Election Timeline

Elections made simple

This year there are more positions available to student than ever before thanks to the new constitution. I thought it would make sense to take some time and explain what exactly will be going on over the next 5 weeks.

The timeline is as follows:
Week 3 - nominations close on Friday.
You not be able to stand in any of the elections past this point
Week 4 - the first week of campaigning.
Tradiitionally one of the slower/quieter weeks in the election as everyone prepares for the following weeks.
Week 5 - second week of campaigning
This is the penultimate week of the election and stress levels are rising as campainging is in full swing.
Week 6 - last week of campaigning and voting opens and runs from monday to thursday.
This is the most intense week of the election. Ballot Stations will be around all the main campuses and every candidate will be postering, flyering and campaigning with renewed enthusiasm as the end is in sight.
Week 6 - Friday the counting starts and the results are announced in an evening election party usually in Morals Bar but this will be confirmed nearer the time.

For some of the positions this year, the Students' Union will be providing candidates with a budget to use for campaigning. This is aimed at improving the number of candidates as well as reducing the financial impact of standing for election.

The Positions available at this election include:
OBSU President and four Vice Presidents; Welfare and Equal Opportunties, Academic Affairs, Commercial Development and Communications, Activities and Development. These positions are full time and receive a salary. You will need to take a year out of study.
6x non-sabbatical (part time) Diversity Officers; LGBT, Women's, International Students, Mature Students, Students with Disabilities, Ethnic Minorities.
Union Council position available include:
Independent Chair - runs all the big important meetings of the Union such as Union Council
Environment Officer - does what it says on the tin! (the tin is recycled by the way)
Halls Rep - represents all student living in Halls
Sports Liason Officer - represnets all students involved in sports at Brookes
PostGrad Taught Rep - represents students on post graduate taught courses
PostGrad Research Rep - represents students on post graduate research courses
Campus reps - five students from each of the campuses represesnting students on that campus, Wheatley, Harcourt Hill, Gipsy Lane and Headington Hill (includes Marston Road)
General Reps - 5 reps from the general student body
Placement Rep - representing students on placement

There are also positions for NUS Delegate. NUS is the national version of the Students' Union. Whereas the SU represents all students at Brookes, NUS represents all the students' unions in the country. To attend Annual Conference you must be elected to the position of NUS Delegate for your SU. The President is automatically a member, and anyone can stand for these positions. There are 9 available.

This is only a really basic over view and i would encourage anybody who is interested to check out the website www.thesu.com. Click on the Representation tab and then Elections. More info as well as nominations forms will be available from the Students' Union reception in Week3. Alternatively you can email me - obsu.cdc@brookes.ac.uk for more info.

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.

Marketing Department

Marketing Recruitment

I thought that homework was a thing of the past but i have discovered that i was mistaken...
There were over 23 applications received for the post of Marketing Manager at the SU and the only time to go through them was the weekend.

The Marketing Department, when fully staffed, contains 4 permanent staff. Currently 2 of those posts are vacant; the Marketing Manager and the Communications Coordinator.

As my job includes political responsibility for all the SUs communications i am involved in the recruitment of staff within the Marketing Department.

It's great for a position to attract so many applicants because you get a decent number of really strong applications. The only problem is that you then have to go through ALL the applications and CVs. This can take a very long time, but if you come out of it with a small number of people to interview then it's time well spent.

It's a big responsibility recruiting staff because the quality and effectiveness of the staff that support the officers and students at the SU are what makes the whole thing work - or not! The staff that are hired now will help shape the future of the SU for at least the next 2-3 years and possibly longer, especially in this crucial stage of the University's Masterplan 'Space to Think'.

Brookes require that anyone involved in recruitment attend their Recruitment and Selection training to give you an understanding of how the process works, how to ask questions and how to get the information you want out of applications and interviews.

Catch Up - stuff thats happened '07

Ok so as i've previously mentioned, i wasn't hugely efficient at blogging last year but that obviously doesn't mean that i haven't done anything - it was because i was so hard at work that i just couldn't fit in the time for all the blogging...or something like that!

We have a new Constitution
The new constitution was passed without amendments by the University Board of Governors. We are now in the process of a phased implimentation of the new constitution. It is planned that whatever can be adopted easily straight away will be and stuff that requires a lot of planning or starting particular projects again will either be started later in the year or held back until the new academic year begins.

There is a Promotions Team
It has taken a while to set up succesfully but we now have strong leadership within the team and it is going from strength to strength. The job of the promotions team is primarily to promote Union clubnights, although than can be used far more widely across the whole o the Union. There is always a big group of them at Peachy and Pleasuredome and they are making a ral difference to the atmosphere on the night. If you think that you might be intersted in promotions then please email me obsu.cdc@brookes.ac.uk

Union Council voted to boycott the BNP
Union Council decided unanimously to boycott the 'debate' being held at the Oxford Union to which the leader of the BNP as well as holocaust denier David Irving were invited. The event was billed as an attempt to explore the limits of free speech, with the student leaders of the Oxford Union (not to be confused with Oxford University Students' Union) reassuring everyone not to worry about the type of people they had invited because they would 'crush them in debate'. The decision to boycott the event and request that it be cancelled was chiefly taken on the grounds of student safety. It was felt that because of the well documented violent tendencies of some followers of the BNP that any event involving the leader of that party was likely to attract dangerous people. In the end the were large demonstrations against the event but nobody was injured, although as expected the event made national news giving the BNP the publicity that it wanted. Hopefully the Oxford Union has learnt something from this experience and won't be as naive in the future.

Facebook Policy passed
Not just Facebook actually - the policy concerns raising awareness among students about how private information or pictures that they post on sites such as facebook, myspace etc really are. With reported cases of bullying and intimidation as well as disciplinaries resulting from information people have posted/viewed on social networking sites. Publicity advertising the potential hazards of public social networking sites will be going out during this semester.

Pullens Lane Policy renewed
The old policy mandating the Union to lobby for improved lighting on the Pullens Lane lapsed this year and so a new policy was passed reaffirming the Unions commitment to promoting student safety.

Attended NUS Extraordinary Conference
The Union took 10 delegates to the NUS Extraordinary Conference in Leicester on the 4th December. The event was to debate the changes proposed in the Governance Review commisioned by NUS, similar to our own review which looked at the constitution. The vote was overwhelmingly in favour of accepting the proposed changes to how NUS is structured and run. For the proposals to be formally adopted it has to be passed at 2 conferences and the NUS Annual conference will be the second hearing an will be held early this year. If you are interested in going to NUS conferences then you need to stand for election to become and NUS Delegate. The OBSU Elections 2008 start in week2 so keep your eyes open.

There was other stuff going on, as well as a vast list of achievements by all the Officers but these are just some of the highlights for me!

New Year's Resolution

I have made an important resolution for the new year and that is...to blog!
My effort at blogging last year couldn't be described as anything other than laughable. I hope you will be pleased to hear that i am a reformed character - i have even set aside time in my diary every week specifically protected for blogging purposes, so watch this space.

New Constitution

The Beginning of a new era...
For year and years and years and years everybody involved in the running or democracy at the SU has run away screaming when the word constitution has been mentioned.

Let me explain why...
It is because the current constitution is longer than the constitution of the USA!

A constitution should be a governing document that clearly and simply details the principles behind how an organisation works. However the mammoth document hanging over the heads of everybody at OBSU is so detailed that it allows for absolutely no flexibility and insists on mind numbing beaurocracy instead of allowing for efficiency.

We thought we ought to change it and that is exactly what we have done!

It has taken the best part of nine months but we are in the final stages of agreeing a brand new constitution of just 13 pages of guiding principles. This is extremely exciting as the constitution has been a barrier to student participation in Union democracy and has also made change and progress very difficult in the past.

We are undertaking some more student consultation on the finished article very shortly and the final challenge is to get 150 students at the Annual General Meeting on the 11th October to vote to adopt the new constitution. Sounds simple, but the SU has only enjoyed one quorate meeting in the last 3 yrs so we'll see!

Any questions about this or any other issue email me on obsu.cdc@brookes.ac.uk

University Redevelopment

University Masterplan 'Space to Think'
The Students' Union continues to play and important part in the University's masterplannig process which will, over the next 10-15yrs transform the appearance of all Oxford Brookes campuses. As one of the lead officers involved i continue to play a key part in representing student opinion as the process continues.

The 'Space to Think' project represents a massive investment by Brookes Uni. The project involves the complete redesign of existing university sites and campuses to ensure that students continue to receive a high quality education in buildings that are fit for purpose.

I think we can agree that many of the current buildings are less than ideal. There is a massive backlog of maintenance for many of these buildings and this is one of the reasons that the University decided that it makes more sense to start again than to continue struggling to maintain buildings that really aren't all that good anyway!

So, the redevelopment is happening and it's really important that the Students' Union ensures that the student voice is represented during this process because it will be students that suffer if the buildings are not up to scratch.

Understandably the biggest concern that students over the next few years are going to have is the disruption to their university experience. It is true also that some students are unlikely to experience many of the benefits that students further down the line will. With these thoughts in mind it is important to remember that the reputation of the university that awarded you your degree is can be just as important as the degree itself. Brookes has built up a very good reputation and is consistently named as one of the top new universities in the country. This good reputation can only continue if Brookes ensures that its lecturers have the kind of world class facilities they need to enable students to fulfil there potential. As a graduate of Brookes i want my degree to mean as much in 30 years time as it does today. This is why i fully support the 'Space to Think' project and why the Students' Union and Brookes are working very closely together to minimise the impact of the redevelopment on the university experience.

For more information check out the Brookes website

Any questions about this or any other subject email me obsu.cdc@brookes.ac.uk