PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION IF YOU ARE IN SUPPORT OF KEEPING THE STATUS QUO WITH REGARDS TO MEDICS SPORTS OR MAKING A THIRD OPTION (AMENDMENT TO OPTION 2) AVAILABLE.

COULD YOU NOW ALSO PUT YOUR INSTITUTION DOWN I.e Cardiff University, UWIC etc, and if you are part of a committee could you put that I.e AU President, Rugby First Team Captain etc

Below is the background information. Please feel free to read.

For the last 8 years, and in particular over the last 18 months BUCS (British Universities and Colleges Sport) have been trying to eradicate medical school teams from their leagues. The reasons they give are that; medical students have an unfair advantage because we can choose between two teams (the Meds or the Uni) to compete for and it is unfair for some "departments" within universities to represent themselves in universities leagues.

However, despite constant reminding that until 8 years ago Cardiff Medical School were a completely separate institution (formally university of Wales college of medicine) and have historically represented themselves at the highest level of sport (along with many other reasons such as our busy timetables not allowing us to commit to training with university teams) they see fit to remove us from the leagues.

BUCS gave the university 2 options, neither of which we saw fit to move forward. We attempted to amend an option, but failed to get the motion to the BUCS AGM twice, in September and July. Our motion is that, if a sport is offered by the medical school, a medical student must represent this team, if the sport is not provided by the medical school, a medical student can compete for the university. This solves BUCS's issue, whilst disenfranchising no single person.

On Thursday 27th June, one day before teams for next season (2013/2014) were submitted by Cardiff University, we were told that our motion had failed to get to AGM and that option 1 had been taken by Cardiff University, meaning that medical school teams had been pulled from the BUCS league.

We hope you can understand how much our clubs mean to us. We have a history of over 100 years of playing top flight, high quality sport. We are very proud of the fact that we have managed this with a small pool of players to choose from and hectic academic schedules to adhere to. This is why we believe this is a cause worth fighting for!

If we are successfully removed from BUCS, we will be forced to enter local leagues at far lower divisions than we deserve. This will lead to a fall in participation and subsequently the loss of our clubs. Not to mention it is unreadable due to the local league seasons starting and running through periods when students are not in the city.

Please sign this petition to support our inclusion back into the top flights of university sport where we belong.