Hello all, 

What do you guys know about the Erasmus Student Network (ESN)? The Gooees inbox got a message on it before and there's a website at www.esn.org, but...

For the un-initiated, basically this is the trans-national organisation of International Students Societies across Europe (and now Turkey), they organise big national events, encourage and enable sharing of ideas between countries and Gooees across the network and even to some extent (though more in the future I reckon) work to lobby EU authorities on behalf of Exchange students.

Basically it's 25€/year to join, there's a big international event for it in Edinburgh in December which we're invited to by Ewan, the Edinburgh ISC president and I was wondering if our society had considered getting involved? To be honest I think an email is a bit of a rubbish way to communicate about such stuff, but I was wondering if it had already been thought about and if it was something we could have a wee mention of in a meeting at some point?

The benefits are not so immediate and obvious but in the long term and in terms of the idea sharing, I reckon we should think about getting involved. Also worthy of a mention is that from the chat I had from Ewan and Edinburgh ISC folk, ours and theirs are really some of the bigger sections out there and we can quite possibly bring a lot in terms of ideas (e.g. Cafe Lingua, whose was that?) and experience to such discussions as they have. I guess GUIS would probably be somewhat of a contributor until a few more sections (ISS's) joined around the UK, but anyway in the short term Ewan is pretty keen to get some events going with ours and theirs, e.g. big weekend trips to youth hostels or islands...

Anyway, these are just some thoughts, but if any of you are interested in this and have any time to talk about it at some point, let me know. I reckon it will be discussed at a committee meeting or something.

Please excuse bad punctuation, and I remain

yours,

Peter

P.S. My morning was made more interesting today when the bar Archie's (and the next building down from ours) burnt down. So now my office smells gently of smoke.