York St John Students’ Union

Small and Specialist Union of the Year

York St John SU

“YSJSU are coming to the end of their strategic plan (2010-2014) and starting to create a new vision and themes for the future. Our vision has been:

“University can transform your life. So whatever you want to do with your time at York St John, we‘ll make sure you achieve it.”

We’ve done this through creating new opportunities which create life skills, new friendships and employability skills. We pride ourselves on being a Students’ Union run by students for students through constant interaction with them and finding possibilities for them to complete their aspirations. We’ve achieved buy-in from our students with ‘tell us what you think’ cards which students hand in, this allows us to work on the main issues.

Amazing work has been done to complete our strategic plan but a big focus this year was getting the intelligence to create a new one. We hired membership intelligence who interviewed students, union and university staff and our main stakeholders. The results of the intelligence have led our new direction and we’re proud to say this direction is based on the hopes and concerns of our students allowing us to be constantly student-led in our work.

This year we’ve worked closely with stakeholders to enhance our work and make a bigger impact. We’re part of the York Student Community Partnership which aims to enhance relationships between students and other York residents, working with York council and HE and FE institutions to make sure students are valued as citizens in York and part of the community. This includes work around voter registration, gardening days and holding resident forums in our unions.

Our sabbatical team has worked tirelessly to go out and engage with students we wouldn’t always come into contact with. The team has put themselves in many places where students wouldn’t normally find them, sitting in the library and other areas once a week and doing ‘Flat Fridays’ where we head to accommodation with teabags and chat to students.

Democracy and Representation

• Doubled number of programme reps from the previous year with over 85% of undergraduate courses covered and more masters/PGCE reps than ever before

• Established Postgraduate Research reps for the first time, held postgraduate forums and introduced research reps on university committees meaning the postgraduate community has a louder voice than ever before

• Elections: Highest number of candidates stood, first woman president in 12 years and first all-woman executive team

• Introduced an accreditation scheme for programme reps which has increased participation as reps are being rewarded for their hard work

• Student representatives on ALL university committees for first time

• Union paper passed at University which means students are now involved in course validation programmes

• Record attendance number of student policy passed at student council

SU Activities

• Set up Students For Hire and advertised students with different skills, such as physiotherapy, nail art, etc. to other students and staff to increase employability

• Delivered a sport conditioning programme for all sports clubs over this year’s BUCS season

• Launched free Intramural activities programme encouraging students to participate in something new and think about wellbeing

• Sourced £28,000 of external funding for student activity development

• Doubled the number of societies and members from 2012/13

• Over 15 students put through level 1/2 vocational qualifications

• Students raised almost £10,000 for local charities

Welfare

• Housing advice publicised across campus and on-going collaboration on a landlord accreditation scheme

• Introduced student champions to represent disabled, LGBT, mature, BME, international students

• Most well attended International Women’s day, Black history month, LGBT history month, Chinese New Year events in recent years

• Arranged a diverse entertainment calendar such as non – drinking socials to create more options for students

• Offered free exercise classes to students

• Established a Zero Tolerance policy

• Awarded NUS Green Impact Gold Excellence award

Campaigns

Unfortunately YSJSU lost a student to the river this year which made national news so a huge focus has been on students’ safety. This resulted in our ‘Plan Safe, Drink Safe, Home Safe’ branding campaign. Including:

• distributed over 300 personal attack alarms

• arranged free self-defence classes

• organised a Walking Bus from library to various accommodations and locations,

• Put together a safety booklet including river safety and distributed to over 200 students

• invited PCSO’s onto campus to discuss safety

• distributed business cards with tips for staying safe

• sabbaticals in nightclubs handing out water, toast and doing safety announcements

• introduced taxi schemes to get students home safe, which allows students to give the taxi driver their student card as payment if they run out of money then they pay the fare at a later date and if students tell the taxi on the phone they’re a lone YSJ student the taxi company puts them to the top of the waiting list

Officers campaigned to get more funding for bursaries, collecting 1000s of signatures and encouraging students to write to the VC and explain why their bursaries were important and why fee waivers aren’t beneficial to them. This worked amazingly well and the VC announced they heard students loud and clear and will be giving out bursaries instead of fee waivers in the new access agreement.

Our LGBT society, ‘To Russia With Love’ campaign which got students to sign messages of solidarity to the LGBT+ Russian community, alongside a petition. While doing this they videoed their work and got our signing society to sing ‘I can see a rainbow’ over the top to increase awareness. This came after giving support and training on student-run campaigns.

Other campaigns

• library, now 24 hours during key exam and assignment time

• Hidden course costs - led to the university looking into what they can cover in tuition fees and advertising costs

• Petition on the cuts to Student Opportunity Fund, getting 500 signatures in two days and wrote to local MP, who wrote to David Willetts to oppose them”

Nominated by Laura Jackson, Students’ Union Officer

What some of the judges said…

“York St John SU deserve particular recognition for their work around representation, ensuring that students are represented across all level of the institution, from cross-university committees, through to course validation, and individual programs. Their work to represent postgraduate students is especially important. “ Rachel Wenstone, Vice President Higher Education

 

 

Some comments from the night…

The award for small and specialist union of the year goes to @YSJSU #NUSAwards14

— NUS UK (@nusuk) July 3, 2014

 

I LOVE small and specialist students’ unions, especially ESPECIALLY @YSJSU and @YSJSU_Laura #SU14 #nusawards14

— Rachel Wenstone (@rachel_wenstone) July 3, 2014