The Re-Freshers’ Bazaar: An opportunity for students to have a look at the various clubs and societies on offer at Queen’s, and to join those they have an interest in. It would help thought if students were told where it was!

UPDATE: Response from VP Clubs & Societies Paul Courtney.

BY CATHAL SKELTON

I am a member of Queen’s Ógra Fianna Fáil and I was at our stall at the Re-Freshers’ Bazaar last Wednesday (10^th February). About 50 people turned up through the whole day. I know that Re-Freshers’ isn’t as big as the October Bazaar, but I expected a lot better.

For those of you who didn’t know (most people it seems), the Re-Freshers’ Bazaar was held in Mandela Hall. I saw not even one sign mentioning this. Students came in and out of the Union all day and they would never have even known that there was something on downstairs!

As a political society, we get zero funding from QUB and rely on raising our own funds. A big proportion of this comes from membership fees. How are we supposed to raise money if no one knows we are recruiting? Also, Ógra Fianna Fáil’s Chairman, Mark Mulholland, got a motion passed at the Student council emcouraging all membership fees received to be donated to the Haiti Earthquake Appeal. This makes the organisation of the event look even worse! Through poor handling of the event, they have prevented any real sum of money being collected for charity. At the cost of a few pounds, a few more posters could have been printed.

When I arrived to set up the stall, I was told that we didn’t book a table. The person I was speaking to was Paul Courtney, VP Clubs and Societies. He told me that we couldn’t use a table as we didn’t reply to his email. I can safely say that we received no such email. I even offered to show him our email account. After a few minutes of harsh words from me, we got a table and the matter was solved but that’s not the issue. This is simply another example of how badly organised the event was.

I think it’s safe to say that, whoever is in the position to organise the event next year, they don’t really have to try very hard in order to outdo this year’s effort.

UPDATE: Response from VP Clubs & Societies Paul Courtney.

A Fianna Fail student representative came into the Bazaar and started to build up the society stand. I approached him to let him know that he didn’t book a stall, and therefore I would have to wait and see if there would be any stalls left at 11.15am (deadline I had set for C&S to build their stalls).

He told me that he had no level of communication from the SU about the Bazaar, so took it upon his initiative to come into the Bazaar anyway. In his own admittance, he said that he had a few minutes of harsh words to me, and so I believed him when he said that he didn’t receive an email from me. Therefore, I let him have a stall as I thought that I forgot to send the email to his society address.

However, when I checked my emails, I found that I had sent an email to the person that complained about me (Fianna Fail representative). I sent it to the generic email account Fianna-fail@qub.ac.uk.

I received no response from the society from the generic email account and therefore they were not booked into the Bazaar. If I had have known that I definitely had sent an email to this generic email account, I wouldn’t have let the society set up a stall in the Bazaar because of the ‘harsh words’ that he presented to me.

Regards, 

Paul