The 93% Club is back
Felix spoke to the team of students running Imperial’s chapter of one of the largest social mobility clubs in the UK at their first event.
Some of you may have seen posts on LinkedIn from the 93% Club on your LinkedIn feeds, or heard about Sophie Pender, the organisation’s founder, who herself came from a widening participation background – her work in improving social mobility has landed her on ”Forbes 30 Under 30” and the Diana Award.
However, the charity, which operates its members’ clubs in universities across the UK, hasn’t had a presence on Imperial’s campuses since 2022. This year, a team of undergraduate students have managed to relaunch the club and are hoping to host their first conference shortly.
Mohammed Atyab, Zain Passa, Polly Dean, Jill Pham Thi, and Claire Madzura form the committee. They collaborated with ICU’s working class representative Aishah Anjum to put on a social and pub quiz for working class students from Imperial on Monday 19th January and this lucky reporter got to attend.
The event was fun: I’m working class, a fact I am very proud to reiterate, particularly when I have had to deal with people (even in the Felix group chat) openly admitting to being classist. The quiz was fun, the crowd was good, and the committee added a charismatic flair with their presenting. As one of the attendees put it: “I came to this event because community is important and there’s not enough spaces in Imperial where you can be around people from a similar background as you.”
The committee is excited to host more events and to be a space where state-educated and working-class students can come together and socialise. Atyab said: “And I think that there’s a lot of thirst for events like this, especially we’ve had a lot of people today that have said that if ‘I’d known about this in advance, my friend would have loved to come, but they’re busy today.’
“We really want to run the best events, and get people in touch with each other, make it [Imperial] a bit less of an isolating place... the most interesting and the most fun people are the people who are the part of the 93% Club.”
The club isn’t only open for home students. Claire explained that “in medicine, there are quite a few international students from working class backgrounds and I think it’s about the way that we pitch it, and the onus is on us to make it a welcoming environment for those students.” She believes that working class international students “are a hidden community”.
Aishah further elaborated: “It’s hard to come across people and I really wish I had known that [other] working class people existed when I first came here, because I literally thought that there was no one [else] and just me.
“I think what would be great is if we had a working-class month. We’ve already had social mobility week done in the Faculty of Natural Sciences, but it needs to be bigger and university wide.”
