SU President Blog

With the weather getting colder, I can happily declare that Christmas is coming! 

I know there’s still a bit of time to go, but thinking about Christmas and seeing my family is the one thing making me survive this weather... sorry to all you cold lovers out there. Despite the unideal weather, a lot has been going on around the SU.  

I went to a doctoral lunch with Jura last week. We had Domino’s and because she’s a legend, she made sure there were gluten-free options for me. Luckily enough, seems like none of the doctoral students present were gluten-free as well, which did mean I ate way more pizza than I should have. The good thing is that that same week I had to do a little trek down to our building in the city, Dartmouth Avenue, for a ‘students as residents’ meeting with some members of the Student Community Partnership (SCP), including Bath Spa sabs. It was a good meeting because it gave us a few ideas on what things we can push for together. I’m sure you guessed it – it's mostly about transport and housing.  

We also brought up those same issues in a meeting we had with the Office for Students during that same week (pictures at the bottom). I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the highlight of the meeting was getting to use the VC’s fancy boardroom. It always makes me feel like a proper adult (not like the rest of the job does that as well). Most of the things we brought up were about student numbers and the implications that this has on the quality on student experience. Very much related to that topic was the Wonkhe forum on housing, which I also joined during that week. I know I’ve gone through a lot of things in very few lines, but that just shows you how busy the semester has been for us.  

Another very important meeting we had was with Wera Hobhouse. We had a whole hour with her to again, mention the concerns we and all students have around housing, its quality and prices, the complications of transport in Bath, and the reality of cost of living and how maintenance loans just aren’t enough. We took our own action from that meeting, and we’re now writing a letter that Wera will take to parliament to present all these issues. This is a massive achievement and we’re quite proud of having done it! More on transport as well: I recently started a transport campaign with sabbatical officers from other SUs (Exeter, Bath Spa, Bristol, and UWE at Bristol). We had an initial meeting last week and are hoping to have a meeting with First Bus soon, to begin to lobby them on ticket prices and quality of bus routes more directly rather than through our universities (which has clearly proven to be a very long process).  

A few other things going on... We had our first SUmmit training session, in which our SUmmit members for this year learned what their role in SUmmit is and how to best represent students. The first SUmmit meeting is on November 27th, so keep an eye out if you’re interested in learning more about it or influencing the conversation we’ll be having. Amber and I attended a graduation working group meeting, in which we’re trying to make the upcoming Winter grads the best they can be, to make sure our PG students get the ceremonies they deserve! More on PG experience, we had our first PG mixer this morning in the Plug. It wasn’t too busy, but it was a lot of fun to chat to some PG students. If you’re a postgrad and didn’t turn up to this event, make sure to come for the next one.  

I’ve mentioned a lot already, so I’ll leave it here for now. See you in a couple of weeks for the next update. In the meantime, as always, stay warm and be kind to one another.  

Much love,  

Jiji x  

OfS + us

Pre-meeting (feeling fancy in the VC's boardroom)