Giles Howard and Flora Noble introduced the issue of the expense of Coffee and Cake (Meet & Mingle) on a Thursday morning. Due to it costing a very large portion of the postgraduate events budget, scaling it back was discussed, as well as utilising the money more efficiently to bring events to other sites as the current event regime is almostly entirely Coffee & Cake which is based entirely on Highfield.
Discussions were had as to the nature of what events could be put on instead and the various stakeholders who would need consulting, as well as what timeframes would be necessary to make this change.
Summer was discussed as a timeframe when the Union could be doing more for postgraduate students who are almost entirely still here.
Other discussions were had regarding carrying out more events for development of PGT/PGR students and potentially collaborating with the University on getting these accredited to drive further engagement.
Freshers' planning having begun recently came up as an opportunity to inject more events into the induction period for PGT/PGR students such as cultural events.
Discussions around scaling back Coffee & Cake indicated that it should be undertaken when we have more engagement from postgraduates and know what flavour of events postgraduates prefer.