President’s Update: October / Freshers Edition
Hiya!! October has truly flown by. Between meeting all of you during Welcome, committee meetings, and one million billion Freshers events, these past couple weeks have been hectic to say the least. Here is a quick breakdown of what I have been up to in October!
Freshers Fortnight & Welcome
It was an amazing experience to get to meet lots of new students through our Welcome Hub during arrivals weekend. Overall, I supported with 5 campus tours, lots of community socials, the Exchange Student Welcome Talk at Ivor Crewe, and nightlife events such as Drag Karaoke at the SU Bar, UV Glow Party at Sub Zero and Binglow! Some of my favorite memories of these past couple weeks have definitely been of students approaching me for directions and us getting lost together in this wonderfully confusing maze of a campus (don’t worry though we eventually managed to get to class on time).
All around, the SU engaged over 2004 individual students through its daytime events during its two-week Freshers Fortnight line up. Huge shout out to all the incredible work from all our staff for making this happen!
Committee Meetings & University Updates
With the start of the term, I have also started attending a whole bunch of committee meetings, where I get to oversee the university’s governance and advocate on your behalf when meeting with senior university officials. In the past couple weeks, I attended: Policy and Resources Committee, Nominations Committee, Education Committee and University Council. Some of the issues I raised include: The need for student representation at the Investment Committee of Council, for the University to implement an Accommodation Guarantor Scheme, provided feedback on sensible AI education policy, amongst other points.
In regard to the SU, I also sat on the Union Performance Committee and scrutinized our financial performance in our commercial services.
Craig and I also had our monthly catch up with the Vice Chancellor, the Chief Operating Officer and the Pro-Vice Chancellor Education. In this meeting, I raised our concerns with the EHRC’s guidance and the need for the University to provide adequate support for trans students, requested funding for our Support Tool - Big Plan project, and asked for SU representation in the University’s development of the new strategic plan, which we secured. We also briefly discussed the ambitions of the Demilitarisation Campaign and implementing an Accommodation Guarantor Scheme.
I also interviewed our Vice Chancellor for our social media channels.I went on my president Instagram account and asked student what they wanted me to ask the VC; compiling a list from the most asked questions from the responses I received. We got to discuss a variety of issues including support for trans students, how university cuts affect the students experience, the University’s ties to arms manufacturers, among other issues. This will be shared on our main Instagram account (@essexsu).
Finally, we were also invited to the Vice Chancellor’s second all-staff meeting, where she unveiled the analyzed feeddback to her Tell Frances listening campaign, picking up from responses from staff all around our three campuses on what the best path forward for the university is. This was followed by the Senior Staff Conference.
Community Market
The first Community Market is going ahead as planned on the 4th of November in Square 3. Allocations for stalls have already been sent out to the pertinent Clubs and Societies (12 in total). We received a total of 32 applications. We will be working closely with our Societies, Sports and Engagement team to make sure the event is as successful as possible!
Community Organising Training Program
Along with Citizens Essex and the Democracy in Action module leaders, I have been working on a Community Organising training program available for students who want to learn about making change in their communities and, more specifically, on campus.
At the moment, we have agreed on a tentative date for a workshop session for later in November, which would be a collaborative effort with the Democracy in Action module.
Citizens Essex Mayoral Assembly
Since the last update, I have had one follow-up catch up with community leaders from Essex to keep us updated on our strategy for the next couple months. I reached out and had an initial meeting with the President and Education Officer from Anglia Ruskin Students’ Union to discuss how we could move forward with this project to make sure that the voices of students at Essex are represented, collect feedback from them and create solidarity amongst our campuses.
We agreed on concrete actions, with a deadline for our feedback collection efforts to be completed by December. I will be reaching out to our Marketing team to see how we can develop the actions we agreed on in the meeting.
BDS Policy
Compiled a report on the actions taken on this policy since we began our work on it (which will be presented to council members). Moreover, I held a meeting with Demilitarize Education to further the goals of the demilitarization campaign, with its specific goal being for the university to terminate its partnerships with BAE Systems.
Student Leader Drop In
We had our first-ever Student Leader drop-in stall in Square 3 to promote the Big Plan and talk to students about what we have been up to. This is part of a big push this year to make sure that students get involved in the SU politics and, more specifically, in their Big Plan. Make sure that your communities provide feedback on our Big Plan through the form!
Campaigns
- HSC Campaign
- Since the last update, I have received responses from all three organizations (NUS, NMC, RCN). The NMC let us know that, as independent regulators, they are unable to contribute to campaigns that intend to lobby the government. The RCN responded very recently, demonstrating interest in the goals of the campaign and asking to schedule a follow-up discussion. Finally, we received a response and scheduled a meeting with Alex Stanley, VP for Higher Education at NUS. He was overall supportive of the campaign and believes NUS could support further, although would have to check how resource-intensive this support could be as we are not NUS members.