Pling!

The first meeting

So today was my first Union Council meeting at Sheffield, and if I had to sum it up in one word, that’d be “long”.

We spent most of the meeting discussing the objectives for Union and the sabbatical officers over the next year, which did turn into an extended “officers questions” session.

The few key points I think were raised here was feedback about the council elections – particularly that there was a lack of an e-mail sent out afterwards informing people who won the elections – and with the women’s health issues objective of the Women’s Officer. Parts of this include sexual health matters, and as Alex Swatton put it in the discussion “it takes two to tango”, so I was glad to clarify that the things the Women’s Officer was doing with regards to sexual health (particularly the DIY chlamydia tests) were open to both men and women (and everyone in between).

Many of the other points raised were clarifications, e.g., in the case of the Activities Officer’s “Show off the great things students do” objective to check it included external media as well as internal. A great number of concerns arose with regards to ACS (Accommodation & Campus Services) policy with student housing, as well as the pressure of private landlords trying to get students to sort out their houses early (an issue I was very aware of and contributed to at York). I also wanted to raise a few points with the Finance Officer, but he unfortunately couldn’t attend so that was delayed to the following week.

The Maths and Statistics councillor also raised an issue about teaching space, and I contributed with my experience from COM6451 rooms being overcrowded. The Education Officer will be following up this issue with the department and feeding back next council meeting (in roughly 2 weeks).

As I’m a postgraduate student, I also contributed to a discussion about postgraduate involvement in the Union, giving my two cents. The PGT (Postgraduate Taught) councillor and the Education Officer were following that one up with some ideas to come to the next meeting with.

We also dealt with a number of procedural items, including how best to scrutinise the officer performance (it was decided that reports submitted to the council was the best solution) and ratification of the Union Officers job contract (which was deferred following consultation of HR to ensure that employment law wasn’t broken).

As the meeting over ran greatly (by about an hour), a number of items were moved from the agenda to the following meeting (such as review of committee minutes), leaving the only other thing dealt with a number of elections to various committees, such as the USport board and the Constitutional Committee (which I was elected onto) as well as the election of Chair and Vice-chair of council.

So, phew! That was it – for 2 weeks at least. As always – get in touch with me if you want me to raise an issue at Council, or you’re disappointed with me.

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Union Council Training

So, hopefully you’ve seen by now but I was successfully elected into the position of Union Councillor for Computer Science, so I’d like to thank everyone who voted for me and I’ll keep my promises to you – to do a good job, and keep you updated via this blog on what I’m doing as CS councillor.

Councillor training was today – a 4 hour session incorporating a mock session at the end which I unfortunately had to leave early due to other commitments.

The main thing that struck me about the session is just how complicated and in depth the Union is (they’ve franchised some of their brands out), especially compared to what I’ve had experience with before at York and Alcuin. Obviously Sheffield is a much bigger University, and a much bigger Union – over 900 members of staff and an 8 figure turnover which gives rise to the complex structures that appear to have arisen. The other main shock is the level of support given to the sabbatical officers – their salary is considerably more than their counterparts at York (although I would agree with the point raised that it’s still not representative of an equivalent job in industry!) and they appear to have considerably more staff to support them than at York – unlike last year when there was no General Manager for a good part of the year, Sheffield has a GM, a Deputy GM, and lord knows how many other full time staff to support them.

The other main difference is representation. Unlike at York where essentially everything is done by cross-campus ballot, there seems to be a great deal of appointment into positions – apparently until recently even the Council was appointed! However, there do appear to be more representative structures in place – Union Links in particular who are students who (from what I can gather) are paid to ensure that any University education (for York people reading this, education is synonymous with academic, e.g., York’s Academic Officer Charlie Leyland vs. Sheffield’s Education Officer Holly Taylor) campaigns are being carried out within the individual departments.

Another interesting thing I noted was a seeming lack of Union policy – at York last year we got 8 motions passed in a single UGM, whereas Sheffield currently only has 8 pieces of active policy overall! Presumably this is because policy is not directly synonymous to UGM motions but there are other ways of getting things done.

There was lots of other information as well – it was a genuinely useful session not just about procedure and format of council but also about the different structures and lots of corporate bumpf about the Union.

The first council meeting is on Thursday – the initial agenda includes the approval of individual objectives and aims for the sabbatical officers, and also a larger vision for the Union, discussion of how best to scrutinise officers and their code of conduct and election of councillors to sit on the Constitutional Select Committee, the USport Board and for election of the Chair and Vice Chair of Council, as well as any issues other councillors want to raise – I’m not planning on raising any myself at the first meeting

If you have any questions about any of these or have an issue you want me to raise – leave me a comment, or drop me an e-mail at computersciencecouncillor[at]shef.ac.uk

I’ll post another update after Thursday with my experiences from the meeting.

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Notes from Union Council

Hi there,

I’m Chris Northwood and I’m running for the position of Computer Science Councillor on the University of Sheffield Union of Students Council.

One of my pledges if I get elected is to write blog posts keeping people updated as to what I’m doing as Union Councillor, so I’ll be using this blog for that. But for now, I’m just going to let people know how my campaign’s going!

I’ve just launched my Facebook group and dropped my poster designs off at the Union Copyshop to get them printed for the campaign proper next week. So, hopefully over the next week you’ll see me with my leaflets, or my posters on the wall around the Uni. Feel free to stop me and ask me anything about my campaign, or drop a comment on this blog, tweet me or use my Facebook group, and hopefully I’ll be representing you all come next Thursday.

Just remember to vote for me. I promise I’ll do a good job.

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