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Student Halls Discount For Selective Students Only Megan Skingsley Editor-in-Chief
The college have announced today at 19:42 that they will be offering a financial incentive to a select group of students, to return to Alban Halls next year. The proposal is that a 10% discount will be awarded to those who ‘serve as an active officer of an HSU society or are an unpaid member of the HSU Executive’. Presumably this means those who are society heads, as there is no such position of an ‘officer of an HSU society’. It also states that students who have made ‘other contributions to the student experience will also be considered’. It states that those wishing to apply for the discount, have to write a description of their contributions to enhancing the student experience. The discount amounts to £630 which will be deducted from Halls rent which currently stands at £6300 for the next academic year.
budget will only be able to fund 31.7 discounted places, showing how all 35 of these positions will not be discounted.
The original proposal was first presented and fully endorsed by TOPSE, and the 10% discount was intended for all Heythrop students. The proposal was then sent to FRPC (Finance, Resources and Performance) and TRCP (Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes) who modified the proposal to only include a select group of students. All students however can apply for this discount by evidencing their activities within Heythrop, but may not be successful. This proposal has been emailed to all students without the endorsement of the TOPSE Committee, as they were not consulted on the modified proposal. Two student representatives on the committee voiced their objections to the modified proposal as it is ‘diviThere are currently 9 positions sive’, yet the proposal continued on the HSU Executive, exclud- without any further committee ing the paid roles, and are 26 consultation. societies, making 35 positions which are eligible for this dis- Further information on the count as the email describes, Halls Discount can be found at without other student appli- http://www.heythrop.ac.uk/ cations. The 10% discount will alban-hall-discount-2015-16 be funded by £20,000 coming from the TOPSE (Teach Out and Protect the Student Experience Committee) budget. As it currently stands however, the