I hope everyone has had a nice Christmas, having a break of my own from the Guild has given me the opportunity to reflect on what I have been up to over the last few months, my successes and campaigns, my struggles and the battles still ahead of me.
Below is a summary ( I have tried to make it as short as possible) over what I have been doing. As always if you have any questions or suggestions about anything I talk about then let me know either on here or using my contact details at the bottom of the right hand column of my blog.
Key Campaigns:
• Welcome Week -I was kept very busy throughout welcome week, I was out and about at all the Halls of Residence over the moving in weekend to check everything was going smoothly, help the mentors with any problems they had and generally be on hand to trouble shoot.
I was also involved with the new Chill Out campaign in freshers week, getting hold of thousands of condoms, spikeys, drink calculators and also donning the chill out bear costume. In addition I managed to secure a host of extra night busses just to take our freshers home running alongside the normal nightbus total. We managed to take home in excess of 7000 freshers during that fortnight!!
Finally myself and the VPS organised the well-being zone, with advice activities and support on everything from sport and exercise to healthy living, personal safety to safe sex.
• National Blood Service – this term saw the return of the national blood service to campus for the first time in 5 years, the demand was overwhelming filling all the available slots before the day. In addition I wrote a new policy that was passed at October Guild Council clarifying our position on donating and worked with the LGBTQ association to organise a petition about unfair donation policy held by the NBS.
• Nightbus – The Nightbus returned this year after a one year break, I worked really hard alongside my predecessor Hollie to make the new scheme work and we trialled it at the end of the Summer. This year it was back with a bang, completely full over the first few weeks of term and been running at near enough capacity ever since. With the additional Night busses provided over Freshers Fest this scheme has helped approx 14,000 students to get home safely in term 1.
• World Aids Day – this was celebrated on the 1st December and this year we made this a key campaign for raising awareness of the Virus, students are the highest risk group for sexually transmitted diseases and it is important students realise that they are not immune to life changing viruses like HIV. On the day we had a red Double Decker bus on campus and touring the halls, red balloons and stalls giving out information, a red fountain (that in the end only went a little bit purple…gutted!) and over 30 volunteers helping out on the day. We also raised over £350 for the HIV/AIDS charity Crusaid.
• Student Parents – in term 1 I really set about trying to give some more support to students who are carers or have dependents, and in particular those students who have children. I organised two coffee mornings for the parents which went really well and worked with the Equality and Diversity advisor at the University to get the University to collect data on the numbers of students who have children or other dependants. This is a campaign being run nationally and we have had an early win with this which is great! Next on the agenda is to write a submission to the University about our recommendations for change in order to help this group of students.
In addition to this the Guild has starting collecting its own data on students with Dependants, for example 1.3% of those who filled in the freshers survey on the Guild website have dependants, and we are currently trying to collate the data of the newly added question to society membership forms.
Other Activities: (remit related)
• Appeals/ Misconduct/ Fitness to Practice – the Vice President Welfare is responsible for co-ordinating the sabbatical representation for students in Appeal, Misconduct or Fitness to practice hearings, this means that if anyone has one of these hearings and wants a sabbatical to go with them then they speak to the ARC who contact me. I try my best to represent as many of these students myself as I can, if I cannot though then the rest of the team will step in as needed. This term I represented 22 students on a variety of different hearings.
• Disabled students association – Alongside the VPSAD I have been working to try and get this association active for first time in approx 4 years. We have attended the Universities disabledf working group where we have been able to elect a chair and vice chair, in term 2 we are hoping to work with them to get a full strength committee.
• Policy on maximum working hours – I have been working with the Jobzone and the University to review the policy and not allowing students to work more than 15/16 hours a week. In the new generation of top up fees students are having to work more but the Guild and Jobzone are not able to protect the rights of these students as workers because the amount of hours they works exceeds our recommendation, I plan to try and raise the limit to 20 hours to open up a broader range of jobs for our students and make sure they are protected as students.
• Sperm donation – whether to promote or advertise sperm donation for fertility purposes has always been a controversial issue and one that I needed to make a decision on again this year. I invited the director of the centre over at the medical school and QE hospital to speak to the sabbatical officer team about the process and the legal ramifications for students, we worked really hard with the media groups to tackle this issue and although for the moment we are not directly advertising the service in the Guild we are certainly very open about what is involved and how students can find out more should they be interested.
• Satellite sites outreach – I spent some (although not as much as I would have liked) doing outreach work on our satellite sites this term, I went and spoke to our students at the Ironbridge institute, gave them a presentation and asked them how the Guild could support them more. I also visited the Shakespeare institute over the Summer, Selly Oak Campus and the Dental School.
• Mentor/ RA love sessions – along with the VPHC organised meetings with the Ra’s and Mentors to communicate how we see the two roles working together and our plans to deliver a more interlinked service to our First year residents
• Business Continuity Planning – because of the risk of swine flu I was the nominated sabbatical officer to be involved in the Business continuity planning for the organisation, deciding what the Guild would do in an emergency, who to contact and what people are responsible for. We also identified our key services so that if there was a large reduction in staff how we could move staff around to keep our key services open.
• Corporate Social Responsibility alongside the VPDR and the VPHC I have also been working on developing a corporate social responsibility document for the organisation, taking a wholistic approach to the actions and activities of our organisation and how we can be mofre socially responsible be that alcohol pricing or community volunteering.
• Worked closely with Equality and Diversity Advisor on a number of issues, the priority being student parents and the disabled association but also talking about support for our LGBT students, and how we can continue to impact assess our services to ensure they are not discriminatory.
• Arranged meetings with University staff in areas connected to my remit, I have had meetings with the Head of Counselling and Guidnace, the Disability manager and their team, the director of student life, the pro vice chancellor for academic quality and students, the director of student conduct and appeals and their team and the chair of the welfare tutors forum to name but a few.
• Jobzone Agency – I have been working hard with the staff to remodel our plan for this agency given the current climate and a realistic budget, we have come up with a streamlined model that we believe we can deliver and more importantly will create more jobs for our students on our campus.
• Mentor Review – this is something that began at the end of the term and will continue into term 2, as part of our service level agreement with the University we review our service every couple of years, the Guild and myself feel that for the scheme to be even more successful in the future we really have to go back to basics and look at what are our objectives, how do we measure them and what are the end results.
• Arc Review – the final review for me to be involved in is the ARC review, with the redevelopment taking place the ARC is going to be having a complete re design, this gives us the perfect opportunity to reassess how we deliver the service and how we can make it better.
• Made decisions on awarding money to those in desperate need through the ARC’s Emergency Grant Fund.
*Created the Mentor ‘Keep it locked’ Campaign – this included a padlock shaped door- hanger and security check list along with UV pens to mark your belongings with, I wanted to put the campaign to the test and dress as a burglar and see what I could find, we decided on reflection however that the police may not be too happy!
• Spent a lot of time working on problems we had with Falcon Cars, speaking to the licensing authorities, liaising with Redbrick who decided to run a story on the problems. Falcon cars are nothing to do with the Guild and haven’t been since Summer 2007 – I will be continuing to make this clear to all students in Term 2.
• Democratic structure review – we have been looking at how decisions are made within the Guild and how the Guild represents its students, could we do it better? How can we get students more involved? We have been doing lots of work on answering the questions and coming up with a new model which we believe delivers a more relevant Guild, consultation will be happening in term 2
• Job evaluation – the Guild is also undergoing Job evaluation – as the sabbatical lead on this (as chair of the R and HR Committee) I have been working hard to co-ordinate the evaluation, liaise with staff about the process and score peoples jobs so that we can make sure that staff are being treated fairly and their jobs are relevant and well structured and that people are getting paid a fair amount for what they do.
• Attended RA training where I delivered a session on the Student Mentor Scheme and working with the Entertainment officers on how to plan events and make sure that what they do is in their students best interests, after an eventful trip to the pub and having to play a really mean character in Fibchester I only hope the new cohort don’t hate me too much!
Meetings: regular meetings that I attend.
• R and HR Committee (monthly)
• Equality and Diversity Committee ( Guild Staff committee)- monthly
• Equality and Diversity Committee (Guild – Students)- 8 times a year
• Equality and Diversity Committee ( University) -twice a term
• Student Support and Development Meetings – twice a term
• Res Exec ( Chaired one, attended most as Vice Chair) - fortnightly
• C- QAEC – 4 times a year
• Accomodation management group – 4 times a year
• Welfare Practitioners forum – monthly
• SOG – weekly
• Team ! -weekly
• GOG - monthly
• Sabb catch Up - weekly
• Staff Forum – 3 times a year.
Miscellaneous
• Staff Recruitment - I short listed and interviewed for 5 core staff jobs this term, we have some great new additions to the team!
• Degree Congregations – had to sit on stage all robed up, lots of clapping!!
• Wellbeing group – fortnightly meetings to discussed staff well being and making sure the Guild is a supportive and enjoyable place to work, this year we organised yoga and football, the Wii challenge and the Christmas party.
• Met the Office of the Independent Adjudicator to talk about complaints and problems that cannot be resolved by the University and have to go to the independent ombudsman. We spoke about processed within the university areas of concern for the Guild and how we can work more closely with the OIA to deliver a positive service to students.
• NUS Welfare Conference – held in Manchester, our chance to elect the Welfare committee and set the national priorities for Welfare in the NUS.
• Chaplaincy meeting to discuss provisions for international students over Xmas.
• Trained student ambassadors in all things Guild related, the services we provide, how we are run, the campaigns that we deliver and of course the bar and the shops!
• Re-use campaign – helped to sort out all the unwanted household goods students left behind in halls last year to donate to incoming international students who because of having to travel to Britain cannot bring all of these supplies with them.
• Acorns Charity Fun Run – ran this along with some of the Sabbs and other Guild staff, I was knackered!
• Open days – we have being creating a new strategy for open days, making sure we are open, key services are running and the Sabbs on there to speak to prospective students about life at the University, I was on hand to talk to students, man our stall in the fair and give talks when needed.
• Flashmob – along with the rest of the Sabb team I co-ordinated a flash mob called tell David, asking students to make as much noise as possible to make it clear that we are saying no to higher fees – we organised it in only 24 hours and had over 400 students attend, a triumph I would say!
• Answered questions around campus for the ‘Ask your sabbs’ article in GOS in print, these are produced monthly and can be found inserted in the weekly Redbrick Newspapers, if you have any questions in the meantime however then please contact me.
That’s about it for last term, I am sure there must be some things that I have forgotten and apologies for any bad spelling, with being off for Xmas I was in a rush to make sure I blogged within my deadline.
I will be blogging soon about my plans for Term 2 so check back to find out more.
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