Last week’s absentees could once again be found in the union offices, after returning from a busy week at the Brighton NUS national conference, with only Emma staying behind. This week all but Ash were free to talk so we had a chat with each of the remaining four about what’s on the horizon.
Bal Deol
Last week I went to the NUS national conference and we elected the national president and four vice-presidents. It was an emotional rollercoaster, with some really, really long days. The conference opened at 9am and didn’t finish until 11pm one day, it was so long but really interesting.
I met up with a load of my friends I’d made at other conferences, which was nice. My speech went really well, but I was nervous beforehand, there was more than 500 people in the audience, my biggest so far. Graduation will be the biggest, at around 3000. It was definitely one of the best things I’ve ever done. Before I came to university, I would never have dreamed of doing a speech in front of people, even doing a presentation in front of 20 people was terrifying in first year. It’s helped my confidence.
This week is Be Safe week, I’ve been talking about it for ages and it’s finally here. Today is day two (Tuesday) and yesterday went well, over 100 students got to see the footprints from Hanley to the Science Building. This morning we got people to pledge a handprint against violence, it’s so good to get people to engage with us. I’m really excited for the rest of the week.
Emma Simeng Zhou
So this week I’ve been helping with Bal’s awesome campaign Be Safe week. We’ve been handing out leaflets and talking to students and got people to pledge against violence, in the hail! This week I’m also focusing on the new officers’ induction and officers’ performance management. I’m working with Janet Lisa to outline a job description for the future team, because it is quite a unique position.
Besides that, I’m looking forward to meeting the officers elect on Thursday when we will have our changeover meeting, where we’ll talk about ways to make this job better and to improve productivity.
Then the most exciting bit is participating in the Leading for Success cohort, sitting on the judging panel with the university staff and lecturers and seeing what they’ve done to get students coming to Staffs, what they’ve done well and what they can improve.
Jaime-Lee Cunningham
As the other officers mentioned we all went to Brighton and everyone asked if we had a nice time down there, but the fact is we didn’t get to see any of it. Only because there’s a sunny beach outside and we were stuck inside all week, but it was really interesting to be fair. To get up and talk about things your passionate about in front of an audience who might not agree takes some guts, I’ve got a lot of respect for the people that did that.
We weren’t sure about who was going to become president and there seems to be nationally a lot of negativity towards Malia and a lot of unions have said they’re going to disaffiliated with NUS, which will have quite an impact on how they run in structures. The national media attention could cause problems, but it wasn’t a negative conference at all.
It’s the people you get to meet there, all the other presidents and vice-presidents, you get to talk about what they’re working on. If there’s something they do that we want to do we can ask how it happened for them; other unions will ask about the 24/7 library. It’s really nice to bounce ideas off of each other.
Tom Hope
We’ve been working on Be Safe week, which is why we’re all wearing lovely t-shirts. I’m going to be helping out during Gobble on Wednesday, giving stuff to students and making sure they can get home okay.
Lots of things came out of the NUS conference, one of which was about e-sports. BUCS is now being petitioned to allow e-sports join them, which will be interesting. I’m video games manager next year, for my masters, so I’m happy with that. We voted on a trans officer as well. There’s always been four liberation camps with the NUS; women’s, disabled, black students and LGBT+, but we’ve seen that trans students have felt unrepresented within the LGBT+ campaign. So it was voted through that there will be a fifth liberation campaign around transgender students. It’s a massive, massive thing for the movement.
Monday was interesting, we had a power cut in Stafford, I was facetiming the team. So I managed to get all film and FX students an extension of 24 hours for their deadlines.