Blog
A Friday afternoon
OK This is the making of a blog I wrote a couple of weeks ago on a Friday afternoon....unfortunately I didn't get all the way through before being called away and its languished in a virtual queue ever since. There's a couple of bits I missed off, but hopefully it'll fill in some gaps before the next blog!
Its been an epic week. RAG, Parliamentary debates, a mental health workshop, Vision, meetings, disussions....on housing (we're making progress!), the health centre (again..progress), a fantastic campaigns committee with some great HE funding results and some surveys that have (literally) ruled my life...its all happening in the land of YUSU welfare so I'll try to give you a taste...
Before looking back though lets look forward: NEXT week is "Come dine with york" - we're teaming up with the bbc and the University to give a massive boost to try to persuade everyone to get some good quality food down them! (That doesn't include EFES, dominos or anything in a plastic sleeve, just for clarity). I'm not sure if I've mastered the whole "links" thing yet, but if I ahve then you can find out about Grub club here The whole idea is that you order a pack, get it in and use it to make yourself some kind of delicious meal! We've also got the Food Bus coming along, so email me to b.humphrys@yusu.org if you'd like some free food...and learn how to cook it! For the lucky college residents we're going to be spreading this out so that everyone has the opportunity to eat delicious food, and your college might even cover some of the cost so get in touch...
Looking even further ahead (but also behind) we've started working on a mental health project in York. There's a few links for you to whet your apetite here and here (That's the "mental wealth proejct" and BBC headroom respectively. Its all still in the formative stages, but we're really keen to get everyone's input so if anyone has any ideas, thoughts or wants to get involved get in touch!!
I was actually terrified (ok, I'm getting a bit obsessed but you can read all about it here ) by being captured by RAG yesterday...but thankfully you were all kind enough to donate to let us free! RAG week is one of the big highlights of the term up in "YUSU towers" and between that, the Viking raid, have i got news for York and more we've been loving it! There are some more events still to come - just check the events tab to find out!
We've made some definite progress this week - with some productive chats with student services on the health centre, security services on (you guessed it) security and the accommodation office on the imaginatively named accommodation list. We're going to have a more accountable health centre, a more credible list and (I'm hopeful) a more robust security system for students at York...and also some more info out there for those people on campus who, I'm happy to say, have experienced less crime in the last couple of terms than in any previously! (That's from the Uni/polices stats though, so I've got a survey done of 500 York students just to check that they're getting it right...statistics being what they are and all!)
Just a note from me (2 weeks after I originoally wrote this blog). Apparently the crime statistics they were referring to excluded bike theft...which is frustrating. Although its a really positive thing that burglaries are minimal and (reported) violent crime more or less non existent on campus we're going to put some real mileage into sorting out the bike issue next term!
(Back to the originoal blog....) I'm also really hopeful about our progress on Higher education funding after I had a really productive chat with some other members of campaigns cmte on Wednesday, and all parliamentary candidates for York outer committed to signing the NUS' come cleanm on fees pledge!
In fact I'm happy to report that, since this blog (that was as far as I got!) all three have emailed to say they've signed. We're still waiting for confirmation from the NUS but, fingers crossed, it looks like York Outer at lest will be a bastion against increasing fees in the next parliament!!
