Student fundraising is not all just cross-dressing and silly walks

Published on Tuesday 29 April 2008 20:12

IT WAS time for cross-dressing in St Andrews last week. Boys masqueraded as girls and girls made not-very-convincing boys.

The annual Kate Kennedy procession through the streets of our small town is a pageant about the history of the university and the town, from the Culdee monks who founded the monastery more than 1000 years ago to more modern influential figures such as JM Barrie, golfer Bobby Jones and John Cleese, an effective and fondly remembered rector from 1970 to 1973.

But why cross-dressing? Until quite recently all the pageant characters were played by male students and until even more recently the procession was run by the exclusively male Kate Kennedy Club. Nowadays, the more broadly based Procession Trust is in charge, but the highest honour is still given to the male first-year student who is told, only on the morning of the procession, that he has been chosen to play Kate, the daughter of Bishop Kennedy, one of the university's 15th-century founders.

Thousands of people line the streets to watch the colourfully-costumed characters pass by. Pity barefoot St Andrew in the April cold. Pity the student to whom has befallen the role of John Cleese and consequently a long ordeal of silly walks. This all sounds frivolous, the kind of frolics that give students a reputation for fun over work and for getting the politics not quite right. There is, however, a much more serious aspect, and this is the fact that the event is but one example of the sometimes astonishing effort that students put into collecting for charity.

The procession raises money from sponsorship, advertising and collecting tins, and is part of the 140,000 that St Andrews students will raise this year.

Fashion shows may be an opportunity for our better-off undergraduates to drink champagne and wear designer clothes, but this year they brought in more than 43,000 for charity.

Students here also run the local Brownies, and organise visits to our old folk. We are not alone in doing this often unsung and under-appreciated kind of activity. The big players are the students of Nottingham, Leeds and Loughborough, who employ one of their number each year to take full-time charge of charity fundraising and manage to bring in over 700,000 each.

St Andrews students raise almost 20 per head of student population, meaning that their part-time efforts are substantially more efficient than those of their counterparts in Oxford and Cambridge who raise less than 7 per head each.

Charities that benefit from student fundraising include Amnesty International and many local organisations, and it provides support via bursaries to help less well-off students. Special mention should go to second year student Gillian Ferguson, who runs Joy to the World, dedicated to building an orphanage in India.

This activity means first rate management and organisation experience. To this year's Kate Kennedy, Will Dawson, will fall the role of next year's Procession Marshall. This will involve being a member of the team that organises the student players, costumes and horse-drawn carriages. Add to this, co-ordination with police, local politicians, local government officials and senior university staff. Not bad for a 19-year-old.

&#149 Dr Brian Lang is principal of St Andrews University