Issue 2, april 2019
student voice | pg16
MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY'S STUDENT NEWSPAPER
INTERVIEWS Ben Allworthy
ANAS BADAR
STUDENT VOICE | INTERVIEW | President of Singers & Musicians Society and host of MDX Got Talent talks about his experiences and gives advice.
STUDENT VOICE | INTERVIEW | Our new elected Students’ Union President for the academic year 2019/20. NATALIE ROSE
LISA HUNT My first impression of Ben was that he was humble, sweet and spoke highly about everyone we discussed. He didn’t have a bad word to say about anyone, and he spoke of with admiration and pleasure about all those that helped him organise the event, especially his committee. What was the process of putting together an event like MDX Got Talent? A lot of planning. It started out when we took over the society in October. We were a completely new committee who were thrown in the deep-end and luckily we had Erica Ramos (Law & Business VP 2017-19) who helped give us context which meant we could run things smoothly. The team decided we would plan it for March since it would give us time to organise everything, and we spoke to Andre and the POW! team about collaborating. Since Andre is so good with visuals and social media, it meant I could sit in the DJ booth and manage sound while Matt compared. Also with the help of Lydia from Musical Theatre and Forenzo, who is a head lecturer of music, we had a really good judging panel alongside Haniss.
How are you going to make sure every student feels represented?
strengths which we bring to the team – Haniss is currently doing Business Arts management so she’s very good at handling the social media element, which I’m pretty terrible at; and Matt is good with music tech, which really helps with putting together shows. And we try to keep the meetings open to everyone, regardless of musical ability. We hold various events for anyone who has an interest in music to show up to throughout the year, such as karaoke nights and band workshops. I’m a third year this year which means I will be leaving the society in the capable hands of next year’s committee. Finally, what’s biggest advice going forward to anyone wanting to run societies or events next year? Always have a back up plan. We’ve tried our best to keep things running smoothly but sometimes things might come up. You may not have the turn out that you want, but you still have to figure something out with your committee and work professionally as a team. The team have been really good this year and I can honestly say I will be friends with them once I finish.
For more information regarding So how has working together been the Singers & Musicians Society, and for you this year in regards to the for all the latest in regards to events, committee? please see their Facebook page or the It’s been good. We all have our MDXSU website.
of them. I believe that we all (the candidates) shared a lot of points on
I believe that, no matter where you
our manifestos. I think that’s a good
come from, regarding your religion,
thing. People are aware that all the
background, gender, ethnicity, we
students need change for that.
all have the same goals in life which Do you plan to stay involved
is – be happy. So no matter what, I’ll focus on the every student, because at the
within the student body next year, to keep speaking to people?
end of the day we are all students,
That’s one of my main focuses – I
so I’ll focus on every single one of
want to make sure that every student
them, no matter what religion they
feels represented in the student
believe in, what ethnicity they come
body. I don’t want to just focus on
from, what background or gender,
one and leave the rest. I want to
anything. A student is a student.
focus on everyone and make sure
“
everyone’s heard. For example, I’ve been running I
want
focus
to
surveys on campus, I’ve been going
on
around asking people with different
everyone
and
make
sure
everyone’s
heard.
backgrounds, different ethnicities, everything. Everyone has been giving
What, in your own personal opinion, is the reason why you won the election over the other candidates? I have to big up all my campaigners, they all represented my goals really well. They all were trained to do so, and they all did it really good. The majority of my win was because
me
different
answers,
different opinions. So you can see the variety that we have on campus. I’m very approachable if anyone wants to come and contact me. They can ask anyone for my socials, even myself, I’ll give them happily. Even if you want to have a meeting, a quick chat. I’m more than happy to talk about anything.
