On the Campaign Trail: Day 5

After a three-hour Supreme Court seminar, the team and I were back out campaigning. I’ve been speaking to a lot of people in Zest and Blend, which tend to serve a fairly diverse section of the student body. It’s important to interact not only with the traditional, 18-21, Golden Triangle students, although I’ve been speaking to many of them too, but also to sections of the student population that have different needs and who may not be so involved with the Union. Now that the elections have started, my job is not only to talk to people about my policies, but to make sure they have received their personalised voting links and that they know the elections are happening. Some students have voted already, but I’ve been checking that they did so after 10am on Thursday, spreading the word about the voting error that happened yesterday in the Academic Officer election.

In Zest, I chatted with a group of Social Work students who only came to campus once a month when they are on placement. They complained about something that several other students have mentioned to me – that the library seems to only send emails once a book is late, and doesn’t send email reminders when it is due to be returned. I will look into this. They also suggested having short-stay parking spaces so they could come to the library in their limited time and not have to deal with the headache of parking during the day. Some Pharmacy students were particularly keen on earlier exam timetables, since they have so many exams and need to start planning. One of them was an international student and wanted to be able to book travel before prices became too high. These Pharmacy students, like some Nursing and Midwifery students I spoke to, said that the printing credit they are given does not transfer to the library – it only works in their academic building. This is something else that, if elected, I will investigate further, to see whether it would be possible to transfer the credit so those students can print anywhere on campus with their printing allowance. 

A group made up of students from Norwich Business School and the School of Political, Social and International Studies discussed their experiences of feedback. Those from PSI said they largely had good feedback, but sometimes it was of poor quality, while the NBS student wanted more detailed feedback. It’s good to hear that feedback is good in some schools, but there needs to be more consistency, so that students in every school of study get what they need to help them progress. A mature Geophysics student who lives in Hopton, about 30 miles away from UEA, would like to see more software available for students’ own computers, such as modelling software, a version of Matlab beyond the limited licence and that works on Windows 7. For commuting students, having such software available would mean they need not commute in for every piece of work that uses the programmes.

All candidates were called to an emergency meeting by the Deputy Returning Officer in the afternoon, who explained that 900 students had not received their voting tokens (the personalised voting links sent to the UEA email addresses), and as a result, voting will be extended until Wednesday 30^th March at 5pm. If you have any issues with voting, please email su.communications@uea.ac.uk or su.vote@uea.ac.uk.

If you have any thoughts or questions for me, please email me (academic[AT]kirstycallaghan[DOT]com) or write on my Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/KirstyforAcademic.