Sound Impact Bronze Award

For the second year in succession Oxford Brookes Students' Union are the proud winners of a Sound Impact Bronze Award. The Award recognises environmental and ethical best practice within students' unions. The SU also achieved a Bronze Award last year, although the criteria were tightened this year and it is now considerably harder to achieve Bronze and therefore our award does in fact represent an overall improvement in our environmental and ethical practices.
A big thank you to everyone at the SU who has contributed to the award this year, whether you have submitted evidence of best practice or have just been a little more conscious regarding sustainability whilst going about your normal work. A special thank you to Suzette Starmer who has been the lead manager on the award from when the SU first signed up to the scheme and has really been a key player in driving the progress of our E&E work, particularly surrounding this years refurbishment works.

Also, James Robertson and Helen West both made considerable contributions to get this years evidence workbook ready for the NUSSL audit. Finally i would like to thank the University, specifically Lucy Millard for her support with a number of E&E issues throughout the year which included providing a wealth of evidence for our Sound Impact Award submission.

NUSSL Convention 2008

Firstly a little bit of background info:
NUSSL, (which stands for National Union of Students Services Limited,) is the purchasing consortium for students' unions up and down the UK. Students' Union that pay their affiliation fee to NUS are entitled to also be members of NUSSL and subsequently benefit from the nationwide deals with suppliers that NUSSL negotiates on behalf of all SUs.

Unlike the NUS, NUSSL is not a policy making organisation and is in fact a company. However, it still has democracy at its heart and student officers can be elected to its various committees and boards. NUSSL will also reflect NUS policy, for example if NUS voted to ban a product nationwide, or boycott a company then NUSSL would not buy that particular product or work with that company.

Every year NUSSL has a convention. The convention hosts NUSSL annual general meeting, its annual elections, various educational sessions, as well as workshops and focus groups.

On Sunday 16th March the SU President Antoinette and myself along with the newly elected VP:CDC for 08/09 Di Caplinska headed off to Liverpools Adelphi Hotel for the Convention. The convention is a great opportunity to re-acquainted with officers from other SUs that we have met throughout the year. Also, as there are many companies hoping to work with NUSSL, the convention often hosts external companies as well giving out free samples or goody bags etc!

NUS is going through a governance overhaul at the moment and NUSSL is doing the same. Information about new structures and committees formed a large part of the session on the first day. I would say that out of all the sessions the most interesting were the environmental ones focussing on the Carbon Academy Project and best practice/innovation from the Sound Impact Awards.

I declared OBSU interest in being part of a pilot energy efficiency scheme being run through NUSSL in partnership with Coca-Cola. I hope this will mean tangible benefits for the SU as well as improving the image of coke on our campus.