With Stephen Brown's Union Review of the Year now published in Felix, Live! presents an alternative point of view.

When I sat down to write a review of the Union's activities for my year in office, my mind tracked back to 1 July 2007. But the excessive drinking this year meant I couldn?t remember that far back, so I thought I?d start with Freshers? Fair in October. The Fair was our most attended ever, with over 6,000 students signing themselves up for four years of junk email, with 340 stalls ensuring they said they?d join clubs they never will.

The Union had some very good news at the end of the autumn term. Just before Christmas we announced that £3.3mhad been secured which would allow the Union to talk about upgrading and modernizing our facilities for student activities. Since then a lot of the design work has been completed by the architects and building work might start at some point ? we said it would start in March, now it?s the Autumn, so it might start by the time Eastside is finished in 2009. The centrepiece of this project will be a new mezzanine for the Student Activities Centre, which won?t smell like a toilet for 6 months of the year, unlike the current one (unless it?s down to the students, which ? lets face it ? is likely). Having seen the plans develop without consultation with anyone other than myself, I am looking forward to coming back for a visit when it is all finished (they haven?t noticed the statue of me in the plans!). Whilst working on this project the concerns of the student body about the Union?s environmental impact have been taken on board. Given the amount of crockery and cutlery being stolen from the bars in the evening, the refurbishment will have all pens in the SAC and all plates, knives and forks tethered to their tables ? this will ensure we don?t have to replace them all the time, reducing our carbon footprint.

2007/2008 has been another outstanding year for our Clubs and Societies and we have seen almost a 10% year-on-year increase in the number of memberships taking the total number sold to over 12,000. This has been greatly aided by us setting up 100 new clubs, most of which do the same thing as other clubs and will be shut down in two years ? but it?ll look great on the CVs of the committee! Whilst official statistics are not available, we believe that Imperial College Union currently offers a student activities programme with the largest participation rate and is the most generously funded compared to all other UK universities, which is why you should come to a proper university rather than a crap poly.

It would almost require me to write a dissertation to do full justice to the achievements of you all this year, but as I did a Maths degree I don?t know how to do it. Here are some of the highlights and headline figures:

• The student media at Imperial College owned us for most of the year, despite the Felix Editor being a big girl and letting me pull his stories.
• The Union?s minibuses clocked up over 100 accidents this year, most of them in the presence of ?Crasher? Cott.
• Surgical Society championed the first undergraduate plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery conference, so we can have Page 3 back in next year?s Felix without wanting to gouge our eyes out.
• 1407 Imperial Students gave up their time to submit paperwork which finance then lost, earning the Union lots in interest as cheques went unwritten and giving countless opportunities for students to develop their culinary skills with Tesco Value Beans and water.
• Imperial College Union?s sports teams visited 2,000 bars this year ? equivalent to 200,000 hours of continuous drinking time.

The Union's Advice Centre helped hundreds of students with issues such as taking College unscrupulous landlords to court, liasing with Transport for London and passing on first-hand advice on how to have enormous accidents. Your elected representatives have continued to contribute to College committees to fulfil our goal of eating as much free finger food as we can. In particular, our work on the student status of writing-up PhD students has resulted in the Live! Editor having to pay considerably less next year in Council Tax. Academic representatives are often the unsung heroes of Students' Unions and we as a student body benefit enormously from their hard work and diligence, yet we stll don't give them much money or think they're that important.

One of the fundamental principles of Students' Unions is that they are democratic organisations that are led by the people they serve. This year saw a 40% increase in the number of times we decided that the Executive Committee are godlike beings who can do what they want, without even mentioning it to the student body. The elections for part-time officers have also seen an increased number of candidates and voter turnout compared to last year and it is excellent to see that so many of you think we're doing such a bad job you need to come in and take over yourselves.

Throughout this article I have referred to "the Union" but it is not quite clear what I mean by this object. For the purposes of this piece I will define "the Union" has being the collective of godlike beings on the Executive Committee, who make decisions in closed session even when they shouldn't really. Without a pervading attitude that the student body doesn't really need to know what's going on, not only would our student media be out of a job but we'd also not get away with holding closed meetings for such stupid things as revealing the line up of the ball, and discussing how best to extract money from you when you buy your tickets.

On that note I would like to wish Jen and her team all the very best for next year. There is still some transparency left to be removed in the course of evolving to meet the needs of an ever-changing student body.

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