Thirty thousand pounds. What would that mean to you? You could certainly do a lot of good with it. But the £30,000 I’m referring to is the ridiculous sum Queen’s Students’ Union propose spending on SUTV.
BY BRENDAN HUGHES
Gareth McGreevy, President-elect and current VP Campaigns & Communications, has long been assembling his master plan for Students’ Union Television (SUTV). A massive cash injection of just under thirty grand of students’ funds (£29,955 to be exact) has been earmarked for the club, despite no justifiable purpose or need for this on the Queen’s campus. With falling bars profits and student job cuts in the Union, spending this monstrous sum on SUTV is complete lunacy.
In his election campaign, McGreevy maintained that most of the money for the project was acquired from outside sources. In actual fact, Gareth went across the road to Queen’s Annual Fund – a student call centre which asks graduates for donations to the University, pocketing twenty grand for his ‘efforts’. The remainder will be directly funded by the Students’ Union if other sources cannot be found.
This money would (and still could) be better invested in clubs and societies that actually have a proven use and student presence. Instead, much like drunks stumbling out of Mandela on a Monday night, they’re pissing it up the wall.
Students are saturated with many different sources of media opportunities at Queen’s, and all of them are underused, including The Gown. We have so many media services such as Queen’s Radio, SU Mag and The Verdict available for our budding future journalists to get involved with. All of them have great potential to provide comment and debate on events at Queen’s, and make a lasting impact on strengthening the campus community. Unfortunately, NONE of them are effectively supported by SU to reach that potential.
McGreevy claims this will be a great opportunity for student journalism. I have no doubt that the students who actually commit to this overpriced club will gain a great deal. For me though, Gareth has failed to justify why it is necessary to spend a huge sum of money on a media outlet that will only be used by a relative handful of students at Queen’s.
On top of all that, QUB’s Film Studies department already provides opportunities for students from all backgrounds to learn about video editing and production at student-friendly prices, through its fully-accredited Apple training studio.
SUTV, initially started in 2007 by the then Deputy President Sarah McCaffrey, has struggled to get off the ground and hold students’ interest. The Union also previously had a ‘movie making’ society (still promoted on its website), which was also recently dissolved. It would be much more prudent for the Union to support the growth and development of this sort of small club as a base level and build up gradually to the point where students would be able to sustainably run McGreevy’s fantasy.
When I challenged Gareth on SUTV, he defended it by saying it was part of his “constitutional remit”, meaning that he has to follow it. While I agree that it’s important to meet your targets as an elected student officer, I would hope our sabbaticals would critically question the merit, usefulness and cost of their stated tasks, ensuring funds that us students are entitled to are appropriately spent.
What’s all this SUTV malarkey in aid of? This in my view will be a platform for the Students’ Union to vomit its PR propaganda on the student population, an ego trip for McGreevy so that he can put his own ‘stamp’ on SU, and an opportunity for Queen’s to pompously boast about its ineffective Union.
Harsh words they may be, but the truth they tell. Don’t get me started on Q-SUM.
you have failed to answer my question. What could Queen’s Radio do with £30k?
Sorry Brendy, I’m not going to answer your question. Every time I give you a reply you do nothing but make uninformed comments about my staff, make irrational statements and frankly this argument is tired. I’m responsible to the members of QR, not you. If you feel so strongly about it, write a piece and interview me, with facts and figures at your disposal.
If you are looking to run a piece, drop a line to the Annual Fund and pick up a copy of the 10K application we applied for.
The other 20K I’d spend on cigars, hookers and fine whiskey.
Feel sorry for brendan, look at the gown poll
lol. I think we all know what Gareth McGreevy has been doing this past few days! He hasn’t been campaigning anyway that’s for sure! “Can you go on to the gown website and vote in that poll?” LOL!
Funny how one person’s opinion can rub so many people up the wrong way. Also, why has QR hogged this thread. Talk about the tele. Sure there’ll be no radio in a few years anyway. It’s all about TV, and Gareth knows it. Show business. That’s where it’s at. Long live The Gown and its ability to make people go mental about things! Freakin love the way poll has went. Funny as f**k. Does McGreevy not realise how obvious it is?!
i think the time has come perhaps to reveal my true identity. I am not Brendan Hughes. I am Tiarnán Millar. I realise that this name does not mean a lot to many people, but anyone who knows me will know that yes i am likely to admit to being bitter and twisted. I was a DC for two and a half years and did the odd portering shift on the front desk in the Union. If you’ve ever been thrown out of the union at night and on some occasions during the day it was probably me that did it. So I think you all owe Brendan an apology.
Total waste of money, no-one will ever watch it just as virtually no-one listens to Queens radio.
Neither should get money in my opinion. There’s really no excuse why either venture should need much money at all if they are online only.
To get a site up and running costs £20/month max and is easy to set up. To record ‘shows’ should cost no-more than a few cheap microphones and a some man-power.
@ Belfast Holylands
What about licensing and royalty payments? Equipment maintenance? Software licenses? Advertising?
For the amount of bandwidth used by an online radio stream, £20/month is laughably low!
Yes, you could in theory record shows with a few cheap microphones and some man-power. But they would sound rubbish, and the record companies would be down upon you like a ton of bricks should you decide to use any music that isn’t Creative Commons!
Ryan, why would anyone want to listen to music on a Queens student radio show? Why not just use spotify it’s far handier.
The only future I can see for a Queens based online radio program is in commentary and discussion, podcasts and youtube videos would be a better medium for it as well rather than a 24/7 radio show.
Someone above said your peak listenership is less than 300? Something just isn’t working and it’s my opinion that a convential radio show just is behind the times.
How will other clubs and socs benefit? Tjat makes me laugh. Will the fencing crowd and the rowers and the dragonslayers and the chess players want to film themselves all of a sudden? Also, if SUTV is to convey messages to the student body for various clubs then God help us. Send all student emails. DUH. That way the message will be conveyed perfectly and it won’t cost anything. This is such a waste of money. I’m surprised outside media haven’t picked up on it. The Gown’s April Fool story was mint!
The rowing club have already been filmed.
Your argument is invalid.
J.B. Dick ole boy!
It appears you have mixed up validity and truth.
An argument can be valid but remain true.
Sorry to correct you!
Yours humbly
Socrates (the greatest philosopher ever!)
It appears that you have missed my point.
http://yourargumentisinvalid.com/user/379
I don’t mince my words.
J.B. Dick ole boy!
It appears you have missed my tutor’s.
Clothes horses’ argument may have been be bad or indeed refuted by your retort. However it is not deductively invalid because of that (as you suggested). Furthermore it was more of a rhetorical question than an argument.
We have to police the mincers of terminology!
Sorry to correct you!
Yours humbly
Plato (the second greatest philosopher ever!)
Very sad, this is the actual short fall in monies that they need to provide the required number of free creche places for student mothers. Mature students and students with children have long been ignored in the funding bubble as they’re not glamerous but this is leading more and more to student poverty and children living in very difficult circumstances. I suggest a rethink
@anonymous
I don’t think the Annual fund can really support childcare places so your argument isn’t that valid here. I agree there are a shortage of spaces for parents but you should fight against the university to get provisions for students rather than lecturers who avail of the service
Annual fund insider – do you actually know how the childcare system works? It needs to have plenty of lecturers and staff paying very good money to look after their children, as the extra that they pay is pumped straight back into subsidising the student rate.
If you gave students entirely top priority (which is arguably unfair anyway, as access to childcare is a staff benefit as much as it is a student one) then the creches would run out of money very quickly!
Can the people on here please stick to commenting about the actual sunject of the article? I’m all for opne debate, but continually getting notified about an opinion piece that I’m quite interested in, only to find that the persons involved are talking about something else, is getting quite frustrating.
Many thanks!
@Notifications are getting out of hand now.
No worries, so who wants to talk about SUTV?
Hey there party people
Firstly may I say that not only as a former member of the RAG but also of QR, I know first hand the amount of work which goes into preparing a “radio” show – secondly I agree with the sentiments expressed in the above article. The RAG ( a society which actually helps not just students and their “experiences” but local charities) recieved the princely sum of £0 from the annual fund this year. The money which is used by the RAG to hold and advertise the year long events had to be taken from their bottom line – money which could be used for charity. The fab tee-shirts that were used in the pub crawls this year were all paid for from the £5 paid by the student. THIS not only AFFECTS Students pockets but also Charities who many without the money given to them from RAG would cease to operate.
so the annual fund can’t fund childcare for students but it can fund a. A TV station that no one needs or wants and b. Orange Order day trips?