Posted on Wed 21 Jul 2021 at 16:28 by
Megan Crossman Hello! We're nearing the end of my first month as your SU Community Officer and I thought I'd give you a little update on what I've been working on!
I'll start with my top 3 highlights from this past month. These aren't necessarily my biggest projects or achievements, but are the meetings and conversations that have made me feel inspired and excited for what's to come:
1. Disability Ideas:
I've had a couple of meetings with staff in student services disability team - I honestly loved these meetings as it was clear that the team shared my passion on the ideas I raised and they were so keen to get SU input on their ideas too.
We're still in the early stages but I've started discussions around introducing neurodivergent-friendly toilets, reviewing the campus buddy scheme, and empowering disabled student voice through more effective means of feedback. I really feel hopeful and excited about what we can achieve this year working with the disability team!
2. Student Group Work:
As Community Officer, I oversee the Diversity and Support Groups in the SU. Last week, I met with the new Nightline Chairs (the people, not the furniture) who were just lovely and I cannot wait to support their ideas in the year ahead. I'm also meeting with a member of LGBT+ committee later this week - it may be only be July, but it's absolutely amazing to see the new committees already starting to think about the coming year!
We've started to think about how we can best support our D&S groups. Firstly, from a representational standpoint - how we can adapt the D&S Exec to suit this (more to come soon!). Secondly, from the welfare perspective - how we can ensure our groups have appropriate wellbeing support for their members.
Probably my number 1 meeting highlight was with the amazing students behind the Equal Access at Bath campaign. These students are running a campaign for the university to introduce an undergraduate asylum seeker scholarship. I met with them last week to discuss how the SU can support their campaign and I left the meeting feeling so inspired. The group's passion and drive is so clear and I cannot wait to support the incredible work they're doing.
3. Pre-Induction Prep:
This is a little more rogue, but I've had a few requests to speak at various information sessions for incoming students - such as for international students, mature students, and at Beginning at Bath. Putting these dates in the diary has made me really excited for new students to arrive and for more students to be on campus in September.
Outside of my three highlights, I've been making progress on various other projects and manifesto points - such as the Safe Taxi Scheme, the student support directory, and improving support for placement students. I'll talk about these projects (and others!) more as things develop further!
I've been working closely with Student Services in developing the training module for the Be The Change module - encouraging students to speak up about discrimination and harassment. I've also been representing student voice through developing the sexual consent module that will be completed by incoming students in September. Additionally, I started conversations around ensuring Student Services are effectively reviewing their services and making improvements where necessary.
As an Officer Team, we're in the process of researching for our SU Top 10, so there's some very exciting discussions starting around this! It's been so lovely working with the team over the past month - we've become such a strong team so quickly and I am so excited to see the amazing stuff they do this coming year!
Finally, I've been LOVING the sun and I've been working outside wherever I can (see the attached photo for me and Annie's working from home set up).
As always, please do get in touch if you have any questions or comments! I hope you're all having a fab summer and I'll update again soon!
Meg x
sucommunity@bath.ac.uk
