Being a Sabb is truly a job like no other. I can go from a meeting with our auditors discussing our year end accounts, to an hour making a graphic on canva, then a meeting with a JCR president and finishing it all off with a university meeting about workload (...and then a trip to the pub). If you’re interested in what all these meetings have actually been for, then read on…
1. JCR Engagement
Having been a JCR President as a student, I desperately want the SU to be a good source of support for all student reps. To kick this off, I spent the whole summer and start of Michaelmas term meeting as many JCR Presidents as possible. I’ve managed to meet 25 so far, and if you are an incoming rep, or haven’t replied to me yet (cough, Corpus, cough) make sure to check your emails and DMs!
We also hosted a college forum at Emmanuel where 12 JCR reps came along to discuss inter-college issues and how to come together to tackle them. We will be running another in early Lent with a focus on rent negotiations to help prepare them for the potentially difficult conversations coming their way.
2. Open Colleges
Building on this JCR level support, I worked with Robinson College Students’ Association President Alex to submit a paper to the Bursar’s committee asking that colleges allow greater access to students from other colleges. The Bursar’s agreed to make sure all colleges published their opening times better, and indicated how any student could get support from their porters lodge, but didn’t agree to standardise the timings across the uni… more work to come!
3. Governance Review!!!
A LOT of my summer was spent looking at the SU’s governance, looking at the recommendations of an external consultant who interviewed current and former staff, sabbatical officers and students, as well as distributing a survey to students generally, to work out what we can do better.
There were several outcomes of this; most significantly the Sabb Team will look very different next year with the two Presidents now being supported by 3 Vice-Presidents for Education & WP, Liberation & Welfare, and Student Community & Societies. I cannot encourage anyone enough to think about running to be a Sabbatical Officer in the Leadership Elections, the skills you gain in this job are like no other!
4. Education
Katie and I have been working together to represent you on all matters undergraduate education. Significantly, this has included the teaching review which this term has been evaluating many possible solutions to the workload crisis. We now need to hear from YOU! There is going to be a student forum on Thursday 23rd January where we want to hear your ideas on what will be most effective in helping students with the Cambridge culture of overwork.
5. Wider projects!
As a Sabb, I don’t just work at the local level but also work to support national initiatives. As part of this, I worked with York SU to canvas support for an open letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, requesting improved financial support for students, specifically a commitment to increasing maintenance loans in line with inflation each year. I also emailed local MPs Daniel Zeichner, Pippa Heylings and Ian Sollom to encourage them to sign.
I also attended an NUS campaigns exchange event where we looked at both the NUS’s ongoing governance changes and the campaigns that they are planning to champion over the next year - including financial support and trans rights, both of which align with SU policies assigned to me to work on this year.
They’ve been my highlights of the past 6 months from a campaigning perspective. My job also involves a lot of strategic charity leadership, including helping on recruitment panels, line-managing the CEO, and approving financial decisions from society grants to block-grant requests.
There’s more to come next term! I have an exciting survey in development, a blog post about society grants coming out in the new year, and will finally get around to meeting with senior tutors about improved tutor training - they tend to be quite busy in Michaelmas! You can always keep an eye on our priority pages to see what we’re working on.