#warwicksu

A very good morning to all new members of the Warwick family - we hope that A-Level Results day has delivered everything you were hoping for!

If you got in - CONGRATULATIONS! Head over to our Freshers mini-site at http://www.warwicksu.com/freshers/ to find out more about what happens next, check out our provisional events schedule and meet this year's team.

Also, be sure to keep your eyes on our official Freshers 2015 FB page (https://www.facebook.com/warwickunifreshers2015) and group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/906955105990995/) for further updates coming very soon.

Some of our courses are also in clearing - check out this Which? University Guide which gives great hints and tips on how to tackle clearing! http://university.which.co.uk/advice/clearing-results-day/ucas-clearing-how-to-call-universities

Isaac Leigh,

Sabbatical Team Priorities 2015-16

It has been a brilliant first week in office for us all – there is so much to get our heads around, but it has been wonderful to receive so much support from everyone and we’re determined to start on the front foot by starting to tackle some major issues immediately.

With that in mind, we spent our first team meeting picking out ten major issues to act as a collective manifesto for us all, which you can hold us accountable to and check out our progress over the year. It’s crucial that we work together as closely as possible – for example, issues that affect postgraduates are NOT just for our Postgraduate Officer to work on!

1) Mental health awareness. 

We should be campaigning on this all year round, not just during exam season. We’re looking to expand Feel Good and make it a termly initiative, as well as running an ‘It’s OK’ campaign during Freshers.

2) Fair pay for postgraduates. 

Postgraduate Officers have battled for this in successive years – it simply isn’t right that postgraduates who teach are paid so poorly, and regularly not paid for preparation and marking time. We will continue to build on the pressure exerted by previous Sabb teams and work to change this.

3) 24/7 Library, all year round. 

Out of the top 10 universities in England, we are the only one not to have a year-round 24-hour library. Warwick students overwhelmingly voted for this motion in an All Student Meeting earlier this year by the largest-ever majority – it will mean more flexibility as to when you can study.

4) A proper Freshers’ Week, free of lectures and seminars. 

This was something I spoke to a lot of people about during Elections Week and I am determined that it is in place for the 2016/17 academic year. Students want and deserve a proper induction - it is eminently achievable, and last year’s team already made lots of progress on it.

5) Free Wednesday afternoons. 

It’s not right that students should have to choose between studying and playing sport on Wednesday afternoons, which are supposed to be kept completely clear. Sport brings communities together and has a hugely positive impact on mental health and wellbeing.

6) Women/BAME/Disabled Students’ Leadership conferences.  

As an all-white male Sabbatical Officer team, we have a massive duty to put structures in place to make sure that future teams are more diverse. We will be putting on these conferences during the year to encourage more women, disabled students andstudents from BAME backgrounds to run, inviting leaders from across the student movement to inspire the amazing talent at Warwick. Our fantastic Liberation Officers will be crucial in making this happen!

7) Compulsory recorded lectures.  

We have made a lot of progress on this over the past couple of years, but compulsory recorded lectures will mean that learning is more accessible than ever before – especially for disabled students whose needs and difficulties with getting to their contact hours are sadly often overlooked.

8) Cost of campus accommodation. 

Last year’s team did brilliantly in negotiating Cryfield as the lowest-priced accommodation in the Russell Group. But it does not stop there – we must make sure that the cost of living remains affordable for students from all socio-economic backgrounds.

9) Improving bus services. 

Following last year’s Bus Survey, we are now represented in meetings with local bus operators Stagecoach, National Express and Travel de Courcey. We’re looking to get more late-night buses put on, as well as working towards Swift cards (a bit like Oyster cards) so that you can get on whichever bus comesalong first. We will also create a ‘Record and Report’ form for late buses, to implement refunds where necessary.

10) Cutting the costs. 

The announcement in the recent Budget that maintenance grants will be scrapped from September 2016 represents a direct attack on students, especially those from low-income backgrounds. We have a responsibility to work with NUS and other SUs around the country on a national scale to fight against this and work with local MPs to have this issue properly debated in Parliament.

We all have our own projects which we were elected on, ranging from scrapping Erasmus fees to creating a Sports Speaker Series – but the above are projects we can all work on together and be held accountable for as a collective.

We’re also looking forward to meeting up with the Part-Time Officers in September. You’ll see their faces around campus a lot more this year, and we’ll be working together really closely to help them deliver their amazing projects and ensure that student representation is as broad and diverse as possible!

Myself and the Team look forward to hopefully delivering some positive outcomes!

Isaac Leigh,

*****ATTENTION ALL SOCIETY EXECS***** If you DIDN'T receive my SocsFed email this week, then you are one of the 79 (!) societies who haven't updated your exec sheets! (tut tut) You can do this by emailing me at [email protected] with a list of your society's exec positions with names, student card ID numbers, and email addresses. If you don't do this then you won't receive vital society related information! Also if any old exec members DID receive my email, could you forward it on to the new exec and make them aware of this message as well please? Nice one x

George Creasy,

So my first week of training as Education Officer is over, and what a week it's been! The SU put on a packed schedule of induction talks and training sessions, and we were introduced to key members of staff from across the University and the Union. In between all of this, I spent two days at the National Union of Students (NUS) conference for education officers.

The week started with introductions to the Union and its strategy, plus meetings with Mike Glover, the Academic Registrar and Jo Horsburgh, the Deputy Registrar of the University. A session with Peter Dunn, the Director of Press and Policy, detailed how we can work with the press to communicate our messages.

The next day involved an early start to drive up to the NUS Education Lead and Change conference at Keele University.

As a student, the NUS can often come across as a distant body that does not appear to do much, but my experiences at conference certainly challenged this view. The NUS is invaluable to Students’ Unions around the country - providing training to officers, resources, research and reports to help SUs and students. Conferences are also a unique place to meet fellow Sabbatical Officers and share ideas.

It was interesting to talk to other Sabbs about how they have gone about campaigning for recorded lectures, online submission and better feedback. It was also an occasion to feel proud and communicate some of the great work Warwick SU has done and things Warwick gets right!

Lead and Change covered some broad topics, from training on leadership and coaching to the national challenges in higher education we will be facing over the next year. One of the plenaries was an eye-opening session on the diversity of the student body: one statistic that has stayed in my head since the conference is that 80% of Black PhD students drop out of their first year. It is clear there are some incredibly important issues we need to work together as a movement to address at a local and national level.

On Friday afternoon, the current Sabbs put on the most challenging and stressful session of the week. Put in our calendars simply as 'Scenarios', we had no idea what it would involve.

The purpose of the exercise was a role-play to see how we as a Sabb team dealt with rapidly developing and challenging situations: essentially the assessment centre from hell! We were given a shared email account which rapidly filled up with tasks to be completed, while the outgoing Sabbs role-played being students and staff members with challenges we had to deal with.  We were faced with a perfect storm of things going wrong, and had to work together to plan strategy, mediate disputes, write press statements, and more.We walked out at the end of the session exhausted, but feeling stronger and more united as a team!

By far the best session of the week involved us coming in early on a Saturday morning for an equality and diversity workshop led by Amit Popat, a specialist in the area who has worked with the NHS, trained barristers on diversity topics and was the Diversity Advisor for the University of the Arts, London.

Amit led a challenging and hard-hitting workshop, taking us through exercises which highlighted our own unconscious biases. We looked at what Warwick SU and the University does well on equality and diversity issues, together with what could be improved, then spent time discussing cultural competence.

Most importantly, the session highlighted that change and progress does not come as the result of benevolent decisions made by politicians - it comes through radical action. Equality and diversity issues are not a separate sphere: they are ingrained in systems and structures of oppression. For change to happen, we need to be intersectional and we need to be radical.

As our President Isaac commented, we are very blessed to have an excellent team of part-time officers and liberation societies. As a sabbatical team we want to do everything possible to empower others and make their voices heard.

All in all, it's been a pretty phenomenal, exhausting, and at times stressful week. We as a team can't wait for the next week of handover, and for the year ahead!

Charlie Hindhaugh