The University of Essex have been selected as the Pot Noodle Society of the Month for May due to their dedication to their community, weekly socials, and incredible vibes. We talked to their president, Leo, to find out more...
Huge congratulations on winning Pot Noodle Society of the Month! Could you tell us about the socials in more detail? What kind of events do you usually run, and is there a standout moment or fan-favourite?
Every week we aim to run an online social on Saturday evenings and have done so since October last year, only having missed two or three weeks due to committee availability! During the Winter and Spring terms we also ran monthly in-person socials on Campus. These were super awesome, we provided snacks and drinks as a club and also had a few consoles set up for use. Halfway through the year we invested in a PS5 from SCAN - props to the SCAN guys they are super amazing to work with. We had the PS5 set up on FC25 usually and saw lots of intense matches, most of which won by our Vice-President Tom! In my opinion, my favourite social was the Pringles X SuperMario X NSE sponsored social, we had a MarioKart section where we ran a small tournament and had Pringles up for grabs everywhere! The in-person socials were a massive success and always had a great turnout; I loved meeting everyone who came to them. In the online socials we play a variety of different games each week. Some of our favourites have been modded Lethal Company, where at one point we had 13 people gathering loot and hauling it back to the ship. We played with some proper goofy mods such as Goku Brackens, the yippee mod, football mod and many more. Believe it or not, we played from 7pm until just past midnight where the 11 remaining players hopped off for some well deserved sleep! In the runners up spot, I would put our second ever social, where we had 20 us of across two lobbies of Among Us, a proper throwback to lockdown for many of us! For some of our socials, like in the minecraft minigames, we kept track of inidividual winners and hand out a special role in Discord called the "Weekly Social Champion"! I love seeing how competitive some people can get when there is something on the line! In the month of May we ran Codenames online, Hypixel minigames and some Pirate Hide 'n' Seek, played SCP: Secret Lab, Fall Guys and most recently Unfortunate Spaceman, which is a FPS play-on Among Us!
It definitely looks like you guys managed to create amazing socials for the community. What was your inspiration, and how was your committee able to run them consistently?
At the start of the year the new committee came together to create a plan to reinvigorate Esports at Essex, and we realised that whilst the crux of Esports is competitive gaming, LAN environments and lots of teamwork, there is a distinct category of people who don't play, or don't enjoy competitive Esports titles. That's where the idea of running chill weekly socials came from. It's a super great way for students to meet in a low-pressure environment and allows friendships to be created that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. It's super easy to run online socials as a Club. Most of the games we run have multiplayer built in, some great ones are Lethal Company, Fall Guys, Gartic Phone etc - browser games are your best friend! For certain games like minecraft, we used some of our club funds to rent third-party servers, it's a super good use of funds since they are cheap and typically only charge month-by-month. One thing we were careful of was to choose games which we knew most people would have as to be super inclusive, some games we were on the edge about hosting like "Tabletop Simulator" since the base game is paid - luckily our members are the best and a simple poll is a great way to find out which games people do or don't have.
We'd be really sad to see you guys stop running these events, it's great to see Clubs and Societies building a tighter knit community through fun and inclusive events. Therefore, with the academic year coming to an end, are there any future plans for the society? Do you intend to keep these socials going, and is there anything exciting coming up?
For most students exams will be over in the next couple of weeks, so there likely won't be any more in-person events this year but as long as there is someone available to host the socials, the plan is to run them over summer so that people can stay in touch! In terms of the next academic year, I'm really grateful that I have been re-elected as President for 2025-26 so we are 100% intending to continue the socials next year! With the few discussions I've had with the new committee so far, we are eager to increase the frequency and variety of the socials. We would love to start meeting every couple weeks in-person for unofficial meetups alongside our monthly in-person socials. One event I have in mind is running a wiimbledon tournament in collaboration with the Tennis Club by using a Wii at the front of a lecture theatre!
We are so excited to see what else you guys cook up! And, as always, to wrap things up we have a very special Pot Noodle themed question. In honor of the yummy Beef and Tomato Pot Noodle, would you rather fight one cow sized pot noodle or fifty pot noodle sized cows?
That's a tough one... I'll come out and say that I am pretty scared of cows, and anything the same size as a cow- except horses, they're pretty chill. So my answer has to be 50 pot noodle sized cows, at least it wouldn't be possible for them to squash me!
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