far this year we’ve made cheese and bacon twists, duffins (doughnut-muffin hybrid) and lemon drizzle cupcakes. We are also trying to persuade more guys to join and encourage those with dietaries that they can still get involved. We dedicate a lot of our time to SUBU Volunteering activities too.How did you get involved?The society was created in my second year and as a baker I thought: ‘Why not?’. I made lots of new friends, ate far too much chocolate on the Cadbury World trip and even won ‘star baker’ after icing all the cupcakes for a Speak Week!What would you recommend to students?Get involved with RAG’s challenges, I can highly recommend Kilimanjaro.What’s an interesting fact about yourself?I was a bridesmaid at Mary Berry’s son’s wedding!

S taff that excel in making BU the great University it is were celebrated with You’re Bril-

liant Awards at the Vice Chancellor Awards last term.

The awards exist to recognise excellence across Bournemouth University and provide students the opportunity to address members of staff who have had a real impact on their time here.

8 staff members across all Schools received awards, after re-ceiving nominations for going above and beyond their call of duty to enrich students’ academic careers. Throughout the last year, these have included Costa staff, admin team members, University bus drivers and all manner of staff members making life easier for students here.

John Gusman, VP Education said he was thrilled with the progress of the You’re Brilliant awards.

"I’m really pleased to see so many nominations coming forward. We’ve had more this semester than the entire of last year, which shows how much students value feeding back about the great staff here at BU."The full list of winners are:SilverKeith Pretty – DECMatthew Frew – Tourism Nigel Phillips – Media School Jo Barrington – Bournemouth & Poole College Lucy Stainer – HSCIain Hewitt – Applied ScienceRobbie Bartle – Bus Driver, Wilts and DorsetGoldKen Brown – Business SchoolNominate staff or student reps for a You’re Brilliant award at: yourebrilliantawards.co.uk

YOU’RE BRILLIANT STAFFCELEBRATED AT VC AWARDS

UNSUNG HEROESCelebrating the hard work and success of the students that make SUBU the hub of activity it is

BECOME A HERO

If you’ve got something worth shouting about, we’d love to share it on this page.

Simply email sumedia@bournemouth.ac.uk

or come up and see us in the SUBU office (above

Dylan’s bar)!

In a passing comment made towards the end of a long Autumn Statement in December, Chancellor George Osborne announced the most controversial development in Higher Education since the tuition

fee rise. Plans to "sell the student loan book" come as a by-prod-

uct of relaxing the cap on student admissions, allowing 60,000 extra people to attend University from 2015.

The idea was, naturally, met with animosity from Stu-dent Unions and activists across the country. According to an e-petition, which had nearly 17,000 signatures at the time of writing; "by selling outstanding loans to the private sector, the Government would lose a long-term source of revenue to the Treasury, sacrificing it for meagre short-term gain and potentially leaving private financial compa-nies to profit without investing back into the UK economy."

The second, more pertinent impact for students allows the risk of increasing an already huge graduate debt bur-den by the potential to remove the cap on loan interest rates.

However, privatised student loans isn’t as new as we think following the ‘Sale of Student Loans Act 2008’ and both the Universities Minister, David Willetts, and the Business Secretary, Vince Cable have reiterated compa-

nies purchasing debt will be prevented raising interest rates. The conditions maintain the debt remains between the person and the Student Loans Company rather than the private credi-tor, and any changes to the T+Cs have to first be passed through Parliament.

In fact, indicators suggest the sales won’t have a direct consequence to student borrowers, but due to debts being under-valued and sold below cost price, the primary losers could actually be the general taxpayer.

Of course, protesters have questioned the strength of these assurances; given the overturned promises the co-alition has already imposed on the student vote. Months before the Autumn Statement, a confidential report com-missioned by the government reported proposals to re-draw the terms of student loans taken out over the past 15 years, and increase the rates of interest paid.

The ultimate goal for government may well be to sell off student debt, which has a face value of £40bn, in its entirety. By raising the amount graduates are made to pay back, loans would become undeniably more attractive to potential buyers. But promises from the coalition aside, if we are to shoulder the burden of student finance, surely it should go back towards funding a decent, accessible education system, rather than temporarily alleviating the governments own debt?

with government announcing plans to sell off £900m worth of student debt to private companies, we contemplate the possible risks for Higher Education

DAWN OF THE PRIVATE LOAN?

What’s your take? Your opinions on this issue can help our elected representatives submit recommendations at the NUS National Conference in April.

As student finances stretch thinner than ever, your VP Comms Annie warns against payday lenders and offers some alternatives

‘You Said This Happened’ is our way to telling you how we’ve acted on your feedback

SUBU SHOULD

coordinate an Accommodation

Fair

Improvements WERE needed FOR THE U3 & U4 bus services

routes and schedules altered to ensure more reliable arrival times

February’s Home Sweet Home

campaign is IN COLLABORATION WITH BU

LETTINGS, offering viewings of great

properties at competitive rates

facilities NEEDED TO BE INCREASED in the library

Nearly 70 seats and 19 new PCs

added across the library

According to research conducted by the NUS, between 3% and 6% of university and college stu-dents have taken out high-risk debts, and you’re more likely to take out a high-risk debt if you’re a student parent or carer.

You will never see SUBU ever promote, endorse or recommend payday lenders or legal loan sharks. If you see such advertising or promotional material on campus or in your halls of residence please let me know at:suvpcomms@bournemouth.ac.uk.

So if you’re feeling stressed or worried about your finances, don’t turn to lenders like Wonga or QuickQuid - talk to SUBU Advice. Advice can offer a wealth of information and a range of support. You can contact them via phone, email and Facebook, or you can pop in to see them at Talbot campus above Dylan’s Bar or on the ground floor of Bourne-mouth House.

Living on a student loan isn’t easy. With Christmas having sent many of us into our overdrafts and a loan instalment ex-pected to last till May, it’s unsurprising

that many of you might be in need of extra cash. Now, TV adverts would have us believe that these day-to-day cash flow concerns can be solved by a quick-quid, pounds-to-pocket payday loan ‘grant-ed via an instant quote and paid back at a time to suit you’.

But don’t be fooled by these ‘quick solutions’. Payday lenders are legal loan sharks; companies that lend money to vulnerable people at huge in-terest rates. Some payday lenders have an outra-geous representative annual interest rate of over 4000%, meaning if you borrowed £100, after one month you’d owe approximately £137. But after 8 months, your debt would have risen to over £1000.

BEWARETHE LOAN SHARK

From becoming a student rep to forming a club, from joining Nerve to even helping put together SUBUurbia every fortnight, we have loads of activities to help you become an active part of your Union and add experience to your CV.

Contact subu@bournemouth.ac.uk

SUBUurbia is printed on 100% recycled paper

E xam period is a stressful time for everyone. The re-vision books, late nights

at the library and enough post-it notes to re-decorate your house is enough to ruffle anyone’s feathers.

But it’s important to keep fo-cused and determined during this pivotal time in your Univer-sity career, and not let the pres-sure get to you. To give you a 5 minute breather and chance to chat, our team will be on hand in the library throughout Jan-uary with a cup of tea or coffee to help keep you on the straight and narrow. We’ll also be offer-ing exam and revision tips from our specialist advice team.

From everyone at SUBU, good luck in your exams!

Keep Calm will run from:Talbot: 21st, 23rd, 28th, 30th JanBoHo Lounge: 20th, 27th Jan

UPCOMINGEVENTS:

MAYDAY PARADE, THUR 23 JAN ENTER, SAT 25 JAN THE BlACkOUT, TUE 28 JAN gET SATISfIED, SAT 1 fEB

B efore Christmas, we emphasised the importance of locking up your houses and ensuring you give your-self the best chance to stay safe from burglary.

As you return back with all your shiny new presents for the New Year, between January and March are the peak times for burglaries.

That’s why ensuring students feel secure in their houses, and follow simple measures to keep themselves and their things safe is a priority for us going into 2014.

Alongside our student wardens, we’ll be out in force across Bournemouth and Winton in February visiting student houses, armed with our ‘Lock It’ padlocks with key information and tips.

In the meantime, remember the following procedures to keep your house safe!

Request student letting signs be taken down outside

your houseTry to leave

a light on when out of

the house as a deterrent

Keep windows and doors locked

whenever possible

Keep valuables

hidden from outside

view