My previous posts in this series can be found here and here.
In the previous post, I looked at the sabbatical and part-time officer positions for this year’s elections. This post covers all the other positions that are available. Even though they aren’t as high profile, they all serve a purpose and can be important. I feel that they don’t get anywhere near as much attention and this is often reflected by the number of candidates.
Image found on Hullstudent.com
Voluntary positions
Disappointingly, 11 of the 15 position only have one candidate that isn’t R.O.N. One of the four that has multiple candidates is Union Council, but it’s worth noting that there are eight openings (as there are only eight candidates, they’ll effectively be elected unopposed).
Even worse than the above is that there are a number of positions that don’t have any candidates at all. This means there will have to be emergency elections later on. The positions without candidates are:
- Chair Postgraduate Committee
- Chair Part-Time Students Committee
- Scarborough Community Officer
- Chair Women’s Committee
- Chair HUSSO
- Senate Reps for the Faculty of Science, Business School, Faculty of Health & Social Care, Hull-York Medical School and Postgraduate Medical Institute
Most of these are Education-related and some of them represent large groups of the student population.
The gender balance is more pleasing as both men and women have candidate numbers in double figures. There isn’t an election with a gender mixture where the women outnumber the men, but the following only feature female candidates:
- Chair Mature Students Committee
- Chair Womens Committee (impossible to have men in this see Standing Order 8001)
- Education Senate Rep
- Scarborough Campaigns Officer
- Scarborough Welfare Officer
In terms of political affiliations, 14 of the 26 candidates don’t have one. Eight are affiliated to Labour in some way (either as a party member or as a member of the union society). However, six of those eight are candidates for Union Council, giving it more of a centre-left influence. The election for the Chair of the Environment and Ethics Committee features one of only two supporters of the Green movement (Joseph William Brownridge). As he has no human opponents, he is a certainty.
As for subjects studied, nine candidates are on degrees that have a link to Politics (e.g. straight Politics or History and Politics). Seven of the eight Union Council candidates fit within that category (the other is studying Drama and Theatre Practice). The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) dominates (understandable given the number of Politics students that I have mentioned) with 16 students. The rest are from the Faculty of Science (6), the Business School (3) and the Faculty of Education (1).
Even though FASS dominates in most positions, the one that is unusual is Chair Societies. Two out of the three candidates are from the Faculty of Science (Tanvir Hassan and Emma-Ashley Liles). Emma (Computer Science) is the sole female candidate for that position and has plenty of experience with multiple societies. As a third year, she also has the most experience of University life. Tanvir (Biomedical Science) is a second year, who has been invovled with the Arab and Islamic Societies, as well as ACS (Afro-Caribbean Society). The third candidate for this position is Ben Croft, a Labour supporting, second year Politics student, who was/is the Chair of the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Society and the Airsoft Society Secretary. So, there’s a mixture of experience. Ben is involved with things that have brought election success in the past, Emma is well known amongst the widest range of people and Tanvir has experience of various cultural groups.
NUS delegates
There are five positions available in this election. Being an NUS delegate means that you go with the President to the NUS Annual Conference and vote on a variety of issues (mostly related to students at UK universities). Once again, most of the candidates (14 out of 17) come from FASS and over half of those (8) do some form of Politics related subject. Whilst this is not necessarily a bad thing, a little more variety would be nice to see.
10 of the 17 candidates have political affiliations and over half (6) are Labour supporters. So, one political party clearly has the most candidates, but it’s not enough to create a monopoly and it’s good to see that plenty have no affiliations (again, it’s not bad to be a supporter of a party, but this comination creates some variety).
The gender balance is almost level, with 9 men and 8 women.
In terms of experience, there is definitely a wide range. All of the candidates have representative and/or sports and/or society experience and some of this is over multiple years.
Apart from Aiden Mersh (who qualifies automatically), Chris Marks is the only candidate who states that he has previous NUS Conference experience on his nomination form (he went there in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.
Student trustees
Not everyone is going to be elected straight away, but it almost happened. The are four openings and five candidates (not including the ever-present R.O.N.).
Due to the design of the form, I cannot find out any political affiliations, but there are other details worth noting.
Before I go onto those though, I should point out that the current HUU Constitution doesn’t mention anything about electing student trustees at any point in the academic year. They are not even listed in the membership of the Trustee Board. This definitely needs to be looked at because any election of student trustees could be interpreted as unconstitutional.
Once again, the gender balance is fairly even, but this time the women outnumber the men (3 and 2 respectively).
Most are on undergraduate courses, but one is a Postgraduate Researcher (José Estrada, who is a PhD student based in the Department of Computer Science).
Only two of the candidates state student union experience on their trustee nomination forms, two have experience outside the university (in the case of Helena Moore, she has both). Rosemary Coates and Helena Moore are both attempting to be elected as NUS delegates aswell.
It’s worth noting that Rosemary actually has student union experience, but she only mentions it on her NUS delegate form.
Summary & Conclusion
It might seem like there are a lot of candidates for these other elections, but when you look closely, you notice a different story. Many don’t have opponents in their respective elections and some positions don’t have candidates. That is very disappointing. HUU definitely needs to advertise these more if we are ever going to see improvements in the future.
The Constitution also needs to be made up to date, so it mentions the student trustees.
So, what do you think?