AU Edge: With AU President Nik Engineer
Despite having been a student at York for three years, been a member of seven different sports clubs, having played every college sport there is, and read what must be about thirty issues of the campus papers, it never ceases to amaze me how negative some people can be.
Take the tent as the most recent example of this. We are in the most fortunate position that any year of students has been in for decades with regards to sports facilities. At three times the size of the main hall, and hosting a basketball court, three netball courts, three volleyball courts, three futsal courts, three indoor hockey courts, three tennis courts, three indoor football pitches and eight badminton courts, the tent is going to finally provide members of the AU and the University the sports facilities they deserve.
Right from the start of the project, before I was President, I said that this was going to be a hard year, that the AU was going to have to suffer a little to gain a lot. Whilst I am under no illusion that this has certainly been the case so far, it astounds me to hear of people bitterly complaining about the current developments, and lamenting the situation we have been in for the last fifteen odd years.
The sad truth of my job, and so much of the work that I do and am involved in, is that it is work to make the lives of future members of the Athletic Union easier and better, and whilst it is certainly unfortunate that some have to make sacrifices in the short term, it is genuinely the case that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
People often forget the bigger picture. It is this simple cliché that explains so much of the difficulties that myself and the other sabbatical officers face on a daily basis.
The truth is that everything we do, every 15 hour day we work, every meeting we chair, every paper we write, and every presentation we give, is underwritten by one single motivation – our insatiable desire to make things better for students.
We can’t do everything for everyone at once, and there are inevitably those who lose out this time round so that others can win, but eventually everyone will gain some advantage, we just have to be patient.
(Nik Engineer)
