The previous Student Forum was a whirlwind of 'secret question drama' focused largely on process and point scoring. Which is fine if that's what people want, but it completely misses the point on why the Students' Union is here; to make a difference.

 

That's also exactly why the Full Time Officer team has been reduced from 7 to 5. Because the Students' Union, over the longterm, can help more students by using the resource we spend on maintaining two Full Time Officers, elsewhere.

 

What do you mean the Students' Unions under-resourced?

 

Swansea University Students' Union is amazing at making the impossible happen. We rarely say no to students over resource. We always try to make it work. But doing this for over a decade causes problems.

 

If we take the past 3-4 years of Student Forums. In one shape or another; students ask for more publicity that would foster greater engagement with our democratic processes. That sounds great. But it's not like the Students' Union has a huge marketing department - it's all done by a single person. So we're faced with a resource barrier.

 

But then also consider Societies: the Students' Union currently does not have the capacity to properly support the number of societies we have in the same way as sports clubs are supported through Sports Swansea.

 

Or Advice: the number of students seeking advice on things like their course, or about their student house has soared. If we want to give more advice, that'll require more staff.

 

Or Representation: Full Time Officers spend more time on operational duties (usually behind the desk) than they do going out and engaging with students on their opinions over decisions being made about them. If you want visible Officers, they'll need staff support.

 

Or Sports: the Students' Union infrastructure needs significant investment to continue to support Sports clubs the same way that other Unions do around the UK. It isn't just about playing. To what extent do we support Sports Clubs to articulate what resource barriers drag them back in BUCS/ Varsity? To what extent do we outline those concerns to the senior management of the University. Not very often.

 

The list is endless. But none of our non-commercial areas can be magically fixed over night. The points above, and for about a 100 other areas all need more resource to deliver to the expectations that students have. It also needs for the Students' Union to openly define where and when it is at capacity in any given area.

 

We need to stop moving resource from one area of the organisation to the other and calling it a win. That isn't good for growth.

 

The easy, and incredibly lazy option here would be to spend the savings from the two officers on any single area (e.g above). That would be a short term patch on one of our many gaping holes. A long term solution would be to create the capacity for the Students' Union to continually identify where we are overstretched and then to develop a solution, for every non-commercial area.

 

What does a solution look like? Sometimes it'll be explaining when the organisation needs to say that's it - we've reached a limit if we want to continue delivering a quality service. Solutions will also mean mapping our needs against the metrics the University uses in it's strategic plan to bid for additional funding and demonstrate how our work has an impact on those stats.

 

This is critical for two reasons - everything we do from 2014/15 is going to have to be more clear, and flexible as we work over two campuses. Secondly as an organisation, we need to recognise that putting together applications for significant funding increases isn't as simple as cobbling together a paper with some feelings along with a presentation to the University's governing body that amounts to 'please sir, please can we have s'more more?'. Those days are well and truly behind us.

 

We need create the capacity for the Students' Union to develop a strategic, measured approach that is based on evidence to articulate why we need more investment. To be successful, we need to show how we'd use it and what direct benefit this would have to the current University strategic plan, and finally to give students the chance to own the student experience agenda on future University strategic plans. So 7 to 5 was about creating space in the Students' Union to allow all of that to happen.

 

later today (3pm), the Trustee Board will meet and discuss the results of last weeks referendum. Information related to the positions should come following this meeting.