What inspired you to run for SU President?
It is a massively critical time in student leadership with the national student movements that are happening in terms of Pause or Pay, Liberate the University and United Against Fees. It is just such an important and pivotal time to be involved in something like this. I was getting so angry about how students are treated that I was like why not? When is there going to be another time when you can be part of something collective and in solidarity with other people to try and make change? I know a lot of the time, people say students have tried before and they think they are going to make change but I don’t think that should stop people continuing to fight to change the system. The general treatment of students is not on and it needs to change. The work that people have already done needs to continue and I would love to be involved in that.
As SU President, what would your main priorities be?
Fighting for Covid compensation – when the pandemic is over, universities and the government cannot just suddenly think that students are fine. There is going to be a huge legacy of problems that still exist. So, whatever happens at the end of this year, I know the officer team has plans already for compensation, but I would like to continue their work and ensure that students get the refunds that are needed.
I want to have more transparency within the University system. I think often, students don’t know where we fit in. We know we pay a lot, but we don’t know where our fees go and we are expected to stay where we are but actually, we deserve more. I want more opportunities to hold the University to account, like question time, asking management questions, because they get paid a lot and we don’t know who they are. They hid behind the facade of the SU even though we are independent.
I want to get the fun back through a supportive community.
The SU is for students and a lot of the time, strikes have happened independently of the SU. The rent strikes, for example, should have been set up by the SU instead of some first years doing it on their own. I would love to set up a student renters union, as part of the SU, to stand up to the University as well as private landlords.
What qualities or experience have you got that other candidates may not have?
One of the main roles of the SU President is external lobbying and this year I have experienced that quite a lot through the Our Bodies Our Streets campaign. We have been doing this since the summer, in lockdown, when student harassment was really high and some of the team were on Channel 4 the other day. The group lobby the council for change and start up creative campaigns. Starting from nothing, no followers, no connections, and having to build a community of people, from students to council, is such an important part of being a president. Uniting the University with the city is a big part of being a president. I have experience in this respect as I have tried to do that independently of the University already. I have also recently set up Sheffield Student Action Group which is a branch of Pause or Pay, a group that is fighting for refunds for students. They are seeing significant wins happening through solidarity and communication with other students unions and I would love to be able to collaborate with other students unions and groups so that students are stronger together to be heard.
What would you say to people who aren’t planning on voting or don’t care?
Take a look at everyone’s manifestos, everything said in them will make you realise that your problems can be heard and your problems are valid. A lot of the time students are told to just accept the position we are in because we receive a lot of corporate gaslighting from the University and government to say that your quality of education is the same. Sometimes it makes us feel we should be grateful but actually we shouldn’t. You deserve a better education, you deserve an education that is not seen as a commodity. You have power to elect people who hold positions of power to enable that. An SU team does everything from student experience, to your well-being, to your welfare. You will need that team and they will shape your university experience. So definitely vote and there are some amazing campaign videos you can watch at the same time!
Who do you look up to politically? Has anyone inspired your campaign?
Zarah Sultana. She is a Labour MP and she was really active in the 2011 student campaigns against the tuition fee increase. As a young, Muslim woman, she has a lot of barriers to get her voice heard but she does it in such a powerful, succinct way and she stands up to white men who think they know everything and who are so comfortable in the system. She is incredible. I would thoroughly recommend following her Instagram – you will learn so much from her in about 10 words. She will make you know that your problems and issues are valid and we deserve better.
How have you found campaigning during a pandemic and how have you adapted to an all-digital campaign?
With Our Bodies, Our Streets, we did that campaign in a pandemic anyway so I have been very used to creating digital content from that. Trying to engage with people when they don’t see you can be quite isolating so it is nice to reach out to other candidates and see how they are. Even if they are campaigning for the same role as you, getting in touch has made us feel a lot better and a lot more positive when it becomes a bit more human. It has been quite fun to do an Instagram campaign, I love it.
How will you help the SU, its societies and activities, recover after the pandemic?
I think just support them as much as we can. Because the SU has had such a hit this year, and at one point they weren’t even going to survive, I think we need to use the University a lot to re-evaluate our relationship and to say we need more support. The University relies so much on our SU for their branding and for their marketing, but actually they don’t give a lot.
They need to start giving more to us and that will help us support activities. In terms of engagement, we need to make sure that more international students and underrepresented students, who might find doing SU activities are quite alien to them and not necessarily inclusive, are more included. I would like to start an interdisciplinary workshop series where a mix of different courses can come along – students, staff or city communities – to tackle every-day challenges that are systemic to our world from climate emergencies to decolonising the curriculum. I want people to work on projects together. We come to university but we do our separate subjects which is a bit weird – we are all in the same place but we don’t really talk to each other. I think the workshop would be a great way to get people involved in the SU through crossing over of courses.
What does Sheffield Action Group do and what inspired you to start it?
Sheffield Action Group is for me when I started a survey a few weeks ago asking people about their university experience. Although there are lots of systems in place for feedback for students, when I was talking to my friends a lot of them were expressing their views and how fed up they were with the University and it felt like there wasn’t a proper space for their views to be heard. Of course we have academic reps who work so hard and do so much but I think there needs to be a reduced barrier opportunity to air your views. So that is why I made the survey under Sheffield Action Group.
The group branches off from the Pause or Pay campaign which is a national group who are fighting for Covid compensation and tuition fee compensation. They have a lot of experience in trying to make change and one of their methods is to write to the Vice Chancellor. Our Vice Chancellor is very quiet, we don’t really hear much from him and I think he might have had it a bit easy. Understandably a hard year but I think our SU officers, who get paid a fraction of his salary, have worked so much harder. I thought we need to bring some voices to him directly through an open letter which we are just about to write next week with a group of 400 strangers who replied to the survey wanting to be involved. When lots of people with different opinions come together and do stuff collaboratively, which is what I enjoy most, it works. I’ve included some pie charts about people’s experience or what they think.
The University says on their website: ‘‘We will provide accessible and inclusive learning and teaching that respects and benefits from our diversity” however 70% of survey respondents said they do not agree with that statement this year. It feels like the University keeps saying these statements and students disagree but there is nothing students can do about it. Actually, we need to hold the University to account for those statements.
I want the Vice Chancellor to recognise the impact students have had because of the pandemic and recognise its effect on student experience. The Vice Chancellor, as head of the University business, has the power to lobby the government for a bailout and say we need more funding to allow us to refund our students for the experience they have had this year. At the moment, universities can’t refund because they rely so much on tuition fees that if a student wants a refund it would jeopardize education and staff in the future. Students do not want their refund to be a detriment to their education therefore we need more public funding and the Vice Chancellor needs to go to the government for that funding.
You say in your manifesto that you want to empower students to use a reformed complaints system. What would this look like?
The current complaints process is really long and time consuming. You have to talk to someone who runs your course, leaving students feeling vulnerable. The system is almost set up to be weighted against students, making it hard to complain. The SU is able to offer support to make complaints but I think we just need to reform the system and make it easier. I also want it to be that collective complaints can be made more easily. If the SU could put a system in place so that we can collectively complain or have a workshop to tell us how we can do that, that would be great. I don’t want your university experience to be all about complaining but I just want more ability to share your voice which is currently blocked a lot. I want to reduce the barriers for people to form a complaint if they wish to otherwise it ends up being really frustrating. The University saying we have had less than 1% of the student population complaining is not accurate because the system is too hard to use.
What would a ‘physical skillshare shop’ look like?
Firstly, it would be to have a swap shop to swap clothing to tackle fast fashion. If you don’t want some items of clothes anymore, you can drop them off to the SU and someone else can benefit from that.
I would also like a skillshare space. For example, if you were good at Photoshop, you might come to a session where you share your Photoshop skills with a group of people. Then in the next session, someone else would share their favourite recipes so there is a community feel and transference of knowledge. This would be great for meeting like-minded people through that. Sometimes you can do it on a society basis but sometimes you might want to drop in and out and I think the SU could become a space for that.
In one sentence, why should people vote for you?
I’m not afraid to make change when people say you can’t. In solidarity with other people, we can change a system.
All President candidates were offered an equal opportunity to participate in an interview with Forge Press. To find out more about the elections and the candidates, please visit: https://su.sheffield.ac.uk/student-leadership/officer-elections
Image credit: Alison Romaine
