SUBU President

THE CHOSEN ONES…

So the Full Time Officer elections really kicked off last week with 7 days of banners, flyers, posters, space hoppers, Will Smith tunes and a variety of sweet treats as 12 candidates worked hard to be elected by the student body of BU to be YOUR new team for 2013/14. All of the candidates were brilliant in their own right and it was really one we couldn’t call! So come last Friday night, everyone was tired, nervous, but happy that they’d worked hard that week.

With a turnout of 2,571 voters and a MASSIVE increase in votes of over 2,000 for the Lansdowne position, it was a real success and we hope a positive experience for all involved.

And now I’ve wittered on about it, I can announce that your new Full Time Officers of SUBU for 2013/14 are…..

Murray Simpson - President

John Gusman - Vice-President Education

Annie Hall - Vice-President Communications

Sophie Chaytor-Grubb - VIce-President Lansdowne

As you may have noticed, two of them are officers from this year (Murray currently VP Education and Sophie the current VP Lansdowne), but with two new team members it will be exciting to see how they all get on! I wish them all the best of luck next year and can only say what an experience it has been for me so far - although I still have 4 months left!
Here’s to hoping they’re even better than my time so far.

It’s that time of year again…

…ELECTIONS TIME!

The Full-Time Officer Elections are fully underway, although you may not have seen too much about it yet. The Nominations are closed and we’re pleased to announce that we have 12 AMAZING candidates running for the 4 Full-Time positions; that’s your new President, Vice-President Education, VP Communications and VP Lansdowne for next year 2013/14.

Your candidates are as follows:

President

Murray Simpson

Leroy-Winston Scott

VP Education

Harley Johnson

John Gusman

VP Communications

Roseanne Blaze

Ana Georgieva

Nasim Souri

Andy Pointer

Annabel Hall

VP Lansdowne

Sophie Chaytor-Grubb

Ashkan Sabzevar

Francesca Savy

Now I know some of you will think “why does this even matter to me? it’s not like it will have much effect whoever gets the job” - let me convince you otherwise. Hopefully if you’ve read any of my blog posts before you will see just some of the many things we work on at SUBU, most of which are things I personally wanted to be involved in and make happen, and whoever takes over next year can work on whatever they feel should be a focus for their year. Your involvement in voting is crucial to ensuring that officers are elected democratically, and are an accurate representation of who YOU the student body want running your SU.

Just some of the things done by Officers this year include:

- changing the Unis’ policy on capping marks at 40% from capping your WHOLE unit for failure to just capping the ONE piece of work

- revealing hidden course costs and working to make them cleareror eradicate them completely

- showing the University and SUBU’s costs and being more transparent - showing you where your fees go

- developing a new Student Centre building just for you guys coming in 2015

- making the BoHo lounge at Bournemouth House a better place to be with new seating and a football table

- ensuring the University provide clearer guidance on bursaries

- getting better facilities for partner colleges

and MUCH more!

Voting opens this Friday at 00.01am and closes Friday 8th March at 4pm so look out for the candidates, speak to them, read their manifestos, watch their videos, and VOTE!

Much-needed update!

Hello everybody,

apologies for my absence on here - definitely not updating as much as I could!. So brace yourself for a round-up of last term, what’s been going on this term, and what we’ve got coming up!…

last term

The first term was a REALLY busy one for us at SUBU. Arrivals of course was a huge part, involving welcoming, helping out, and providing activities and nights out for nearly 4,000 new students to BU. SUBU ran a whole bunch of awesome club nights at TOFS, and the term was packed with lots of different campaigns we ran for you all including Money Matters, taking students to the NUS Demo, Speak Week, SSHH, First Year Counts, BUnique week, One World One Planet…All sorts!

Some of my personal projects included spreading the SSHH message through Winton, developing the First Year Counts campaign to show freshers that their year DOES count for lots of reasons, and the Winton Winter Watch project - collecting food donated by students and delivering it to local elderly/vulnerable people to help them through the Winter months.

It’s things like all the above that make my job feel so worthwhile.

Some of the other things I got up to that aren’t as obvious as campaigns include being part of the University’s Institutional Review process, running the contriBUte scheme as a way for students to input on uni changes and earn whilst doing it, running the Part-Time Officer elections, helping VP Education train student reps, and most importantly representing YOUR views at a variety of important meetings within the University - including the Board of Governors!

This term so far…

So I’ve already been up to a fair bit this term - I’ve recently been collecting together feedback you’ve given us on the quality of the U2 bus service and arranging a meeting with Uni staff to see what we can do to make using it a better experience for students. Myself and the other 3 officers also released our first SUBUrbia TV - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ly25XHzfeE&feature=youtu.be - giving you a snappy update on what we’ve been up to. Some REALLY exciting news is that I’ve been attending meetings on the new Student Centre building to be built soon ready for 2015, which will be the new home of SUBU in the heart of campus, and this has now been approved to go ahead! so keep a look out for more info on it coming soon and opportunities for you to have your say on what you want it to be like.

As I’ve said previously, a big part of my role is community, so already this term we’ve launched our burglary campaign, ‘Shut it, Lock it’, encouraging students to keep their properties secure from theft…

…and coming up

This week has been the relaunch of the SSHH campaign! this stands for ‘Silent Students, Happy Homes’ and is our big push to deal with the noise and anti-social behaviour problems still occurring in the local community. Check out the official SSHH video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjd7GFRU0nY and the new ‘Community’ page on the SUBU website for more info:http://subu.org.uk/content/896383/

AAAND the next big thing I’m working on this term is the Full-Time Officer elections! I’ll be doing another post just about this very soon but if you or anyone you know fancies doing my job or one of the other FT Officer’s roles next year, nominations open on Monday for 2 weeks so check all the info out and hand in your nomination form!

that’s all for now,

Louise x

for anyone interested in a perspective of why it’s good to be signed up to NUS:

http://www.wessexscene.co.uk/magazine/2012/12/04/say-yes-to-nus/

Anonymous asked: How much are SUBU paying NUS in extortionate affiliation fees then?!? In the previous question about NUS Affiliation, you mentioned the 'Tangible Benefits' were "being part of the purchasing consortium - keen cost prices, advice, marketing help etc." Do you honestly believe the price SUBU pays NUS is worth this?? Is it not true that the only point of NUS is so Sabbatical Officers can just go around the country getting drunk on expenses at "Training" and "Conferences" ??

The affiliation fee for this year is £28,614 and is based on a combination of the amount of our blockgrant and our student numbers. It’s not just about the cost price (however in general, because of this we save the amount we pay for products if not more than that each year from being part of NUS), but it’s also about supporting NUS in lobbying central government to save students money and fight for their rights. I strongly disagree with your assumption that NUS is for officers to “go around the country getting drunk on expenses at “Training” and “Conferences”” - the training we receive, particularly in the Summer, is essential for Officers to really understand their jobs and the bigger picture in Further and Higher Education, as we have all come from being students to being thrown into a job with a high level of responsibility and power within our Universities. What you’ve heard may or may not be true of other officers at other Unions, but here at SUBU we certainly cannot and do not claim drinks on expenses, and take the opportunity to attend conferences and training very seriously, not as an opportunity to get drunk. If you’d like to talk more about this, feel free to come up to the SUBU office and we can discuss the topic in more detail.
we would not act in a way that we felt was detrimental to students, and certainly would not be affiliated with NUS if we thought it was a complete waste of time.

I love that people are asking me questions on here! keep them coming in - anything I can let you know that will help your understanding of something or help you get involved, I want to answer (if I can - hopefully I can answer most questions…)

Anonymous asked: Hi, Maybe you could hold some more meetings for events at the lansdown campus? It's hard for health and social care students to get over there. x

We completely appreciate that it’s a lot harder for HSc students to get to Talbot for meetings and such and do try to hold events at Lansdowne when we can…are you referring to RAG information meetings? I could let our RAG President know your thoughts and see what they can do.

Anonymous asked: Can you tell me the benefits and costs for SUBU being a member of NUS? Southampton University has for a consecutive year running have voted no to NUS with a lot of valid reasons

We get tangible benefits from being part of the purchasing consortium - keen cost prices, advice, marketing help etc. but also believe that being part of NUS and funding the central lobbying of the government and representation function of it is in the best interest of students collectively. Do you feel that we shouldn’t be affiliated?

Anonymous asked: The prices in the student shop and the out of date Cadburys bars the shop has on offer are just some of the atrocities I have seen of late in the student shop. Why does everything cost so much ?? I understand everything goes back into the student union but really?? £3.20 for a standard sandwich ?? Not on.

I can’t defend there being out-of-date chocolate in the shop - was that in the normal chocolate counter bit? I’ll flag that up with our commerical manager. In terms of prices, you’re right in that the money DOES go back into funding clubs and societies, events etc., and we rely quite heavily on our commercial areas to make up the money we need to run as a union. We are currently looking at the possibility of lowering prices, and hopefully increasing our block grant from the University (the chunk of money they give us each year) so that we don’t have to rely so much on income from the shop.

WE TRAINED 320 STUDENT REPS THIS WEEKEND!

(Y)

Busy few weeks!

Hi everyone,

I hope you’re all settling in well or settling back to our returning students at BU. So inductions are out of the way, lectures have begun, and the Summer appears to have officially decided to disappear. The four of us full-time officers did SO many induction talks 3 weeks back now (time is shooting by!) I thought I’d never get my voice back - but it was such a good opportunity for us to speak to loads of students about what we do, what we hope to be doing this year, and how you can all be involved in those things. So what have we been doing in the past few weeks?…

Well we’ve been preparing for the upcoming campaigns this term - Money Matters is on your campus today, providing you with budgeting tips and ways to make the most out of your money - trust me it’s a good one to pay attention to! We’ve got a student-led campaign this week Thursday and Friday for Black History Month. It’s great when we see students taking the reins and creating their own campaigns on things they’re passionate about (if you’re interested in doing something similar for a particular cause or idea email Ruby at suvpcampaigns@bournemouth.ac.uk). I’ve been working closely with Ruby on our First Year Counts campaign which is coming up too - more on that nearer the time!

Myself and Ruby have also been out and about in the local area posting our community flyers along with our SSHH (Stay Silent/Safe, Head Home) campaign materials. There are still problems with noisy students in these areas which we hope to tackle - we want you all to have an amazing University experience but we all also have to remember that local residents may be elderly, have to work early, or have children, so let’s cooperate and be considerate of our neighbours!

Bournemouth RAG’s (raising and giving) Choose Your Challenge evening was HUGELY successful - look how many people were crammed into Kimmeridge House to sign up for charity events!(email rag@bournemouth.ac.uk if you missed it and want to know more)

The past two weeks have also been open for Part-Time Officer elections nominations. These closed last Friday at 5pm and I can let you all know we have 32 candidates running for the roles - elections voting opens Wednesday 24th October 10am, so keep a look out for their manifestos and come along to the hustings in the BOHO lounge this Thursday 12-1pm and next Monday 12-1pm at Talbot Campus in the courtyard: it’s going to be exciting!

and FINALLY our Student Shout is tomorrow at 1-3pm in Lees Lecture Theatre. This is an amazing opportunity for you to vote on motions that both we and other students have put forward that they want to see happen at your University! YOU decide whether we go to the NUS National Demo in November, whether we fight to cancel lectures after 12 on Wednesdays for sports and varsity competitions, whether we get more water fountains on campus - come along to make your vote count (and we also have some sweets for everyone to chew on too ;) )

Well I think I’ve written more than enough for you to read now. If you have ANY comments for me, ‘ask me anything’ on here or send me an email: supresident@bournemouth.ac.uk

Bye for now,

Louise x

Murray Simpson: Returning Reps Training

Apology not accepted?

I’m sure most of you have seen the video, heard about the apology, or watched one of the various parodies and autotuned versions on youtube…Nick Clegg’s apology for breaking his promise to not increase University tuition fees has not been received particularly well by many. (see the original apology video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjOa1bWYMs8).

Education, it seems, has been low on the priority list for the current coalition government. The fees shooting up as they have has made Higher Education unreachable for many, and I believe that no individual should be denied an education just because they can’t afford it. And just last week, International students at London Met were facing the terrifying reality that they would have to leave the country if they could not find another institution to study at within 60 days. Thankfully, UKBA recently decided to allow these students to complete their course or continue to study up until the end of the current academic year (2012/13), whichever is sooner. Although this is great news, and the NUS are pleased, the future for these students is still uncertain after July 2013 - and this needs to be rectified.

But still, an apology does not make up for the fact that students and would-be students are suffering because of Clegg’s broken promise; for a start it was not an apology for actually increasing fees but an apology for breaking a promise - and Liam Burns (NUS President) is not happy - check out his video out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTtCjeeoQCc.

This makes me even more interested in what you all think about the National Demo on the 21st of November - do you think we should go as a united force from SUBU? do you think it’s a waste of time? get down to the Student Shout on the 16th October and let’s debate it! we’ll take a vote then and there to decide what you want us to do as a Union - let’s get involved!

Louise x

Arrivals week so far…

So we’re on the 5th official day of the arrivals period and it’s already been a hectic, mental, amazing, fun few days!

Moving students into halls last weekend was great. tiring - but great nevertheless. our Welcome Crew were amazing at making all the new students feel welcome and settled moving into their new homes for the year - I’m sure those of you who were helped by them would agree.

The SUBU roadshows have been such a success - we’ve had over 100 students attending so far, meeting us, having a laugh, and making some new friends. It feels good to know we’ve helped some students that have been very much on their own meet others in their area and create new friendships.We have one more today at 1pm - 5pm by Bournemouth Pier so get yourself down if you get a chance!

We’ve also been on some great nights out at the Firestation - Freshtival was RAMMED on Sunday, and the Back to School party was a massive success. Check out the pictures from all the Freshers events on the facebook page: www.facebook.com/sububournemouth. We’ve been out and about at most events making sure you’re all having an awesome time so if you see us about please come and say hello and if you have any questions don’t be afraid to ask! we’ll most likely be in our white SUBU tees or these cracking blue ones below:

I hope you’re all enjoying yourselves, both new and returning students, and see you all around! If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments for me, email me at supresident@bournemouth.ac.uk