A group of York students has won the opportunity to have their very own I-phone application developed after winning The App Challenge final, held at the Ron Cooke Hub on Wednesday, January 18.
YUSU Welfare officer Bob Hughes has warned students to be vigilant after a student loans phishing scam has been revealed.
Her Majesty the Queen will be visiting York on Maundy Thursday, 5th April, as part of the 800th anniversary of York’s Charter for the traditional “Royal Maundy” ceremony.
A flood caused by a heating system “failure” forced the university IT services to shut down many essential systems on Sunday night, causing problems for many students on the eve of their exams and assignment due-dates.
In addition to Carr’s election as President, Dan Horsfall took over as Welfare Officer, Richard Rhodes was elected Internal Officer and Sarah Lewis became PGCE Students’ Officer.
Since his election (with Horsfall) as one of five Sports Officers back in October, Carr has clearly developed a taste for leadership and responsibility, stating in his well-received acceptance speech that: "This is a time for assertiveness in an organisation scarred by apathy."
He added: "I believe the GSA has been an organisation too comfortable with operating for its officers, their friends, and the residents of Wentworth College. [It] has failed to adequately engage its membership because it hasn't cared enough... We must embrace everyone in the graduate community."
This was more than apt, as the turnout figures pointed to widespread political disengagement of the GSA membership, with no post receiving more than 200 votes.
In Horsfall’s words, "[This] represents just under 5% of the graduate population, which begs the question, do 95% of graduates either not know, or not care about the GSA?"
Carr ran against Jonathan Kidner, and received 109 of the 148 votes for the position.
The election of Rhodes as Internal Officer was a closer contest, but Neeraj Sarawgi and Patrick Vitalone garnered only 23 and 27 votes respectively to Rhodes' 86.
Rhodes will now be responsible for co-ordinating the services offered by the GSA. On this he said: "I want to ensure that the GSA caters for all its membership, in particular those students who are living and working off-campus, PGCE especially."
He added: "It’s important that every grad knows what services the GSA offers; sports, welfare and facilities are all currently running well, but not enough people know about them."
The position of Welfare Officer saw the closest race, with Horsfall winning on 93 votes, beating Nikhil Agrawal on 13 and Serenade Wang on 57, but only just passing the halfway threshold of 85.5.
Meanwhile, Lewis enjoyed an easier campaign, with RON the only competition, and won with 111 votes to 17.
With all positions now filled, the GSA can start repairing the damage done by the controversies surrounding the previous two rounds of voting, and the consequent four months without a fully elected executive.
Fortunately, the newly-elected officers seem determined to restore confidence and unite the GSA, but as Horsfall said, "It is going to take a lot of hard work to ensure that the damage is not permanent."
Kudos to Dan Carr, he's been impressing people for weeks including some of the university staff. Absolutely legend and I hope he can pull off everything he wants to in the next however-long..!
"200 votes...of approximately 2,500...represents just under 5% of the graduate population"
Hang on a second, not it doesn't. It's just under 10%...
If Jason Rose knows how much he's been impressing people, then his must be SO impressive.
And hang on, The Yorker have gone and got humans writing for them again. The error's a bit like mistaking 'ill' for 'I'll' and trying to be clever and correct it, isn't it Mr. Rose?
How come Carr's going to be using his personal site (that doesn't even seem to be up yet) to communicate with the GSA?
The GSA represents around 3600 graduates if you take into account all those on the long-term register and as the figures above show, 163 voted in the ballot for Welfare Officer (highest turnout), so just under 5% is about right.
comment deleted by the author I'll be using my personal website in the short term, while we have a Content Management System built that will allow me to easily and effectively use the GSA website to communicate with members. At the moment I do not have immediate access to update the GSA website and that is crucial to keeping people in the loop with what's going on.
We're having the Content Management System built now, and our webmaster is doing a fantastic job with it. In the meantime I want a responsive online method of communication with members of the GSA, hence the personal website.
Anyhow, the address is www.dancarr.co.uk and the site will be up ASAP.
The turnout for the elections (number of people voting for one or more of the positions) was 193.
Sorry this information has not been released sooner, I needed to ask the YUSU IT Coordinator to retrieve the data.
Tom (Returning Officer)
If you are bored of reading The Yorker pop by
http://www.theflyingdcuk.com
For all news Derwent related!
Nah it's okay.
Oli (#8), if you want to advertise, why don't you pay for it?
Well-received speech? I imagine you were not there...
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