Hello everyone!
It’s that time again! As it’s the Easter break right now, we’ve not got a huge amount going on but we do have one really big piece of news: It’s AGM time (that’s ‘Annual General Meeting’ for the uninitiated). Being a student society, we’re required to run elections for every office of the committee for next year. To nominate yourself, simply fill out the application form and you’ll be included on the ballot! More on the AGM later, here are some upcoming important dates:
- 01/05 AGM Applications close at 5pm! Voting to open shortly after.
- 09/05 AGM results announced
- 13/05 Collaborative session with the Pagan and Witchcraft Society (18:00 – 20:00 in the Faith and Reflection Centre)
We will also be collaborating with our sister publication, The Edge throughout April and May to produce a collaborative issue!
AGM
For those of you familiar with our rampant EGMs (Extraordinary General Meetings) this past year, it’s basically the same thing but instead of trying to fill the current committee we are electing the committee that will take over in July to run Wessex Scene next year. We also make some statements about elements of our operation from this past year. It can sound scary, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the process but, in reality, if you can read and follow basic instructions you’ll have no trouble at all (and if you’ve made it to this university, you should be more than capable of that).
All positions on the committee are up for grabs, these are:
- Editor-in-Chief (President)
- VP Deputy Editor (Secretary)
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(VP) Treasurer
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Social Media & Advertising Manager
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Technological Officer
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Head of Design
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Imagery Coordinator
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Events Secretary
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Content Editor
The application form contains a link to a document with further information about the AGM and the roles available. Being on the committee means that you have responsibilities related to the running of Wessex Scene, this not only looks great on a CV but it also gives you the opportunity to really get stuck in and learn lots about print media and journalism! Though some experience can be useful, it is not required or expected, if you are willing to learn and you want to see Wessex Scene succeed then you have everything that you need to do well. It would be great to see as many people apply as possible! If you are reading this then you’re probably already the kind of person who would do well!
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us!
March EGM Results
Congratulations to Emma Leeson on being elected as our new Social Media & Advertising Manager and to Karla Bejan and Daniel Schiavon on being elected as our latest Content Editors. We had one of our best turnouts in years to this election so thank you to everyone who voted.
It is also worth noting that the Content Editor election was one of the most hotly contested we’ve seen in a long time, you all did exceedingly well and regardless of success, please know that putting yourselves forward for election is itself a great service to Wessex Scene! You can view a more detailed breakdown of the March EGM results here.
Magazines
Change and Adaptation
It is out and available on Highfield, Avenue, and WSA campuses to pick up for free!
We have posted a map to our Instagram page denoting the areas where you can find the distribution stands. There is also a separate post with pictures of each stand.
View this post on Instagram
Luck and Superstition
The content for this magazine is compiled and edited, we just need the design to come together! It’s perhaps too early to give an ETA for this one becoming available but optimistically an early May release is on the cards. Thank you to everybody who contributed to this one, it has been really fun reading all your articles and admiring your illustrations (remember, if you create visual content that we can print, you’re more than welcome to contribute to our magazines).
Untitled Edge Collaboration
As mentioned earlier, the third and final magazine of the year is going to be a collaboration with The Edge. We’re still figuring out some of the details but anything that comes up will be announced on our social media and edited into this newsletter.
WitchSoc Collab
We’re going to have a joint session with the Pagan and Witchcraft Society on the 13th of May where we’ll learn about how pagan rituals can be applied to student living and related things, then we’ll hopefully be able to get an article (or two) out of it!
This will take place between 18:00 and 20:00 in the Faith and Reflection Centre. There’s also free tea!
Tips for Writers
De-Clutter Your Editor Page
The website gives you a lot of options to change things with your articles, but most of them are irrelevant (and some don’t even work correctly anymore). Here is how you can clean up your options so that you don’t have to deal with all that nonsense.
In the top right-hand corner of the post editor page (where you write articles), you will see two little tabs, one for help and another for screen options. Clicking on screen options will open a menu as pictured below with a bunch of checkboxes, you can deselect any that you don’t use and you’ll find the page is suddenly a lot less cluttered (shoutout to Hamish for drawing this to my attention).
The screenshot above shows my personal preferences as Editor-in-Chief, for most of you some of these are surplus to requirement (for example, ‘post options’ isn’t majorly relevant to non-committee, and I’m not sure that ‘Hashtags’ even does much either).
Accessible Hyperlinking
When including a hyperlink (CTRL+k or the chain icon in the text editor bar) in your article, try to make sure that the linked text gives some indication of what it is linking to. This can help people who use screen readers as it is not uncommon for users of these technologies to get a separate list of links, by making the link text more informative you can save screen reader users a lot of effort trying to figure out what links to where. WebAIM has a brilliant article on screen reader hyperlink accessibility.
MJA ‘Building Trust in Health Journalism’ event
For anybody interested, we’ve been informed of an event by the Medical Journalists’ Association this coming Saturday (the 13th) centred around building trust and handling whistleblower situations. It is intended to be student-friendly! Check it out if you’re interested!
Closing words
Thanks for reading! We’ll edit in any extra details as and when they come up. Remember that if you’re interested in what we do, grab a free membership via SUSU to get email updates (including ballots for General Meetings) and a link to our WhatsApp community among other things!
Best Wishes,
– J.M. Hurford and the rest of the Wessex Scene committee
