Roehampton Vale hosted a Student Union fayre on Wednesday September 27, to include the engineering campus in festivities usually reserved for Kingston Hill and Penrhyn Road.
Patrick Tatarian, Roehampton Vale Officer, hopes that having a union day will make the university less “Penrhyn Road-central”.
He said: “We have four campuses, and the students especially on this campus do feel like they’ve been very under-represented for many years, primarily because it’s quite out of the way to get here.
“That’s why we want to come out here and show these students that the union is here for you guys. They are as much a part of Kingston as students at any other campus.”
Students were informed by union members of the range of societies, sports, volunteer work, advice and wellbeing services available at the university.
A ping pong table was set up and students played for the chance to win a Kingston University hoodie, while free headphones were given to anyone taking part in the tournament.
Tatarian said: “[This event] is a good learning curve because we want to branch out and do more union days on each of the campuses in the future, so this is a good first start.”
Twenty-year-old Maheshwaree Mattabaddul, who studies actuarial science at Penrhyn Road, said: “It’s good to have some activities here to get these students moving. I believe more activities should be done here.”
Shahvaiz Salahuddin, a first-year mechanical engineering student and winner of the ping pong tournament, said: “This is a smaller campus, but the thing is a smaller campus has benefits as well: you meet new people, you have new friends, and the people I have met here are amazing.”
Salahuddin said that the event had inspired him to start up a table tennis club, now that he knew other students across the university were interested in the sport.
He added: “I’m really happy with my hoodie and my headphones!”
Alice E Rickman
Jade Oates
Shaunelle Harrydass-Clark