An interview with Tom Gordon, Deputy President for Activities
Tom Gordon walks into the Felix office with an Imperial College Symphony Orchestra (ICSO) sweater. I wear a Felix hoodie. The game is on.
Before his election as Deputy President for Activities (DPA), Tom was very involved with student societies. A member of now-defunct Comedy Soc in his first year, he climbed the ranks of music societies over the course of his Aeronautics degree, becoming successively Treasurer and Social Secretary of ICSO, as well as Publicity Officer of Sinfonietta orchestra, and technical officer for Wind Band. He was also elected as Treasurer for the Arts and Entertainment Management Group.
“So I’ve done quite a few things,” he assesses. “I think that at times, perhaps, the balance was a bit wrong, and I did maybe too many types of society things”. Still, freshers are strongly encouraged to make the best out of Imperial’s Clubs, Societies and Project (CSP) network.
“It’s really, really great experience. I think you have to have a social life and do extracurriculars while you’re studying, because otherwise all you’re doing is studying, and it can get very, very tiring, it burns you out.”
How does one get the balance right? Tom thinks the Union can help with that. “One of the things that wanted to make me run [is that] some of our processes were not as good as they could have been, and required quite a lot of workload from students. So I want to really streamline that experience.”
A new role, timeless struggles
The DPA role was introduced following the Union’s Democracy Review, replacing the role of DP Clubs & Societies (DPCS). “One of the findings of [the review] was that DPCS didn’t really encapsulate all the things the role was meant to do.” On a day-to-day basis, Tom is here for “the overall direction” of activities at Imperial: “my job really is to oversee the processes and look at how we can improve them.”
Streamlining was already underway when Tom was elected. The Union recently switched to a ticketing system replacing direct emails, which automatically redirects student queries to Union staff with relevant roles. A new knowledge base has also been introduced on Freshdesk, replacing clunky PDFs.
I complain about the eActivities interface, although I don’t go as far as admitting that I struggle to approve claims for Felix. Tom tells me that the Union aims to provide more finance training.
“We have two in person training days – we’re calling it a training conference – just before the start of term one, but I think we need to do more throughout the year: training on specific aspects, like maybe finance or running an inclusive event. I’d like to see this happening throughout the year, not just before the start of term one, because I realized that not every student can actually make that.”
I wonder if students have the reflex to reach out to Tom given the role rebrand.
“I get a lot of feedback in my role, but I don’t think it’s varied and coming from everyone. I think some groups probably are very vocal and some groups are less vocal. And I’d like to see how I can engage with the less vocal groups.” He plans drop-ins on campus every few weeks, like his three fellow Officer Trustees. “I do still get quite a lot of emails, and I reply to all of them, so feel free to email me.”
A standout point in Tom’s manifesto was his promise to expand the Student Experience Fund.
“The Student Experience Fund was launched two years ago,” Tom recalls. “If you’re on an Imperial bursary, which is for home undergraduate students with a certain household income, it will give you an amount every year to spend on union shop purchases – events run by the union, club society membership, coach transport to Harlington, society events, anything like that – and it just shows up in your Union account.”
“And it’s pretty seamless, but it is just for home undergraduate students at the moment, and I appreciate there are many postgraduate and international students that will also really benefit from it.”
What are the next steps? “The biggest challenges at the moment are just getting more funding and deciding who actually needs it,” Tom tells me. He highlights the necessity to devise a “way of measuring need” for the fund, to best accommodate students. Expansion is still in its early days. “What we really need is sort of just a governance framework of how it will work”.
Beyond the Union
“I’m not sure what the future holds,” Tom reflects when I ask him about personal next steps after the sabbatical year. “Maybe I’m a computer science student at heart.”
In 2018, Tom released Freeze Tag!, a Roblox game he programmed himself. The game has hosted 50 million play sessions from 20 million users, and proved a useful source of income.
“I could continue my old game, make a new one, or do something different entirely,” says Tom. “I am not sure yet.”
But he knows what he wants to achieve during the year ahead. Doubling the pot and extending it to postgraduate and international students are one of his main priorities. “But first and foremost, I just want CSP committees to be happy with our processes and to feel satisfied.”
“I want every student at Imperial to have a transformational experience, if they’re in a club or a society, and I want to just make that as easy as possible for everyone.”
