Yesterday we received the following email:

To whom it may concern

This is to inform you that we do not allow unauthorised flyering around the halls of residences on our campus.

All unauthorised publicity is removed on a regular basis.

Should you wish to advertise with us then please see the options that are available to you by clicking on the link below.
www.warwicksu.com/mediasales

Regards,

Helen

Project Leader

Warwick SU
University of Warwick

For me this is like lighting the touch paper, I have found the attitude of the students union towards pretty much any students setting up businesses to be appalling. Warwick is a university recognised around the world for it’s entrepreneurial activity and I find the lack of support from some (definitely not all) sections of the university disappointing to say the least, when they try to place obstacles in the way it just makes me angry. I wonder if they send similar emails to all society presidents for every leaflet they deliver to halls of residence? I suspect not – this is all about trying to squeeze revenue from anything considered to be advertising.

Anyhow my response is below, judge for yourself if my point of view is correct. I also copied the email in to the president & communications officer of the SU. Lets see if I get a response!

Hello Helen,

You may be surprised to learn that E-resistible.co.uk is a business venture started by University of Warwick students. I can only assume that you are unaware of this as I cannot believe that an email such as this would be sent to the union’s own students who are attempting to be entrepreneurial. The fact that you are unaware of this demonstrates the lack knowledge that the senior management of the SU has about daily student life.

In early 2008 when we were just beginning our business I wrote an email to the Communications Officer of the SU (James Gatsby Pete) asking for some assistance with getting our start up off the ground. All we wanted was some backing verbally from the SU & perhaps a news article from the website, instead we were brushed aside and told that we were competing with the SU’s outlets. This is completely untrue as the SU does not operate a delivery service for Chinese, Indian, or Pizza during the evening hours.

Undeterred we proceeded with our business idea on our own and students loved our service and E-resistible began to be looked upon as a successful Warwick start-up, winning last years’ Be Your Own Boss competition run by Warwick Entrepreneurs. Suddenly Warwick has wanted to use E-resistible as a tool for positive PR, we have had features on the “Entrepreneurial Spirit at Warwick” in the following newspapers.

The Independent (national) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/higher/campus-dragons-the-entrepreneurial-spirit-is-soaring-across-universities-in-the-uk-1049816.html

The Birmingham Post http://www.birminghampost.net/2009/02/11/recession-forces-graduates-into-self-employment-65233-22901489/

Press Releases using us from WBS http://www.wbs.ac.uk/news/features/2008/12/04/WBS/student/entrepreneurs

Last year’s boar http://theboar.org/news/2009/jan/6/warwick-entrepreneurs-win-e-resistible-reward/

We’re used as an example in this year’s WBS prospectus.

Just this week I traveled for 4 hours (unpaid expenses) to give a talk at Internet Enterprise Day (part of Global Entrepreneurship Week), see the event here http://warwickuni.eventbrite.com/ If you read the boar just this week you will see that one article entitled “Entrepreneurship Talks Inspire” mentions E-resistible yet again.

We invest money into societies at Warwick sponsoring the Poker society here http://www.warwickpoker.com/events/event.asp?eventid=219 We also sponsored the Nordic Society last year.

I don’t really feel like I need to give further examples as to E-resistible.co.uk‘s value to the University of Warwick. We have been used for positive PR many times and you may wish to consider allowing us to leaflet on campus as a form of payment for all the free publicity we have gained the institution over the last 18 months.

You can probably gather that we feel very poorly treated by our own students union and receiving this email just confirms that feeling of bad taste. I may suggest a goodwill gesture of you featuring E-resistible.co.uk on warwicksu.com?

Please feel free to call me on the number below if you wish to discuss this matter further.

Regards,

Steve Barnes – Director
E-resistible.co.uk