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The president is in charge of the day-to-day running on the society. The role involves chairing meetings, leading the discussions, and having the final say on decisions. It is your job to make sure the committee know what they’re doing, and (from experience) reminding each person in the committee what they should be doing at regular intervals!

It is not your job to do it all - allocate jobs to the appropriate committee member and it is them that then has to do that job. This is really important and will save you a lot of stress.

You generally need to know everything going on in the society, which is why meetings are so important. Before meetings, you and the secretary should plan an agenda so that it goes smoothly and doesn’t waste too much time!

Advice for you is to plan as much as you can in the summer! It may seem silly to plan for things half a year in advance, but it will pay off! Plan things with each committee member.

Also – get accustomed to what’s in the Dropbox. You’ll find a lot of the work has already been done. Make sure the rest of the committee know what’s there as well.

As there is no official ‘RAG officer’ it is usually a shared responsibility with the committee to raise money for a chosen charity – usually through event income. It looks really good for the society. This year we also did a Christmas food collection for the homeless before students went home for the holidays. I would recommend doing that again.

Freshers week is really important to gain new and renewed interest from students. You automatically have a spot on the academic society fair – bring updates Freshers Guides (updates these during the summer from Dropbox), posters of socials, merchandise, Revs cards (e.g.), sweet things (if you contact Tesco, they will give you free stuff!) and get as many people as you can to sign up! As well as this, you will be contacted to do a presented to the Freshers and the new Postgrads. If you check the Dropbox account, most the work is done for you – it’s a case of updating! Same goes for Freshers Guides.

If you ask nicely at reception, you can store CivSoc bits and bobs with them – this is very useful for things like T-shirt orders.