Petition to allow St. Mary’s alumni at society events
Category: Students Union Petition
Voting closed
We are looking at introducing associate memberships for the academic year 24/25, which would allow alumni to attend society events.
Currently, SU money is not allowed to be spent on alumni. Also, in many cases, alumni are not allowed to attend society events.
Many St. Mary’s alumni have expressed sadness because of this. From their perspective, it seems that once they graduate, they are no longer a part of the St. Mary’s family – no longer welcome in the community that was part of some of the most important years and memories of their lives.
Others have cited that many universities have great alumni programmes and that this makes those universities more desirable to potential new students.
And every former student I polled regarding this issue said they were extremely dissatisfied with the lack in care, community, or really anything at all for alumni.
The policy should be changed to include alumni and allow funds to be spent on them.
St. Mary’s is a family and that should not change because someone has achieved their degree.
Comments
The creation of a special alumni paid membership to the SU in addition to a membership fee to any society the alumnus would like to maintain membership with could fix this problem. An alumnus with a fulltime job might be willing to pay a larger membership fee to join a society, and/or maintain an active SU membership. E.g. some societies have a membership fee of £1 a year for an active student. An alumnus could be asked to pay 25 times the active student fee. In this case, an alumnus membership would be £25 rather than the student £1. This would help include alumni in the St. Mary's family, and also help societies raise more funds for events.
As an alumni, I completely agree with this! As someone who still want to be a part of the uni even though I have graduated and have also been told I should not be attending events that I been a part of for the past 3 years I back this 100%