A petition against the planned eradication of medical school sports teams by BUCS.

This petition is based on the information given in Appendix 2, provided for the upcoming BUCS AGM to be held on the 14th July 2011. It states: "Some further anomalies remain – BUCS is aware that some HEI’s currently permit some schools or departments within HEI’s to compete as individual members despite actually being a formally recognised part of the University (This applies mostly to former medical schools). BUCS will work with those institutions affected by this to remove this anomaly in the coming year with a view to all such arrangements ceasing from 2012. Any institutions which wish to make this change immediately are welcome to do so. " We, the undersigned, feel that: a) This blasé motion is an indictment to the history and traditions of the respective medical school* based teams - many of which are amongst the oldest sports teams (and educational institutions) in the world. b) Forcing a merger of the medical schools and their sister universities will greatly limit and decrease the participation of sport at each institution. c) That limited research has been done by BUCS to understand the infrastructure of the so-called "former" medical schools. Many of these establishments, in fact, maintain a large amount of autonomy from their sister universities with separate councils and governance. There are also often greatly different timetables and commitments, separate campuses and accommodation and different sports grounds. d) In many instances, the sports teams of the medical school actually compete at a higher standard than the larger university (proven by league standings and results in varsity fixtures) and thus the dissolution of the medical school based teams will lower the quality of BUCS competitions. *The author would like to acknowledge that due to differences of structure at different colleges, the term ‘Medical School’ is a term inclusive of dental students as well as other para-medical subjects that may be taught within the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the respective universities. We propose, therefore, that no further action should be taken by BUCS to "remove this anomaly" and to allow the continued entry of medical school based teams as a separate entity to their sister universities.