With Spring Vacation underway, what better time than to look back at everything we’ve been up to throughout March. From winning our 15^th Varsity in a row, to One World Week, the launch of the Surrey Teaching and Academic Greatness awards, and hosting a range of Housing Events, we’ve had a lot going on this month!

Your Union have continued to work hard behind-the-scenes to ensure there are plenty of opportunities, activities and support available to you as we reach the half-way mark on Semester 2, with so much planned for when you return after Spring Vacation.

Here’s what we have been up to in March:

Community:

• Hosted a very successful One World Week, with support from the Voice team, finishing the week with our infamous, I Gala, with a sold-out audience of 200 at the University Hall!
• Ran several nightlife events including our sold-out Citrus Varsity, with 1,550 of you returning to campus to celebrate our Varsity win! We also hosted our annual Full Moon Rave, this year with a bright new look and feel, inspired by beach parties in Thailand!
• Continued to provide you with a range of Belonging Events including two litter picks across campus and the wider community in line with Keep Britain Tidy.
• We've also loved seeing everyone come along to our new weekly events at Manor Park Social - we can't wait to return and see you all after Spring Vacation!

Voice:

• Launched for the first-time a new awards initiative, the Surrey Teaching and Academic Greatness Awards, designed to encourage you to nominate outstanding members of staff for a recognition award. We’ve had over 70 nominations so far and there is still time to get your nominations in, click here for more information!
• Your Student Equality Network led several campaigns and projects across the month including Women's History Month, and the #MyNameIs campaign. They also hosted several events for Neurodiversity Awareness Week, and supported our Community team with One World Week.
• Reached over 130 Course Rep wins so far this year, with 72 of you submitting a win across the month of March alone! If you know a Course Rep doing outstanding work, or would like to nominate yourself, you can do so here. It’s a great way to celebrate and recognise the excellent work our Course Reps do across the University!

Support:

• Supported 194 students across March with Academic Appeals, submitting Extenuating Circumstances and other areas of academic advice.
• Your VP Support, Sam has been helping her Zone with various events and launches, including Access to Success Disability Awareness Panel, the SurreyWeekends project and Light Up the Night – an event marching in solidarity with survivors of sexual violence from Guildford Town Centre to the University Campus.
• Updated our Housing advice pages, with more information to support you to find somewhere to live and/or someone to live with! Alongside this, we ran two housing events to help students find someone to live with, with over 50 of you coming along! We have another event planned for Wednesday 22 April, find out more here.

Activity:

• Organised another incredibly successful Varsity over at Royal Holloway - seeing Surrey to their 15th win in a row! We sold over 1,000 varsity t-shirts, and 948 seats on the coach. The atmosphere was incredible and despite such mixed weather on the day, it was great to see so many of you there supporting our Team Surrey clubs! Read more about our win here.
• Held our annual Club and Society elections, with 699 candidates running across 579 positions. Overall, we saw 10,630 ballots cast amongst 2,293 unique voters, which was amazing to see!
• Organised and led two Union Trips in March, including Mercedes Benz World and an outing to Canterbury. Discover more on the Mercedes Benz World trip from your VP Activity, Kade here.

Your Union:

• Launched our Destination Success workshops throughout March, running a total of 16 workshops. Four student trainers are running the sessions and overall, we have seen 60 students attend the workshops. Due to demand and positive feedback, we have booked more workshops for you from Tuesday 21 April – check out our What's On for more information. Expect to see more of the Destination Success programme in the next academic year!
• Opened our Honorary Membership nominations, which are now open until Monday 21 April. Every year, we ask students and Union staff members to consider if someone in particular has done something extraordinary for the Union in order for them to be awarded our most symbolic accolade, Honorary Membership. Find out more on how to nominate here.

We hope that you have all enjoyed everything on offer at your Union throughout March. As we now head into the Spring Vacation period, activities and events are a little lighter, but be sure to keep up-to-date with our What’s On calendar to see everything planned for when you return!