Posted on Thu 14 Sep 2023 at 18:42 by
Jimena Alamo Hi everyone!
Officially less than two weeks before the Fresher Week madness and the new semester... I hope you’re all as excited as I am. By now, if you’re a Fresher you should’ve already purchased your official FW23 wristband. If you haven’t, get to it soon! And make sure to only get it from our official website. Also, make sure you look at everything that’s going on during FW. My next blog post will be dedicated to all the good gossip and fun anecdotes about FW, but for now, there’s other things I want to tell you about.
We have finally put out our Top 10 for the year!
I know some of you might not know what the Top 10 is, and I think it’s worth a few lines of context. Every year, the new officer team has a long discussion (which usually lasts a few months and long meetings) about what we want to lobby the university on for the year. In Bath specifically, this takes the shape of a list of 10 issues which we call our priority campaigns for the year. This certainly doesn’t mean that we won’t be working on other things. What this means is that we send this list to the university, and they commit to assigning one senior member of staff to work on this with one of the officers throughout the year. Our way of deciding what goes into the Top 10 is by comparing manifesto points, talking to students, analysing data and survey responses that show what issues are most affecting students, and researching what the university is or isn’t doing about the issues to see if it’s worth us mobilising them to start a new project. If it isn’t clear this far, the Top 10 is a very powerful thing. Please do look at this year’s Top 10, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions about why we chose what we did.
Other things going on... I went with Hanna to our first FoBRA(Federation of Bath Resident Associations) meeting recently. It’s very useful to have a direct connection with the local residents and see how we can work on that student-community relationship which we know might be a bit problematic sometimes (because we all do love our Oldfield house parties too much, but our neighbours probably don’t). I also went with a few other officers to a Student Experience Advisory Board (SEAB) meeting. Again, this is a very useful one to be part of, as it gives us the chance to sit in the room with all university members of staff who look out for student experience and give some SU input into it.
Finally, we went to see Abbie play Rugby last weekend! Not work related at all, but we had such a good time that I had to mention it. Here’s a picture of us after the game (which she so brilliantly won, btw).
I won’t keep going because there are so many things going on in the build-up to the new academic year that this update could go on for pages and pages. I’m sure you’re too busy getting ready for the new year as well to spend all your time reading about what I’m up to, so I’ll let you go! As usual, come back in a couple weeks for another update and please send me a message or leave a comment if you have any questions or just want to chat!
Much love,
Jiji x