Elections and 'Apathy'?

Election Time Drawing Near!

It's almost that time of year again. The Students' Union gears up for the second busiest time in the academic calendar - Elections.

This year with the reformation of the constitution there are over 50 different positions up for grabs. However, it's really difficult to assess whether student involvement has improved on the previous year until nominations have closed at the end of week 3. After that point there is a final list of the candidates running for the various positions.

The challenge is to attract those candidates in the first place.

The Students' Union has been suffering recently from a lack of student involvement. I do not believe that this is a problem with the students themselves - the Students' Union has become irrelevant in many students lives. Therefore it is up to the SU to demonstrate why it is here. To do that it needs to win some key victories, respond to student needs and deliver consistently high quality/value services.

The Students' Union Mission Statement says that it exists to Support, Represent and Inspire students through their University experience. The mechanism for delivering on this mission statement are all in place, but the SU itself has to be making the best use of them. The Union needs to be pro-active not reactive with student engagement. This doesn't mean that everything to do with students should be left to student officers and reps 'because they are students'! Every interaction that a student has with the SU should engage them and leave them wanting to know more. A student should always get out more than they have put in!

This demands that everybody working within the SU from student staff and volunteers right through the organisation to senior management, including all the student officers and reps, need to be delivering a consistently high level of service to the students they encounter in their line of work. Everybody already involved in the Union should act as an ambassador for the Union and should know about the range of services and opportunities on offer, and more importantly be willing to talk to students about them.

This is going to sound like an excuse but previously the SU has been doing to much. Staff have been working over capacity trying to accomplish a huge range of objectives from awards and developments to new services. This has led to the basics been lost - like student involvement in the Union itself. The Student involvement that does currently exist in the form of the sabbatical officers also struggle to cope with the problems of student engagement under the weight of so many meetings and other commitments.

I would like to end on a positive...
The view is getting better. There have been significant changes, organisationally and democratically within the SU. Staff are being instructed to focus their energies and say no to anything that doesn't fall inside the criteria of 3 objectives that they have to meet. The new constitution allows for flexibility in the structures of the Union such as committees which will enable Offciers to spent more time out and about talking to students rather than stuck behind a desk. Both these things are the beginnings of an organisational shift in focus back to having 'The Student' at the absolute center of everything we do. We are heading in a very positive direction, i just hope it doesn't take too long.