Everyone fasten your seatbelts, because the full list of candidates running in the 2015 SUSU elections has been released.
If your favourite things include having your lectures hijacked and being attacked with slogans as you walk between seminars then SUSU election season is like a long, drawn out Christmas.
This year, there are fewer candidates for Sabb roles, headlined by the total absence of joke candidates on the entire ballot.
However, both new student leader positions (Charities and Community Officer and Housing Officer) have candidates, and the proportion of contested roles has risen from 78% last year to 80%.
The candidates are:
Union President:
Benjamin Franklin
Sebastian Vogelpoel
VP Democracy & Creative Industries:
Chris McGeehan
Kerry Sclater
VP Welfare:
Sam Bailey
Chibeza Mumbi
Eva Pemberton
VP Engagement:
Jenny Bortoluzzi
Daniel Clemence
Hannah Talbot
VP Student Communities:
Rebecca Lake
Anjit Aulakh
VP Sports Development:
Stephen Barratt
Roman Martin
Ashley Sivarajah
Jamie Wilson
VP Education:
Shruti Verma
Campaigning will start on February 20th. Voting begins on March 9th and ends at 4pm on March 13th. All of the results will be announced that night (March 13th) in Elections Night Live at The Cube.
If you care about the student leader candidates too (you very likely don’t), here they are:
Ethics and Environment Officer:
Amy Paraskeva
Dominika Slotwinski
Student Groups Officer:
Trini Philip
Michael Sims
The Edge Editor:
Natalie Fordham
Wessex Scene Editor:
Bridie Pearson-Jones
SUSUtv Station Manager:
Christopher Evans
Hexin Li
Surge Radio Station Manager:
Dan Linstead
Union Films Cinema Manager:
Alexander Petrov
Alexander Howard
Christina Vinothan
International Students Officer:
Zehong Li
JCR Officer:
Flora Noble
Daniel Varley
RAG Officer:
Kieran Reals
Charities and Communities Officer:
Jade Head
Nightline Officer:
Luke Hashman
Housing Officer:
Louise Bellamy
Athletic Union Officer:
Katie Lightowler
Physical Sciences & Engineering Faculty Officer:
Giles Howard
Engineering and Environment Faculty Officer:
Vinnie Sivadev
Humanities Faculty Officer:
Frazer Delves
Social and Human Faculty Officer:
Harriet Hall
Business and Law Faculty Officer:
Marc Goh
Health Sciences Faculty Officer:
Daniel Browning
Charlene Wickham
Student Trustee:
Nathe Jenkins
Union Councillors:
[Note: Some Union Council positions are reserved for people from particular backgrounds, the final allocation of which will be known on results night]
Zehong Au
Alexander Howard
Phillipa Pearce
Kokulan Mahendiran
Steven Valentine
Jade Head
Frazer Delves
Positions with no candidates:
Enterprise Officer, Equality and Diversity Officer, Intramural Officer, NOC (Site) Officer, Natural and Environmental Sciences Faculty Officer, Post-Graduate Officer, Sports Participation Officer, Wellbeing Officer and Winchester (Site) Officer.
Who will you be voting for? Let us know in the comments!
Wait, where’s David Gunns?
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So dissapointing to see a lack of engagement with SUSU but it poses an interesting question. Do students genuinely not care about SUSU? Do they care but feel that running and gaining a position will make no difference? Are the positions seen as a way to be a BNOC (big name on campus)? Is it that SUSU doesn’t advertise the positions well (although there is a comms team and a new campaign this year)? Would be interesting to hear students reasons and opinions!
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A lot of this, I think, comes from tuition fees and such over the past decade or so. Student unions before used to stand up for the rights of students whose voices were generally ignored as education didn’t really bring in “the money” quite so much as research did. These days, the uni views us as ‘student-customers’ and we are held in higher esteem, so the role of the union is less important, and students probably feel “why bother?” towards elections as things that can be fixed tend to get fixed, and things that can’t, don’t matter as they’ll be gone by the time they are.
Of course, this ignores that a lot of things would not be identified and fixed without volunteers and Sabbs, but if you’re spending 9k, you probably want to get in, get drunk, do some sport, and collect your degree after 3 years. I think it takes a
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A lot of this, I think, comes from tuition fees and such over the past decade or so. Student unions before used to stand up for the rights of students whose voices were generally ignored as education didn’t really bring in “the money” quite so much as research did. These days, the uni views us as ‘student-customers’ and we are held in higher esteem, so the role of the union is less important, and students probably feel “why bother?” towards elections as things that can be fixed tend to get fixed, and things that can’t, don’t matter as they’ll be gone by the time they are.
Of course, this ignores that a lot of things would not be identified and fixed without volunteers and Sabbs, but if you’re spending 9k, you probably want to get in, get drunk, do some sport, and collect your degree after 3 years. I think it takes a special type of person to be willing to really get involved and step up, and maybe that’s difficult if each year of uni is costing you £12k and you don’t see the point?
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I don’t see a connection between the rise of tuition fees and involvement with SUSU with your reasoning. I think students don’t want to get involved because the cost of getting involved isn’t worth the outcome. Students feel that SUSU is unresponsive and unrepresentative which is shown by the NSS survey. It’s unfortunate because this isn’t why people should run but perhaps those who are heavily involved and ‘step up’ are power hungry and doing it for their own benefits? I’m not surprised to see the same students names rerunning for SUSU elections.
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I think I speak for most people (that I know at least) when I say that the reason people don’t get involved is that we really don’t give a shit about SUSU. As long as you remember to feed and look after the cat, I don’t care what else you do / don’t do.
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Full list? This is the most tragic selection of candidates in a long while.
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You’re kind of missing the candidates for JCR Officer…
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Woops, noted and changed, thanks.
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Really sorry Flora, it wasn’t made clear on the SUSU official candidate list. Fixed now.
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Haha don’t worry about it!
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VP Education uncontested. The only sabb position that can actually make a genuine fucking difference and we can’t even rustle up 2 nominees. Fuck sake Southampton.
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Didn’t fancy running yourself then…
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Look another cretin who thinks you need to be as good as or better than something in order to criticise it.
I take it you have no negative opinion on any well known politician, musician, actor, writer etc etc etc?
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1 VP Ed candiate, no Post Graduate Officer candidate, and only 2 for President.
PG make up a quarter of students, the VP Ed represents you on the £9k you spend per year for tuition, and the 2 for the President is a shambles.
How many candidates are women, international students, part-time students, mature students, nurses, doctors etc – students who don’t get involved but make up the majority of students – this is awful.
And once again, only one officer directly involved in the strategic direction of the Union’s business activities (The President). The Union has a turnover of 7.2 million, and approx £2.5million comes from block grant – so it must make sense to have one student leading the direction of the staff and activities of the other £5 million. yeah.. perfect sense
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If you were a former VP, then your year was undoubtedly worse at addressing BME and sites students, as Jonny brooks was the first black sabb, and ankit was the first non white international! So unless your year was one with a female president (which would narrow you down to one of 4), you’re calling pot kettle black here.
Also there are 6 sabb trustees still, and more student trustees than your year, so off the high horse please.
That said, poor show on turnout – Solent have more sabb candidates ffs with fewer positions!
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First black Sab was Murzeline Parchment president in the early 90’s.
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Also google Tiger de Souza AU President in 2000 and very black
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Both the Health Science FO candidates are Nurses
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This list is a tragedy, not because the candidates are bad, but because there are so few of them. It’s such a shame as I got so much out of running even though I lost. Being a student leader, union councillor or even joining one of the committees headed up by a sabb gives you so much extra experience, plus giving you more to write about on job applications and say at interviews (certainly worked for me) than remaining apathetic. Though most people don’t care about SUSU, its action or even lack of action on things affects people in so many ways that they don’t know about.
Want to know where money on your extortionate tuition fees is going? Want to make a difference to any part of your course, halls, or just tired of being screwed over by landlords? Then like it or not you need SUSU to represent your views and lobby on your behalf as getting things done is so much easier with support.
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