2026 Term 1 Exec Feedback Responses

Mon 12 Jan Feedback

The exec respond to the feedback given by our membership for Term 1!

Intro

Hi everyone,

Following on from our feedback form and our recent exec meetings, we bring you - Feedback: The Feedback!

Thanks to the peeps who took the time to fill out our form, much appreciated :)

There was a lot to get feedback on, and so a fair bit to respond to! We asked our various roles to cook up a response, read below :3

Event Communications

It's good to see that our various methods of communicating about events receive good traction, and word-of-mouth is effective in people discovering stuff we're doing too :)

It's notable that some responses felt locations were not always known/convenient, and that event details & purpose were mostly easy to find, but not always.

Actions going forwards:

Where possible, and working within space constraints, to add more missing start & end times, and locations consistently within our publicity and announcements
- This is more difficult for the half-termly timetable, however we do also have our weekly timetable posts, Instagram reminder stories, Discord announcements, weekly newsletters, and our events website over at https://events.uwcs.co.uk as other means of grabbing event details - we can work to make these more consistent
Avoiding ambiguous naming of locations like the Atrium
As mentioned in the socials feedback below, we'll be looking to plug gaps in communicating of sober exec across each of our platforms
Improving signposting across platforms for event details (e.g. point to events website in newsletter)

EGM/Elections

It was great to see as much engagement as we did for our Frep EGM! There's a few bits to address from the feedback:

Event being longer than expected (but made up for by free pizza)
- The free pizza is usually a feature, so good to know that works!
- The runtime of the EGM was exacerbated by some extenuating circumstances on the day (similarly, caused a slip in the PowerPoint quality, which will be avoided for the AGM), apologies
- We'll try and be better on timing for the AGM, and we're considering making an estimated itinerary. It's worth noting that it's difficult to balance giving sufficient time for discussion of motions (particularly important for ones that change the constitution) & equal speech time for the various roles, versus not risking being kicked out by Community Safety. We'll be having more of a brainstorm about this ahead of our AGM towards the end of T2 (provisionally Wednesday Week 8)
The EGM being the day before CS118 CW1 was not helpful - fair point, we're doing what we can to avoid as many deadlines as we can for the AGM, and it'll be noted for future exec to consider
Clarity on how jokey/serious to be in speeches
- This is mostly down to candidate discretion, as long as the speech is not offensive, and does not indicate endorsements of a candidate or smear them
- It's helpful to talk to current exec that hold the counterpart positions, and talk to members to get a vibe from them
- Different roles and different cohorts have different priorties and preferences, and we can't dictate what you should/shouldn't say to win votes
- For example, you may find sometimes more serious academic candidates are preferred, or more shitposty gaming candidates
- Ultimately, you're trying to persuade people you're suitable for the role
- If you e.g. say "don't vote for me", this has proven unsuccessful previously
Extra note: We're looking at improving expectation-setting by bridging the gap in information between exec and the rest of members. We're looking to run a panel-style event of current exec in the lead-up to the AGM, and we'll be looking to be more transparent with what each role generally gets up to - hopefully this'll make running less daunting!

~Raven :3

Welfare

Whilst it's been good to see praise for our Welfare efforts, we have a huge part to play in making the society a safe space to be in. That's not just Raven & Tom as your Welfare Officers, but everyone in the society has a part to play in looking out for each other, for continuing what works well, and raising what isn't working well.

What's going well:

In response to member concerns early in Term 1, we've been working with Willow & Odin to strengthen the presence of sober exec at our major drinking events, with the successful introduction of rotating sober exec in addition to continued Welfare presence. Notably, it was fed back that people felt more comfortable at our drinking events later in Term 1, including both circles
We've been making sure to make ourselves known via variety of mediums, with our presence being made known via event presence, exec hoodies, newsletter mentions, and much more
We've been able to support a large number of members on a variety of members, whether more serious matters, or matters that can be resolved quickly by making sure people are signposted to the correct information
Including member voices more again by pushing for reintroduction of feedback!

Considerations & changes going forwards:

Raven & Tom to meet privately at the beginning of T2 to discuss how to bring various things forwards for the term
As indicated in the other responses and meetings, we're pushing for greater cohesion in how info is communicated, including things like event timings, signposting of sober exec consistently (including finalisation of them earlier), and much more
Us & the Secretaries are resolving an issue with the publicising of meeting minutes, starting alongside this feedback response
We'll be looking to create a more centralised bank of support information and services via our Discord & our website, and where to go to to make a disclosure to us (including anonymously) - partially inspired by WUFS' approach
As part of this, we'll also be looking to improve signposting to resources created by the society, for our courses & events & more, and to improve info regarding what each of our roles do, particularly important since we'll be having our annual elections towards the end of this term
Tea++ & a mysterious extra event may be in the works 👀
We'll also be splitting Term 2's feedback into half-terms & big events

It's worth noting that this is non-exhaustive, and we're always open to hear more, whether you drop us a DM, an email, or speak to us in-person. We appreciate that there's always more that can be done, and we want to do our best to make sure everyone feels they're being looked out for, safe & included, and that the society is in a better place for the new exec cycle. On a related note, we'd like to praise the Gender Inclusivity Officers for their amazing work on this - they received the best feedback overall in their efforts to make a safe space for our Wildcards, and to make the society less daunting overall for gender minorities to be involved in!

We wish you the best for Term 2 and hope to see y'all around!

~Well we fare, we fare well, we welfare, Raven & Tom :3

Gender Inclusivity

Wildcards Feedback Feedback

Thank you to everyone who attended Wildcard events and especially those who answered the feedback! We’ve received some very positive feedback, and our overall response to that is that Term 2 will be just as strong (if not stronger!) than Term 1 for Wildcards :) We’re gonna continue our weekly events Wednesdays 3-5pm - some of which you can already see on the events page 👀 - but we may also have some non-Wednesday events! Cat Cafe is already planned for the 24th of Jan, and a drinking event may be coming soon…. lots to look forward to! I’ll reiterate again, thank you for coming to Wildcard events, and for the lovely feedback, we’re looking forward to a great term 🫡

Gender Inclusivity Officers: Irene, Kashu

Socials

Hey everyone! Odin & Willow here!🫡

Firstly, a big, massive thank you to everyone who filled in the feedback form or spoke to us directly about socials, this T1. Every single piece of feedback, no matter the nature, is incredibly valuable and helps us make socials better for everyone! (we’re not just filing it away and forgetting lol.)

Stuff we heard (esp. welfare-y bits) 🔊👂

Sober execs need to be way more visible (and not just on Discord)
Sober execs should be sorted earlier + ideally at least one who isn’t a guy
Circles/circling can feel isolating if you don’t already know people
Sometimes announcements miss useful bits like rough end times
Also a note about a resurgance in “splitting the pub meal” (incl. people getting yoinked from Duck to Phoach etc)

What we’re actually doing about it 📝

Every social post will include sober exec info (newsletter + IG included, not just Discord)
We’ll be clearly introducing the sober execs at the start of circles (including reminders throughout the social, e.g. if people arrive late)
Circles: we’re going to be more intentional about looping everyone in, using names more, and keeping things from becoming more about certain (groups of) people.
We’ll be stricter on circle rules being followed so it stays comfy + predictable
We’ll try to include rough end times in event posts so people can plan their evening without guessing
We’ll aim to finalise sober exec earlier. we're also looking at widening the pool (potentially including some freps.)
- On that note, we can already confirm your sober execs for the W2 social are Irene, Crystal and Raven !!!

Planned early T2 socials

Week 2 Circle: Dress for the wrong event
Week 2 Saturday: Ice skating ⛸️
Week 3 Thursday: Luna collab event
Week 4 Tuesday: Pub Golf @ Smack ⛳️
Week 5 Tuesday: Laser Tag 🔫

If you submitted feedback, thank you again. and if you didn’t but you’ve got thoughts: pls chuck them our way anytime (DM or in person). it all helps us contribute to our overarching goal to make socials to feel easy to show up to whether you’re a regular or brand new.

-- Odin & Willow 💛

Gaming

GAMERS MY GAMERS, thank you for all the shenanigans of Term 1, including the feedback peeps sent into us!

What's going well:

It's good to see praise for our event comms - after all, we must respect democracy :3
We're very pleased to hear gaming events being praised for making members feel welcome & safe - including positive shout-outs for inclusion & clear support of gender minorities
Satisfaction is high with gaming events overall 🎉 - including strong praise for our inaugural scavenger hunt!

Considerations & changes going forwards:

Whilst we're happy about the positivity on inclusion, we encourage people to get in touch with us with any ongoing suggestions or concerns on this, since we won't get the entire picture from just the feedback form
People want more input on games bought for our events - valid! Similar to our T3 board games one, we're introducing a new form for this here.
Requests for LAN-like sub-events at FNG - whilst we don't want to detract from the value of LAN, we'll be having a brainstorm on some one-off special events, which should also help improve people's inclusion in group events
Requests for repeats of previous events will also be noted for the next years' gaming coords to consider - similar with feedback of placement of a coupla bits of equipment at BFSL

Also, WE HAVE WHEEL, PEDALS, GEAR SHIFTER NOW!! We've also bought F1 25 on our Steam, and we're planning to debut this at the Week 1 FNG :3

We hope to see y'all throughout Term 2 💜

~Your ever faithful crack squad of gamers: Raven, Rob, Lyon, Arda, Sharvil, Laina, Santiago :3

Academic

Good afternoon nerds and LinkedIn users! I hope you enjoyed your holidays, but it’s back to term time and you know what that means? We’re fixing things wooo !! Not many people put feedback regarding the academic events unfortunately, so we’ve had to go off of what we witnessed at events rather than direct feedback, so it might be quite general comments.

What's going well:

There’s very good attendance overall, especially on the courses (linux labs and the X-Soc coding course were both received well)
In regards to the X-Soc coding course, we’d revamped the format from last year to make it much more interactive, and people seemed to like that, as 10x the amount of people were at the final session 🤯
Company events generally had good turnout too, we might need to up our pizza orders if the same amount of people are showing up this term

Issues and lessons learned:

Some event details were unclear or announced quite late (including uncertainty about whether certain courses were running)
The location for the Ab Initio talk was very hard to locate, which damaged the turnout quite a bit (it wasn’t entirely our fault tho 🥺👉👈)

Considerations & changes going forwards:

We’ll make sure to communicate events (and changes in event plans) more in advance
We’ll aim to make courses more interactive like the X-Soc one, as that worked well
We will liaise more with the DCS careers team to get more information about events and job opportunities
We’re planning on doing lightning talks this term (yippeeeee 🎉🎉)
We’re reviewing some room choices for courses and talks to make them easier to run and to find

If academic events matter to you, make sure to provide feedback on the forms each term, even if it’s positive feedback, it all helps 🫶

Hoping to see all y’all at more events, stay safe 🦅🦅

Academic Coords: Ed, Edward, Subhan and Joseph

Sports

It sounds like everyone loved sports events. This is good, as we loved putting them on too. So only a couple of takeaways for sports. Firstly, please keep giving feedback (including but not limited to: letting us know if you would love to come to events but they're being hosted at a bad time/place for you, harassing us in-person or on discord to put on your favourite events, showing up to our events just to post scathing criticisms on twitter under multiple anonymous names, etc.). But more importantly, don't just tell us how much you love our events. Please tell your friends, as we only do this for the validation of the turnout numbers. "RUN CLUB WOOOOOOOOOO" ~Anon

Sports Officer's New Years Resolutions:

survive dark cold winter events and thaw out before the end of the term
host indoor sports events with good heating if we have any hopes for turnout before march
do MORE (BIGGER) events: tennis, climbing, hiking, hobby-horsing, ... spoilers
continue being the best basketballers on campus (sorry I think some of you missed this fact, gg)

Sports Officers: Zach and Alfie

Tech (Yes, they decided to contribute a comment too)

ty guys we're killing our servers <3

Winter Meeting Minutes

Thank you to everyone for being a part of our journey this year, we hope to have a banging Term 2!

~Raven :3