About me
Hi! I’m Rachel Hasson and I’m running to be your Welfare Officer. I am a final year English and History student and a passionate advocate for student issues.
I have been an active advocate for mental health and welfare ever since helping to establish mental health campaigns through my local youth council in school. I have continued this advocacy for welfare throughout the last few years, both inside and outside of university, being on the panel for the Women’s Scoop, an admin for the Belfast Girl Gang and a member of Pure Mental’s Wellbeing Council.
I’m a proud activist for disability and inclusion and have been the Vice Chairperson for QUB Inclusion this year. I hope to continue to support them in their aims to create an accessible social space at QUB and continue to advocate for disabled students’ welfare.
Why I’m running
Throughout my 3 years at Queens, I’ve been involved with various student clubs and campaigns, and I’ve seen through interacting with students and through my own experiences just how many challenges students can and do face in terms of welfare. I believe in the power of individual and collective voices, and I believe we need to continue to come together to work towards positive change.
Students’ welfare has suffered more than ever in the last few years with the effects of the ongoing pandemic and online learning, as well as wider societal issues. I want to work to ensure that we are prioritising students’ welfare and making their voices heard. I will put students’ mental health and welfare at the heart of all my decisions as welfare officer and aim to work towards creating a more accessible and inclusive community for all students at QUB.
Key areas I want to focus on include:
Further Mental Health Support
Amplifying Disabled Students Voices
Student Safety
Sexual Health and Period Poverty
Things I hope to work on as Welfare Officer
Further Mental Health Support
We are in a mental health crisis and the reality is that we do not need more mental health awareness. We need to take an active approach in advocating, campaigning and continuously pushing for more resources and funding to be put into our mental health support services. As welfare officer I will continuously advocate for the vital need for further mental health support for our students.
At the minute, the first point of reference for students struggling with their mental health is to offer 4-6 counselling sessions. I want to advocate for an increase in the number of these sessions and aim to make these support measures more long term.
I hope to also work on creating an online forum where students can express what kind of events they want to see run by the university in terms of their mental health and welfare. I hope to work with more mental health organisations and charities to establish a bank of resources and further events and campaigns focused on students’ welfare.
Amplifying Disabled Students Voices
Being a disabled student myself I know how hard it can be to study whilst dealing with additional health problems and I want to make sure that the welfare of disabled students is a high priority. Disabled people have just lived through a pandemic whereby wider society has continually pushed a false narrative that we are disposable. I want to show our disabled students that such views are not held by our university and continue to advocate for their representation.
I would like to work with the equality and diversity officer and the disabled student’s officer on ensuring that disabled students are adequately represented at things throughout our university such as SU Council and as course reps. I would also like to work with QUB Inclusion on making sure we are doing everything we can to create an accessible social space at QUB.
Student Safety
The increasing culture of gender-based violence across our society has left a lot of women and queer individuals including myself feeling unsafe. I want to further the work currently being done by our officers and student societies on speaking out against this. I want to advocate for the establishment of some sort of listening service that students can call if they feel unsafe walking home alone. I also want to continue the work being done by current officers around the awareness of spiking and what we can do to further combat this.
Another aspect of student safety I want to advocate for is housing. Due to the cost-of-living, students are increasingly forced to rent with private landlords in poor conditions. I want to continue to advocate for the need for more high quality and affordable housing so that all students get the opportunity to stay in safer and more accessible accommodation.
Sexual Health and Period Poverty
Sexual health would also be something I want to work on as welfare officer. Many students are coming to university from schools where they were taught little to no sex education or consent awareness. I think that establishing initial informational workshops for students surrounding sexual health at university to signpost them to the various resources we have here in Belfast, such as clinics would be a great foundation to further expanding such campaigns.
I would hope to continue the great work being done by our current officers on the issues of consent and sexual harassment as these are important issues that will continuously need to be addressed.
There is also some great work being done by current officers on the issue of period poverty and I would hope to continue this. I want to further advocate for the need for free period products in all our public bathrooms on campus.
Some of my experience:
- AEL School Rep
- Nominated for an SU Award for Championing Wellbeing
- On the panel for the Women’s Scoop
- Vice Chairperson of QUB Inclusion
- Student Council representative
- CAG Member 2020-21
- HAPP Peer Mentor
- Mind Your Mood secretary 2020-21
- Member of Pure Mental's Young People's Wellbeing Council
- Project Choice Member