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Subject: Re: Minutes of Student Meeting
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> 9) Other Business. 
> 
> a) Discussion on whether students should only be allowed to play for 
> the University they attend, this will give them incentive to set up 
> their own University team. An example are the people of Sheffield 
> Hallam playing for Sheffield University. This is legal in the rules 
> of Ultimate, but gives Sheffield University a player base twice the 
> size of other Universities. The Open University will be an exception. 
> No decisions reached.

Apologies to those on britdisc with no interest in student matters 
but I'd like to pick up on this point from the student meeting. 
While I appreciate the exception madefor us few full timers of the 
OU the point I was trying to make at the meeting was that there 
are any number of FE and HE institutions that have a much lower 
number of students and thus have a much smaller base from which 
to recruit players than the big universities such as Sheffield or 
Leeds.  Cranfield University(Alien Nation) for example struggles to 
field a team from a the 1000 students studying there, despite the 
serious effort put in by Aaron Altman. Student teams have recently 
begun to emerge from these smaller institutes thanks to the efforts 
of some experienced players, for example Terrace Army at Bedford 
or Cupid Stunts at Grantham but while these presently seem to 
enjoy relatively high player attendances this may not always be the 
case and it seems to me to be an unnecessary imposition in the 
rules to prevent small teams from joining with others where the 
alternative may well be not to be able to play at all.

If I remember correctly I think it was Si Weeks who suggested that 
the existence of such a rule would be good for ultimate in that it 
would force players at universities without teams to build one of 
their own in order to be able to play at student level. While 
encouraging the growth of the sport is a worthy end  I think the 
problem with this is twofold, firstly not everyone is cut out for the 
administration and hassle that it requires, and secondly, and I think 
more importantly, that the rules governing the sport should be best 
designed to encourage the greatest opportunity to actually get out 
and play, they should not exist to tell people what they should be 
doing with their time off the ultimate pitch.

Well done if you've bothered to get this far,

Pete
Alien Nation/Mad Kows