Supporting and Informing Students About Issues Affecting Their Lives
Welfare & Campaigns
We made considerable progress in the area of student health this year, holding a Mental Health Awareness Week in Term 2 as well as offering IAPT Cognitive Therapy Workshops during the second and third terms (during which we also ran our annual Feel Good campaign to keep students in shape during the exam season). In addition, we held 6 GUM Clinics throughout the year, allowing over 700 students to get checked out for sexually-transmitted infections on campus without the need to make an external appointment.
Our House Nouse campaign led to a hugely successful Housing Day on 27th November which saw approximately 1000 students attending (double the estimate), while we also introduced a Rate Your Landlord scheme and established a new protocol for accepting landlords & agents onto our approved housing list. For students based off-campus, we ran the Leave Leam Tidy and Keep Cov Clean campaigns in Term 3 and published Moving Out Guides, together with posting separate information regarding the reclaiming of housing deposits and partial refunds on TV licenses.
Following the appointment of a dedicated member of staff to assist students with campaigning activity, we held our first-ever Campaigns Conventions in Terms 1 &2, as well as hosting the Democracy & Campaigning Fair during the first week of term.
Advice Centre
Our Advice Centre received 6,037 enquiries over the year. Housing advice was our biggest category - particularly looking for and finding accommodation - with Academic advice the next biggest (including the representation of students with academic complaints and at academic appeals). Ultimately, throughout the year a total of £130,000 was won for the Advice Centre’s clients, while the Advice section of the SU website was completely revamped and rebranded to make it more accessible to students. As a result, hits have increased by 28%.
Sample testimonial:
“I wanted to feed back about the excellent service I received at the Student Union Advice Centre.
I was advised to contact the Advice Centre after Student Finance refused to fund my PGCE course. They put me at ease straight away and stated they would get back to me after completing some research into my problem. I have now been granted full entitlement to funding.
If it wasn’t for the advisor, I would still be appealing against Student Finance's decision, causing me a great deal of stress due to the uncertainty of whether I could start my PGCE. Within one day of contacting the service, my problem was solved. I would thoroughly recommend this service.”
Second Hand Book Sale
We ran another student Book Sale in Term 1, which generated £30,000 going back into the pockets of our members. Following student feedback on the event, we will be looking toward developing an online portal through which to run this all-year-round in 2013-14.
Publicity
We worked closely with the University on the roll-out of their Big Screen in the Piazza and network of digital screens between the Arts Centre and Chaplaincy, helping to facilitate the upload and display of promotional material for student-run events. As a result of this new system’s introduction, our own network of digital screens in the Atrium were made free-access, ensuring better publicity for student, society and SU-run initiatives.
Societies Officer Silkie Cragg also created the SocsFed Top 5, which was a weekly online application for societies to advertise an event. The Societies Committee chose which events made the Top 5, and the Union then advertised them for free on our notice boards and digital screens. Ultimately, this provided a fantastic mechanism for conveying the diversity of student events, recognising the great work societies do and giving them a stronger connection with the Union.