When I studied at the University of Portsmouth, students had their involvement with the student union being our participation in societies and also the occasional beverage at the union bar. I also remember students buying their hoodies from the union to show pride in their university. I am a proud alumni of the greatest brick university in the UK.
I started with the OU in 2016. Then, the union was the OUSA. Just like a brick university, it’s involvement with students was through its societies, although there wasn’t a great choice on offer. Naturally we didn’t have the union bar but you could buy a decent hoody from the shop. However, now alumni Lisa and Marie set up an awesome virtual bar which made virtual nights out cool before lockdown did! We had our online community and a great support network that removed isolation in study.
In 2018, the OUSA set up clubs. These were self funding autonomous groups linked to the OUSA. They had no charter and couldn’t access funding. They grew our engaged community almost instantly. Clubs like study addicts which I ran for a while and OU Fit which was amazing for our fitness community during lockdown made the OU the place to be.
The space society was industry leading. It was regarded by UKSEDS as the best university space society in the UK. We held talks with industry leaders and had great professional networks. Our cybersecurity society boasts the leading capture the flag hacking team and support communities for computing modules on its discord server. Our geological society is largest, longest lasting and one of the highest regarded university societies in the UK. These STEM societies are now under threat.
New rules means that clubs must be 100% current studentship and societies must be 50% current studentship. I understand why the SU want to make these changes. There were alternate legal choices they could have made. A better choice will be made if the SU discusses freely and openly with clubs and societies. Clubs and societies have written to protest these changes. The SU needs to talk in places our students are rather than false us to talk in the places they are like the Connect forum which is far from user friendly and barely recognised by students (like the forum spaces on the module websites). I am the only candidate who has campaigned to save the only part of the SU that talks beyond the walls of the echo chamber. Our alumni are not an issue, they are our success stories and our mentors for our current students.
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