Your Uni Needs You (To Drink Up…)

For the coming financial year the Union of UEA Students will have a deficit of £46,500. £44,000 of this is one off costs and so technically the shortfall is only £2,500. The natural question is, where are we going to find this extra cash?

Optimistic plans have been made that the new ‘Megashop’ (a combination of the UFO, Paper Shop, Travel Shop and Post Office planned for Summer 2013) will bring in an extra £75,000 a year. Failing this, money still needs to be found.

Reading the budget section of the Union Council Agenda from April there is a clear focus on one group who are to blame for the fall in union profits. Us, the students.

According to the Union Council “Student social behaviour has also changed. Students are drinking prior to going out in the evenings and are arriving at our venues later – severely capping our income”. A natural part of any student night out is the pre-drinks at yours, or a friends, or a friend of a friend’s house and for good reason.

Would you rather drink here or at home?

Drinking in bars, even the Union bars where prices are adjusted for the student customer base, is expensive. They’re often busy and this makes it almost impossible to find a place for you and your mates to sit down all together. Also, try setting up a game of Beer Pong and you’ll be thrown out before you can shout “DOWN IT!”.

Still – the Union is considering raising prices to counteract the effects of the “pre-drinking” culture. That’s right, raise prices and we’ll be back in a flash, partying and drinking more than ever….

Plans to increase the cost of hiring the LCR to external gig promoters will see ticket prices for these gigs increase accordingly.Also a “small increase” to drink prices during gigs in the LCR will be happening. With complaints that not enough of the LCR events are selling out and the nationwide fall of 3.9% in licensed trade (beaten by UEA’s fall of 5% a year) these plans look doomed to failure.

I’m no financial expert but even I can tell you that higher prices will not encourage students to renew their interest in the university supplied services.

Nationwide the average number of nights that a student goes out per week has fallen from 2.2 in 2005 to 1.6 in 2010 so UEA isn’t exactly an isolated incident. But, is raising the prices of drinks and club nights the way to get us back into old habits? I can’t see it working well, can you?

Do you think raising bar prices is the way out for the Union’s money troubles? Let us know in the comments section!