A group of York students has won the opportunity to have their very own I-phone application developed after winning The App Challenge final, held at the Ron Cooke Hub on Wednesday, January 18.
YUSU Welfare officer Bob Hughes has warned students to be vigilant after a student loans phishing scam has been revealed.
Her Majesty the Queen will be visiting York on Maundy Thursday, 5th April, as part of the 800th anniversary of York’s Charter for the traditional “Royal Maundy” ceremony.
A flood caused by a heating system “failure” forced the university IT services to shut down many essential systems on Sunday night, causing problems for many students on the eve of their exams and assignment due-dates.
Students are being asked by their union to choose to support a company who may promote unfair working conditions so that a charity Viking Raid can take place.
The ticket prices will lower from £10 to £7.50 if unethical merchandise is used.
A motion has been made to an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) which asks for a temporary removal of policy so that t-shirts can be ordered from a company whose ethical stance is not clear.
T-shirts, which act as tickets to the event, were supplied by Gildan in 2007. The company have not met guidelines for ethical products.
The company has also provided products for the NUS and other charities.
The choice of Gildan to supply Viking Raid t-shirts was "against existing policy" as they did not have the support of al list and did not have the approval of the Environment and Ethics officers, and so the Union’s decision to use them was against existing policy.
Exec voted to open the decision to all students as to whether Gildan should once again be used, despite worries as to their ethical position.
the chances of Viking Raid going ahead would be severely jeopardised.
Matt Burton, YUSU Services and Finance Officer, told Union members that any of the suppliers who can supply ethical merchandise will not be able to fulfil the order in time.
The motion requires 245 voters to meet quoracy, and if it does not, Burton said, "the chances of Viking Raid going ahead would be severely jeopardised."
As part of the motion YUSU have stated that they do not support sweatshop labour but believe that students want the event to take place and thus need to suspend policy.
It also calls on YUSU Environment and Ethics officers Tom Langley and Tom Williams to submit a new 'Ethical Merchandise' policy.
After a blunder in 2006 in which Roses organisers ordered unethical t-shirts, the union voted to only order products from companies which could be proved to offer satisfactory working conditions for its workers.
The Viking Raid would occur in Week 5, as part of RAG Week.
The order can't be done in time?? Why didn't they order it sooner, it's been well documented that ethical merchandise takes longer to produce (because it's not made in sweatshops by poor children) and it's not like they didn't know the Viking Raid was coming.
Why should we be forced to suspend a policy that has been voted by York students because of yet another YUSU cock-up?
It's not that ethical merchandise takes longer to make, it's that the ethical policy only lists a handful of suppliers, most of whom are small companies who only print t-shirts on a small scale and can't fulfil an order of over 1000 t-shirts in a limited time frame.
The difficulty with ordering viking raid t-shirts early is that it's very difficult to get the bars on the barcrawl to confirm that they're taking part and pay sponsorship long enough in advance. The viking raid organisers need to know and have confirmed which bars are taking part and sponsoring as this needs to be printed on the t-shirts.
Also, YUSU's executive is not asking students to vote for the proposal at the EGM. They're asking students to choose between two options before them, and they will go with whatever is decided by the student population at York.
And this once again proves the problems of our current "ethical merchandise" policy. Absence of this company from the list YUSU uses to decide if a company is ethical or not doesn't necessarily mean they're unethical or evil, just that they're not on the list of known ethical companies.
@#1 - do you know they exploit children working in sweatshops? As the NUS use them, I'm willing to bet that they're not all that bad.
The other thing you should consider is that ordering from suppliers on that list could put the price up to around the £10 mark, which could seriously dent the popularity of the event.
Anon 2 - You're also right in saying that this is an issue we're asking for student guidance on. Whatever happens, it will be because the York students wanted it.
Although students need to turn up to vote!
So turn up to vote then!
am i just being daft? why are the prices so much higher than on previous raids, i've been on 3 and havent paid £7.50 for any i dont think, this time last year it was 5 50 and that was up on the previous. At 7.50 a lot of first years who don't know any better will get t's but the rest of us who know the crack will just go out on the crawl and goto the club at the end. 7.50 to a tenner for what at the end of the day is just a t shirt that gets drawn all over and only worn again at the gym is ridiculous in the first place regardless of where the merch is coming from.
@#7 The money just isn't for the t-shirt. The Viking Raid is a RAG event and sale of tickets (through the t-shirts) is a way of raising money for charity.
@#7-8 both are fair points, but you can goto asda andbuy a plain t for 2 quid, a bulk order on printing won't put much more on that so rag are making a mint or buying from the armarni of the printing world
RAG doesn't make money, it fundraises. If they are earning £8 per t-shirt, then that's £8 that can go to charitable causes. Problem with that?
I believe the amount that gets donated to charity per t-shirt is less than £5? (I believe the t-shirts are around £2 each, and then there's the cost of printing, plus possibly other overheads), so out of your £7.50, there's not exactly a huge amount going to charity.
The last Viking Raid was £7.50 and part of the reason this debate has kicked off is because no-one wants to put the price up (which buying from the specified supplier list would force us to do).
As with all Union event budgets, we work to our financial rules of breaking even on ticket sales of 66% (which is a prudent expectation of ticket sales).
Hi,
Apologies for omitting this from the article, the meeting is at 12.15, Tuesday, PX001 - 245 people are needed for the motion not to fail (no matter which way you want to vote, 245 are needed there!)
Thanks
Ruth - News Ed
Surely an unethical black list would make more sense - the current system seems to prove any company is unethical unless Env. + Ethics say otherwise. Seems rather limiting to me as 2 people surely don't have enough time to research every clothing company in enough detail to confirm it is 100% ethical.
Good luck to organisers of the raid whichever way the motion swings.
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