Residences Support Team (Wardenal) Petition

Last year the Residences Support (Wardenal) system came under the auspice of Student Services and this year the system has been reviewed. The preferred option of the review is to replace the current resident Support staff with a full-time system which could see external people coming to work in the halls. This system will effectively have non-resident night porters awake and on duty who will provide no pastoral support. It will also result in the loss of a great amount of valuable experience. It is felt that this change will result in a massive deterioration in the quality of service to the students as residents and consequently the University as a whole. The effects foreseen occurring as a result of this proposed change to a full-time system include:

• Potential loss of empathy / understanding
Traditionally the Residences Support team (Wardens) has been comprised of individuals with strong connections to the University, as either students or University staff. The team has lived in the halls of residence and formed part of the residential halls community and its daily life. They have been responsible for ensuring the wellbeing of the students and have striven to maintain a good working and living environment for the residents.

Being fellow students (or staff) and living on site, the Residences Support service has always been very visible and approachable, and has been ideally placed to offer empathetic support and to direct the students to the appropriate University services. The proposed full-time system would most likely place external people to work in the halls of residence and does not require applicants to have any connection with the University, meaning that the current empathy and understanding available would diminish drastically.

• Drastically reduced pastoral support from the proposed system
A key role of the current system is to provide pastoral support to students facing any of a vast number of different issues, including home sickness, stress due to academic or financial concerns, conflicts within flats and mental health issues (such as suicidal behaviour), among many others. The proposed system will not provide this level of pastoral support in halls of residence. Instead this role will be transferred to other daytime University support services and could result in a time delay for accessing pastoral support, which could have serious consequences for the wellbeing and quality of life of students. Any problems students have are more easily dealt with through an on-site pastoral system. Currently these issues are often raised by informal conversations with Residences Support staff. The full-time system will not address problems which students may find distressing but for which they may not be prepared to use an offsite system.

• Loss of experience
The nature of the new system would require individuals to stay awake throughout the night. This means that neither full-time students nor current staff could do the job. It would lead to most, if not all, of the current wardens quitting or being made redundant. The system would lose the experience gathered throughout the years by the current wardens, who possess knowledge and experience of the inner-workings of the University and its support services, which are key to ensuring a healthy University / residential environment conducive to both work and leisure).

The new system would see an inexperienced team, who are unlikely to have any connection with the University whatsoever, being introduced at a time of peak demand.

More information about the review can be found in the accommodation website: http://www.soton.ac.uk/accommodation/community/index.html