Katherine Windsor is full of ideas and ambitious in her aims. One of her manifesto objectives is to help Lancaster achieve their first away win at Roses. “Lancaster always has the most support over York, even when we’re there. Last year, I was just blown away by the amount of Lancaster people that were there and how few York people were there, so even when we’re at their home ground, we have a lot of support.”
With her experience on a range of sports team execs, including the water polo society and the boat club, sport is going to be her grounding going into this position. “I have organised a tour for a trip abroad for water polo last year… I was novice captain of the boat club this year: I pretty much organised all of [their] freshers’ week and helped in the recruitment of them. The recruitment we got was over 250 people signing up, and we’ve maintained about maybe 90 of them,” Windsor says, illustrating her abilities in event management.
Windsor is keen to stress that her experience in sports clubs does not mean other societies will get ignored, and this is reflected in her policies. “Like the sports clubs have got this year, I want to set up a development funding programme for them [societies] so that they can try to develop to be the best they can be.
“I think it is important for both [types of] clubs to get that sort of funding that the sports clubs get so that they can develop properly, because sport isn’t everybody’s game – I know that from people I’ve worked with in the past.”
Another of Windsor’s initiatives is a cultures fair, celebrating the diverse range of cultural societies that are on offer at Lancaster University. “There are just so many different cultures and cultural societies within the Uni, and I just feel people are unaware of them.” She believes that a culture fair would also help societies: “I think it would help increase the numbers within the societies as well: if these people are quite shy then we might not know they’re there. It’s good for people to meet and greet people as well.”
Windsor is also keen to improve communication between LUSU and societies. “I want to set up a forum between the activities council and the presidents and captains of societies so that there’s a good platform for interaction between the Activities Council and LUSU with the clubs and societies… I just think that’s a really good way of getting information out because although everybody checks their emails sometimes the information doesn’t get properly digested.”
In addition, Windsor wants to set up “a minimum time frame where emails have to be responded within, because I know that for a lot of clubs this year, because the weather’s been so bad over the past few months, they’re having to cancel fixtures and they’re not getting a response within a couple of days.”
Most of all, Windsor wants to get as many people as possible involved in sports and societies at Lancaster. “I want to encourage participation in all clubs and societies. I think it’s important for people to be involved in things to help them develop.”
