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.
Why do you think you won the presidential election?
I hope I won the Presidential election because people think I'm the right person for the job. My manifesto pledges are based around standing up and fighting for what students want and to make sure all students are represented and listened to. I really hope that some of this resonated with students and that they believed I was the person who would put the most into the role. I was also lucky to have a massive backing from Goodricke College and I hope people know I will put the same effort into being their Union President.
What are your top plans for when your term as president starts on 4th July?
Preparing for £9,000 fees in 2012 is going to be the biggest task next year for YUSU and the university. It is really important for YUSU to stick to its principals of opposing the rise in tuition fees, but we must also work with the university to push for increased spending on the student experience if £9000 fees come in. I want to lead the calls for the profit that the university will make to go into areas that will affect students, from looking into things like seminar sizes, academic resources and increased funding for sports and societies.
At the same time I want to work with the university to make living in York as affordable as possible. Already there are reports of potential students being put off by the rise in fees, thinking they will have to pay money up front. We need to work hard at persuading sixth-form students that coming to York will be an investment and that there are various ways of getting financial support on top of their student loans.
What are you most excited about?
I'm most excited about actually getting down to work in July and hopefully seeing tangible results. We've got a fantastic team, including all the part-time officers who started this term as well as the team of Sabbs that will be starting in July, so I hope we will see a successful year for students. At the moment I'm just itching to actually get started but it’s still nine weeks away!
What will you focus on that Tim Ngwena didn't?
Tim has done a great job at working towards a more visible and accessible Union but I would quite like to see YUSU become more political and encourage more groups of students with various views to come and work with YUSU. Campus has an active political scene, with the likes of NGS, People and Planet and Amnesty, as well as all the political party groups, and I would love to see more members at Union council and other YUSU committees feeding into debate. YUSU can achieve results and get things done and I hope we can create an active environment where all students can feel like they can affect YUSU policy. It’s a shame when YUSU is overlooked by groups wanting to affect change and I hope that next year people will automatically look to YUSU when wanting to mount a campaign or make a stand against something.
What do you see as the biggest challenge?
In my opinion the biggest challenge for YUSU, as with all Students’ Unions around the country, is accessibility and participation. It is a lie when people say students are apathetic and uninterested in the issues that affect them. One only has to look at the fees protests, listen to complaints about the library closing for three days right before exams or look at the Facebook groups dedicated to improving college bars to realise this. However, the problems arise when people become apathetic towards the organisations that represent them. We need to make sure that YUSU is delivering the things that students want, that students recognise the role that YUSU can play for them and they feel like they can influence what it does.
Furthermore, we saw a worrying lack of female candidates in the election this year, with only two out of thirteen sabbatical candidates not being male. This is unacceptable and something I really want to work on alongside the Women's officers next year to tackle. As a Union it is so important that we are representing the widest cross section of campus as possible and this is something we must never stop trying to work on.
What do you plan to do to tackle the perception that the Students’ Union has no relevance beyond being a contact point for clubs/societies?
YUSU does a fantastic job in terms of sports clubs, societies, RAG, organising official club nights and much more, but it’s important that students realise this isn't all they do. YUSU has the ability to affect a lot of things and it’s so important that people realise the relevance of this to their time at university and get involved and make the most of it. I really want to work closely with the Council Chair so that we can publicise what areas of policy are up for discussion in the various assemblies so students can feed into debate, not simply hear what the outcome was a few weeks later (if at all!). I think it’s really important that we make the most of all the various communication avenues at YUSU's disposal to get information out as much as possible. These are all things that I want to look into over the summer so next year we have an informed, active and represented student body.
You must log in to submit a comment.
