Manifesto Summary

My name’s Aidan and I’m your current Campaigns and Engagement Officer. For the last year, I’ve taken on landlords and won serious money back to student renters that had been ripped off by landlords. I’ve taken on bosses and managers that expect student workers to prioritise a minimum wage job over their own sanity. I’ve organised campaigns against the university that successfully brought management to the negotiating table.

Fight Dodgy Landlords and Bosses

The economic crisis has left students more vulnerable than ever to slum landlords and exploitative bosses. Throughout this year I’ve dealt with numerous cases of neglect, harassment and manipulation and fought on the behalf of students to combat this. We need to take this up to a new level.

Many landlords and bosses see students as a cheap way to make profit because they see us as vulnerable. The Union should be there to make sure no student is ever vulnerable. This includes QUB when it rents and hires students.

Consent Training for Clubs and Societies

Sexual violence is far too common on campus and most of us are unequipped to deal with it. From noticing warning signs in an individual’s behaviour to dealing with the trauma felt by the survivor, the skill set needed to handle the epidemic needs to be learned by as many as possible. Clubs and societies are a fundamental point of community for students. We need to have members in society committees trained in how to handle these instances and either direct students to the relevant aid or to put preventative measures in a society if they are needed.

Free Resits and Graduations

This year, we’ve won free resits and free graduations for this year, but we need to make sure this is permanent. Academic stresses and financial difficulty are the two leading causes of mental illness and burnout according to the OMNI Survey; charging people to resit an exam does both of these. A student should be able to resit the exam without having to worry about the financial cost this is going to have, specifically during an economic crisis. They have already shown that they can afford it so we need to make sure this becomes a permanent policy.

An Open, Transparent and Accountable Students’ Union

We need to have open decision making systems and more public and open meetings. Any student can suggest an SU policy, any student can challenge a policy, any student can impeach an officer but how many students know this? We need to be doing far more to create frameworks where students can get involved, challenge officers and decide our policy.

The Students’ Union shouldn’t be sitting idly by while an economic crisis created by powerful figures damages the lives of students. We are living in times where the Students’ Union has to be more than just a lobbying group. It needs to include all students working together as a community to fight for our own.