Blog
"Weekly Info", Summer Week 1: What I've Been Up To Over Easter
Spring has arrived, the campus has turned green - including the lake - and the first itchings of hay fever have started to hit those of us who suffer from it.
Five weeks is a long Easter break, but the university doesn't stop during it - and neither does the Students' Union. Here's some of the things I've been up to over Easter:
The first major event was the NUS Annual Conference. Along with a thousand other students from around the country, the eight elected delegates from York descended on the Winter Gardens in Blackpool to help set policy for the National Union of Students.
I won't lie; it wasn't always a pleasant experience, and it certainly wasn't a free junket off to Blackpool. The first day of conference runs until 11pm, the second from 9am until 8pm; it's a very tough schedule. And the trouble with a formal conference is that it has formal rules; at one point we were buried three levels deep in procedural motions, with the chair needing to see fifty hands in the air from delegates who wanted to hear the case for a procedural motion that the chair's ruling that he didn't see fifty hands in the air from delegates who wanted to hear the you know what, never mind.
Suffice it to say that at times the conference was everything that delegates are warned about: obtuse and opaque. But the business of the national Union did get done; I'm pleased to report that our delegates were all attentive, present, and voted in accordance with the wishes of York students wherever mandated. Several also spoke, eloquently, on some of the motions.
Back to York, then: I've also been on the online accommodation application planning group; run an induction for the April intake of student nurses; worked with the Safer York Partnership; sat on the Catering and Social Space Working Group that's making sure that there'll be, well, catering and social space on Heslington East; helped out with Keep Your Cool week (which went really well); and handled the endless stream of emails that find their way into my inbox.
It's been a busy Easter, and I'm planning to make the most of the nine weeks I've got left.
To those who have them: good luck with your exams. And to everyone: have fun.
