Medics' Circle Line will be alcohol free

The ICSM Student Union has been forced to reign in its plans for RAG week, due to growing pressure from the college over recent alcohol-fuelled bad behaviour.

The annual Circle Line Pub Crawl usually involves a charity bucket election for ICSM RAG at stations around the Circle Line, as well as stops as multiple pubs along the way. The night usually ends at the Clapham Grand.

However, this year, the ICSMSU has announced to its members that pub stops will not be an official part of the event. Any student visiting one on the day will be doing so “on their own actions, not as an ambassador of ICSMSU”.

Pub stops will be replaced with volunteering opportunities, including street collections, singing in hospitals and other volunteering opportunities at stops on the Circle line. Any student involved will also get free entry to the club afterwards.

The President of the Medical School’s Union told students on Monday that scrubs may not be worn in the club afterwards.

This comes after students on the medic boat club’s trip to Leuven were refused passage on a P&O ferry after students were deemed “drunk and disorderly”. The ICSMSU has since banned alcohol consumption on coaches.

This and other alcohol-related incidents over the years now threaten ICSM students union’s independence. In an email to the medical student body this week, the ICSMSU president said: “The history of events has now led to the heads of College questioning why the faculty of medicine should have its own Students’ Union”.

Scrubs may not be worn in the club afterwards

“The dialogue [with college] is such that there can be no more negatives surrounding alcohol without risking the SU and our separate clubs and societies”.

In the eyes of the law, Imperial only has one student union, and ICSMSU is a constituent union of ICU. However, at the moment, ICSMSU does have some autonomy, with its own separate clubs, societies and sports teams and a sabbatical president paid for by the faculty.

Some concern also seems to surround what a negative medics story could do for the plight of Junior Doctors. Another 24 hour strike is planned for Wednesday the 10th of February, and it’s feared that what would normally be an innocuous photo of a student drinking in scrubs, this week especially, could damage the contract campaign. After The Sun’s desperate story on “Moet Medics”, when photos surfaced of members of the BMA’s junior doctor committee drinking and on holiday, the medical school is under pressure to make sure students aren’t photographed in compromising ways over the week.

The Circle Line pub crawl caused a stir back in 2013, when Imperial medics were accused of damaging property. All Imperial students were temporarily banned from the bar over a weekend as a result.

Medic RAG week usually involves the RAG invasion, where medical students in fancy dress complete challenges and collect money around central London, and RAG Dash, where students hitchhike across the country before travelling to a European destination, which, this year, is Paris.