Connections: June Perry

 What’s your standout memory of Warwick?

Being a staff member at the set up the Law School early in 1968 on the East Site when Professor Geoffrey Wilson arrived, followed by the arrival of the first intake of 40 undergraduate students. It was a very happy time with the small group and newly appointed academic staff (Patrick McAuslan, Sol Picciotto, and Steve Anderman).

Little did I know that I would have a chance meeting my future husband some 24 years later when we met again working for the same investment company. He was the nephew of Professor Lesley Perry, Professor of Education (whose office was next door to mine) and enquired about his uncle during that Easter vacation with hardly anyone around.

I also remember on any visit to the ‘main site’ how muddy the ‘road’ was when the library and engineering block was being built.

How would you sum up Warwick in the time that you were there and your generation of students?

It gave me the confidence to return as an undergraduate in 1976 to study for a BA in Psychology when Steve Van Toller had set up the department. I remember going into my first-year exams and being asked by one of the philosophy staff invigilators what I was doing there!

What was the student culture like at Warwick, and were there any annual traditions, societies, sports clubs, or events that you remember?

Quite revolutionary I thought! Flower power and protests.

Finish the sentence: Warwick influenced who I am today, because…

I feel the University of Warwick gave me some of my happiest early memories when everything was exciting and newly developing in a close-knit community full of hope for the future. It continued to provide interest and support when I returned to live in the area a few years ago. I have become a volunteer at the Warwick Arts Centre and joined the university chorus in what decades ago was an unimaginably well-developed modern university complex with so much opportunity.

June Perry

BA Psychology, 1979