Blog
Year round up
Its been a busy year! In 12 months a staggering amount of stuff has happened, and as it draws to a close I want to take advantage of the opportunity to update you on where I’ve got to in the 12 months I’ve been your welfare officer. I’ll split it out into separate sections, with a brief synopsis of what I planned to start and then an explanation of what happened, what was achieved and what still needs to happen.
Policy
University Accommodation: In my campaign I committed to holding the University to account on campus accommodation, to pushing for faster refurbishment of Heslington West, to champion individual cases when they came up and to ensure that students aren’t being ripped off for sub standard accommodation. I committed to lobby for a more effective reporting mechanism so that faults in accommodation could be reportable online.
Progress
Refurbishment of Heslington West has picked up in pace, but remains far too slow: too often we hear of faults in accommodation which are just part and parcel of the fact that we have an old campus: I’ve consistently argued that the University should not be diverting funds away from this refurbishment and I’m pleased that the University has upheld this.
I have championed a number of individual cases over the year, including members of James College, Alcuin college and Derwent college. Raising faults with accommodation at a Union level when simply reporting them to the porter isn’t effective is a win on two fronts: We get the problems sorted more quickly and effectively and we can build up a profile of cases to back our other arguments. I’m really proud of the campaigns reps of Langwith College who are now championing this approach, with a number of key profile successes accross the college.
Which highlights the need to deal with the systemic failure of a reporting system requiring an intermediary (porter) for anything to be fixed! I’ve lobbied hard for this over the year and succeeded in getting it into the student first initiative that accommodation fault reporting should go on line. I continue to badger the personnel in estates responsible for looking into this, and I’m hopeful that we will have this sorted, or at least a concrete commitment on time scale, over the summer.
Policy
The Health centre: In my manifesto I promised to lobby the University for more space for the Health centre, to provide Sti testing on campus, to provide a pharmacy delivery service on campus and to tackle the long running issues that students bring up with the service provision.
Progress:
I have continued to lobby for increased space for the health centre as part of developments on Heslington West and am hopeful that we are finally making progress on this formerly intransigent issue.
I worked with the health centre and finally succeeded in obtaining the opening of a new GUM service on campus for the beginning of the spring term. It’s limited to 2 slots of 2 hours (Mon and Weds from one to three) a week, but it is a good start to move on from and a big win on an issue we’ve been fighting for years. It’s a tribute to the work of previous officers that we haven’t given up on this issue, and Charlie Leyland in particular deserves recognition for the effective ground work she did in lobbying for this last year, which was crucial to the final success.
I have obtained a commitment from the Health centre to support a campus delivery service and am in the process of sourcing a pharmacy to take up the role next year. On a wider remit I have lobbied for some pharmacy provision in any health centre extension, after it became clear that a separate pharmacy isn’t viable on our campus, and I will continue to press for this to be part of the new plans for the centre.
I have argued strongly for a better service for students from our health centre service and have obtained a commitment to a participation and health centre panel to look at the results of the survey currently running fill it in here and to form an action plan on how the health centre should move forward.
Policy
Improving welfare campaigns: In my manifesto I promised to make our campaigns and services more accessible to students, to collaborate more effectively with societies, colleges and the University and to develop our collaboration with Nightline and “Its a ducks life”.
Progress
Our campaigns have been bigger this year, had more people participating with them and have had a longer lasting impact. We had over 700 people tested for Chlamydia, 300 participants in the recent security campaign, 2000 housing checklists handed out and a successful accommodation campaign with a doubling of hits on the University private sector accommodation list for the second year in a row. In association with colleges, societies and sports events we’ve worked to make our campaigns more linked in than ever before with an increased impact on students at York.
I have lead, alongside Charlie Leyland, the work on the creation of the Advice and Support Centre, work on its general design (overall, not the artwork...we left that to professionals....!), on its layout, choosing the information services to put in it and how to focus on the different areas – I’m very proud that our union now has four specific areas to showcase the work of out liberation officers! It’s a fantastic space, and one in which I have further spent many hours providing an Advice and Support service for our students myself – this is our first high profile Academic and Welfare space and I’m incredibly proud of its success this year and, as its organisation becomes more professional and service orientated, I’m excited about how it will help students in York in the future.
Collaboration with Nightline is strong and our links with the organisation have developed; I’m pleased to be able to commit that their funding will better match the substantial level of service they provide students at York over the next year and that we have supported them in funding better training and more materials over this year. Nightline deserves massive credit at every stage of student life for the service it keeps open all through term for students and for their work to develop the range of funding available to them to make sure we can offer give the best service provision possible!
I’m really pleased to be working with Nightline on getting their number onto the University Card and to support the recent moves to look towards a long term base on Heslington East. This progress is crucial if we’re going to retain the support service provision we have on campus right now.
Its a ducks life unfortunately closed down over the summer, and we haven’t been able to contact the owners to get it back up. Unfortunately this means we may have to start again from scratch, which is a crying shame for students at York.
Policy
Internationalisation: In my manifesto I promised to developed our policy approach for international students, work with the ISA more closely and kick start our international representation over the year.
Progress
Internationalisation is probably the area I am most proud of working in over the last year. We have had key successes, succeeding in developing our own representative functions over the year and now providing a means for the ISA to continue its work witin the Union structure. We attended for the first time the NUS international students conference and from it took a number of key policy areas on which we have made substantial progress: commitments on predictable international fees, for instance, or to provide clear guidelines on international student volunteering.
We have also kept the international experience of the University at the heart of a number of discussions with the University, especially around the supervisory review this year in which we secured a commitment to more developed training for supervisors in managing language gaps, cultural differences and the additional support issues which being far removed from your home country bring.
Policy
Working with the mature students and the GSA In my manifesto I committed to work on provision for students with dependents, to work closely with the GSA and to support the work of the Mature students association officer.
Progress
I’m proud of the progress we’ve made this year over provision, especially for student parents: We have held 2 consultations and I look forward to the third next week to bring out the areas we should be focusing on, we’ve held events and I hope that anyone reading this will go to the student family picnic we have planned for next Sunday (have a look here , we’ve succeeded in getting an expansion of the Nursery for next year and continue to lobby for increased student accommodation on Heslington East. We’ve set up an online forum and will continue to publicise it to engage participation and I look forward to a summer of events over the next few months when we can really focus on developing a student parent association at York.
I’ve worked closely with my counterpart, Heather Rowley, in the GSA and we continue to fight on the same issues at every level of the University to get the best provision possible for postgraduate students. We have successfully got non term time provision for postgrads onto the agenda for student first, and I have high expectations of progress in the area over the next year.
Policy
Working more closely with JCRC’s: I promised in my manifesto that I would work more closely with JCRC’s, with weekly equality welfare and diversity meetings, a new structure to streamline the committee, a developed training schedule and focus on providing incidental support whenever it was needed.
Progress
The weekly EWD meetings have been a success and have allowed us to begin to push forward with some of our campaigns as well as to bring out the issues affecting the colleges. I’ve reinstated the weekly college/sectional round ups to keep us all in touch, but reformed the committee from an unmanageable 78 to an effective 20 members. I’ve held an event to get more people involved in the committee, to which we got 70 people and have created 7 campaigns to go on from there focusing on specific areas. I’ve developed our training, providing more accessible and short welfare training for listening skills and then a developed campaigns training session based on the NUS activist academy which has been well received. I hope I’ve always been accessible to welfare teams when they’ve needed me, and I’ve been pleased with a lot of the collaborative work we’ve done in this area.
Policy
Website: I promised to develop our Advice and Support website to bring it up to date and put the information student need on it.
Progress
You can find the website, with 28 articles fully laid out here . There’s still a lot to do and I’m looking forward to now redeveloping it over the summer, providing more information and rationalising a couple of links that I’ve been made aware are currently broken. I’ve, in addition, put a load of information onto our campaigns website and I’m currently working on documents that will be able to become live representations of our progress in the area as time goes on.
Policy
Off campus accommodation: I promised that I’d put in the work to ensure that our off campus accommodation matched our high expectations, source a “rate your landlord” service and develop a way for incoming tenants to contact resident tenants to transfer bills etc.
Progress
On the “rate your landlord” survey I have sourced a service which will allow us to do this next year without hitting legal implications on this website . I am less convinced than before that it is the right way to go, however, and have lobbied simultaneously for us to accredit the private sector accommodation list and to throw landlords who violate its terms off the list. Increasingly this is being fulfilled, and I strongly believe that we should ensure that this remains at the heart of our provision next year whether or not we focus on a ratings system as well.
I have not been able to deliver a system for contacting future / current tenants of housing you’re leaving/moving into due to the increased restrictions of data protection, although I’m hopeful that a system may be developed over the summer and we are running a very visible campaign for the end of term to help people move in and out of accommodation to compensate for it.
Policy
Security: I promised to better publicise and to develop the minibus & Night bus services, campaign for more paving and lighting in Halifax and Walmgate stray and campaign to increase portering hours, especially in those areas that have bars open 7 days a week.
Progress
I have delivered 5000 minibus cards like this one which give people information about the service as well as the link you can see on the website. I have not publicised the night bus service effectively, except on a single website article here and our security page here and I apologise for not following this through.
I have worked with the womens officers and went round the campus on their “reclaim the night” march in the winter to illustrate the low levels of lighting across campus and as a result there was a estates survey of every light on campus to make sure they (should) all work. If they don't call 4444 (01904 434444) and report it and it should be dealt with immediately...if not let me know.
On portering we entered office after successful negotiations between the then President and the university had prevented the closing of Vanbrugh porters lodge and given a commitment to 24 hour portering on Heslington east and in Langwith as well as an overall increase in portering hours and a 20% increase in the security team over two years, but with setbacks in a loss of hours in Derwent and Vanbrugh colleges.
I collated two dossiers of information, both of which went to the senior university services committee - the first outlining our worries about the changes in portering and the second, given as a verbal report, outlining the instances where a lack of porters had caused difficulty in the intervening months.
I continue to press for a realignment to increase portering on the central spine, as the last year has clearly demonstrated that a single porter can’t take on all the duties necessary, as well as to press for full portering in every college in fresher’s week as a separate (but intrinsically linked) pledge. This is a long term campaign, a campaign I have committed many hours in and out of work to, and I am hopeful that we’ll see a better system next year and will have long term success in getting 24 hour porters in every college
That's it for the year! If you've managed to get through to this point then congratulations, and to whichever hapless Nouse journalist has to trawl through it all for information I strongly apologise. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with everyone on this welfare campaign this year, now I can't wait to get my teeth stuck in to the next!! I solemnly promise however that I will improve my blog rate next year, because this year it has been abysmal...
