It's important to understand the relationship between the National Union of Students (NUS) and its member students' unions, of which Staffs Union is one of 550. For the elected student officer this is particularly important as they often serve as the key line of communication between the university, the union and the NUS.
We spoke to the NUS Vice President of Union Development, and former union president himself, Richard Brooks to help us understand how exactly this relationship works, as well as why student officers are such a crucial component in it.
Richard became a student at the University of Hull in 2010, at a time when the student community were up in arms over spending cuts to higher education and increases to the cap on tuition fees, instigated by the coalition government. He described how this catalysed his involvement in student politics.
"Even though I was engaged in politics, I didn't really know what was happening or why there were loads of really angry people," he said.
"I could understand it was about tuition fees with the Lib Dems, but I couldn't really understand how to get involved. The way I did eventually get involved with my students' union was through some of that stuff: just basically passionate, articulate people coming up to me and saying ‘are you as annoyed about this as I am?' and the answer is of course yes. So they pointed me to things I could do about it."
Things soon developed as Richard became more and more involved with societies, sports teams and the union as a whole, eventually being elected as their president.
As a former student officer and a current NUS employee, Richard was the perfect person to explain how student officers liaise with the NUS and why it's so important for the two to keep in constant contact.
"Basically [liaising with student officers] is what I do every day," he told us. "All of my work is done with the students' unions. I've had two phone calls today, for example, from officers who have something they're concerned about in their students' unions.
"It's part of the job and if I wasn't talking to the student officers every single day then I wouldn't feel that I could do my job properly.
"NUS is a representative of students' unions and the presidents and vice-presidents of students' unions are the people who want to represent students and talk about the issues they see on their campuses. They're utterly important because, if we don't speak to them and work through them, we become irrelevant."
Richard went on to say that unions were the "best delivery vehicle" he'd seen when it came to making significant changes to student life; whether that was halting Disability Support Allowance cuts or fighting for maintenance grants. Real change isn't made by NUS staff sitting in a room and talking, it's impacted by 550 passionate unions and their officers lobbying their institutions or MPs.
As with most of our Leadership Race interviewees, we asked Richard for his top tips to help would-be student officers through those early days: "The number one tip is to not be afraid of it because you don't feel like you know what you're doing, that's not the point of it. Do your research, learn as much as you can, but you will always end up in situations you're not prepared for and that's why you have other officers and your staff team around you.
"Secondly, try and remember why you decided to become an officer. It can be a really overwhelming job sometimes, but that can get you through it.
"And lastly, just enjoy it, it's just one of those things. The chances that you'll get to meet new people and do interesting things are unparalleled."
To find out more go to www.staffsunion.com/leadershiprace.