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My Latest Video Blog
Hi, I’m Lewis Bretts and this is my thirteenth video blog. I’m, the democracy and services officer within the student Union. By the way with any things in this blog you can always drop me an email, my email’s l.bretts@yusu.org or you can pop by the student centre at any time and say hello.
Two announcements to begin this blog with really. The first one I mentioned last week is about the cooption, If you want to get involved in any union committee you’ve got the opportunity to do so really easily; you just need to submit a form to the student centre by twelve o’clock on Wednesday of this week. Please make sure you do it there are loads of positions available, if you go to the democracy section of the YUSU website then you can find out more, Also this week is the deadline for UGM motions as well. So the Union General meeting (UGM) is the highest decision making body within the Union. All you’ve got to do is submit something to that meeting. It’ll be debated at that meeting and then all students at this University will vote on it and if it passes it will become the official policy of the students Union, of YUSU. So it’s really worth taking a looking at it and I’m always happy to help you out with drafting and writing a motion; it can seem like quite a formal and a scary process but it’s honestly the easiest thing in the world and I’m always willing to help people do it. Again you can find out a little bit more about that in the democracy section of the website but its a really great way of making things happen if that’s what you’d like to do. One final one, which I’ll add for good measure, RAG Viking raid tickets are on sale so get a ticket from Your shop as well.
So what have I been up to this week? Well this week I attended bar strategy group which was really interesting, really worthwhile; it was a very long meeting but we really made some progress, it was great to meet with commercial services with a few of the college chairs to discuss some real figures, to discuss what’s going on across the board and hopefully within the next couple of days we’ll have something to get out there and look at how we’re making bars better across campus. That’s really really exciting, and something I think’s worthwhile.
I’m also looking at JCRC budget allocations as well, planning elections; again we’re almost wrapped up proofing designs and looking at some cool ways of getting things out there as well looking at different ways of publicising things. As well as that I’m looking at election rules and looking at the returning officer as well an I’m really pleased to say that I’ll be submitting a UGM on Wednesday to make the whole process online for those who want to which should make the whole process of getting yourself nominated a little bit easier and a little bit less complicated as well.
I’ve also been looking at student first, which is an initiative I spoke about last term so along with Ben and Tim, the welfare officer and the President [respectively] we’ve been working on some ideas that were drawn out of that and all I’d say is again this week I have a meeting called “Campus services†where me and Rhianna meet with everyone within the department of campus services which includes things like portering, it includes things like cleaning, it includes accommodation it includes timetabling it includes facilities management...it includes recycling as well so a range of different issues like that. So I have this meeting monthly and its where I bring up service issues and things that are going on that might be annoying you, particularly if you live on campus, but even if you have teaching on campus or anything like that. So if you’ve ever got an issue that you’d like to raise, particularly this week we’re meeting on Thursday so if you’ve got an issue you’d like me to raise then please do let me know and I’ll get in touch with people as well.
I also attended RP training on Saturday, done by the wonderful Sam and Suzi, the ents officers, and that was really interesting and worthwhile. I hope everyone that was where found it worthwhile, its not always the most exciting of trainings I have to say and being there for eleven am on a Saturday is never my pleasure but it was really good and it was good fun as well. I also had a meeting this week with our internal task force as well – we’ve been working internally within YUSU with a multidisciplinary staff team so staff from different areas of the Union. We’ve been getting together and we’ve been meeting to look at ways that we can develop the services that we provide. The group that I’m in has been looking at engaging students and making sure that our services are accessible and are available for students that might not always use them so we’re having a look at student from some specific areas which is really interesting and exciting and it’s good to work as a team inside YUSU as well.
That’s about it from me really, so as I say please do think about cooption, please do think about running for election and please do think about the UGM this week. If you’ve ever got any questions, as ever, please do let me know. Thanks a lot, Goodbye.
