What inspired you to run for Students’ Union President?
I’ve always been involved with the SU throughout uni. That inspired a lot of love for the whole student community and going for an Officer role was always a bit on the cards. A couple of people suggested to me that I should go for President this year and it made sense with Covid happening and the opportunity to really build back so much better than before. Being so tight-knit in the community, building from that and using people’s feedback, it just made a lot of sense to go for SU President.
If you were elected, what would your main priorities be?
My whole campaign is centered around building back from Covid in a way that’s for students. We’re trying to get the justice of tuition fee refunds, better mental health services that are culturally competent, and really looking after international students. They’ve been quite neglected, regardless of Covid. I really want to build a united student community that integrates them fully, and by working on feedback that I’ve heard from international students themselves. I want to make the recovery from Covid green, not just in the sense of climate action, but climate justice. I want to look at racial justice and try to really embed this within the SU and the University’s community. I want to make the SU inclusive in the whole sense of fighting misogyny, transphobia and ableism. I want to build us back to be this beacon of inclusivity, action and justice.
What qualities and experience have you got that other candidates might not have?
Being so involved in campaigning and the SU from early on in my university experience has given me a lot of experience within the SU. I’ve been in a lot of the big uni rooms now, especially as Chair of Sustainability Committee this year. I’ve been in the big University meetings and worked with SU staff, and have successfully brought change. I’ve really fought for these campaigns and these are all things that I do alongside my degree. I take my personal time out and I really fight for these things, and actually have success in these campaigns. I’m not saying sustainability and climate justice as a throwaway comment to win votes, you can’t just do that, I’ve actually proved in my past experience that I really care about these issues, I deliver on the promises that I make and the campaigns that I fight for.
What would you say to people who aren’t planning on voting or don’t really care about the election?
I would say SU democracy is so important. Our SU is top, and it’s been top for so long, but that’s because the student voice is heard. It’s built on every individual that’s put things into the SU and every individual that has voted in these elections to pick the leaders that they think are right. I would hope that all other candidates this year are the same in that my manifesto, from when I first submitted it, has evolved so much. I’m listening to the people that want me to hear what’s been bad for them and what suggestions they have. It’s really important that every single person, because every single person is so different and their experience at uni is so different, chooses the leaders that they want to see fight for their SU for the next year. It’s really important that they give us their vote so that we can build this based on what everyone wants.
Who do you look up to politically or anyone that’s inspired your campaign?
100% Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. I remember the first time I saw a video of her, I think it just popped up on Facebook, and she was talking about climate justice in the Bronx, air pollution and lead pollution. I remember thinking: Who is this woman? Is she real? Where is she? Is she going to be the leader soon? She fights for everything she cares about. She’s so progressive. Also, the fact that she came from a working class background and didn’t have any experience and just fought for a cause that she was so passionate about. I think she is like the beacon of what we will be soon, well, I really hope it’s going to be soon. She undoubtedly is a huge role model for me.
In terms of inspiring my campaign, it’s been a lot of the local SU community, students I know and students I work with through the Sustainability Committee. It’s built around that and what we all value and what we all want.
How have you found campaigning during a pandemic and how have you adapted to an all-digital campaign?
Honestly, it’s been so, so weird. I’m not a very social media person and normally I don’t post that much at all so this has been totally new. It’s been really fun though, trying to show a creative side and to come up with new ways to do things, and trying to get the kind of person I am across to people through social media posts, videos and stories. It’s been a challenge, but a very welcome challenge. Obviously, it’s kind of hard to know how far your reach is spreading because you can’t just do like the lecture shout-outs anymore.
How will you help the SU, its societies and its activities, to recover after the pandemic?
This is something I’ve definitely developed a lot more after hearing from people. One thing that should be done is keeping the SU open over the holidays. Pre-Covid, the SU club nights were already so successful and that brings in so much revenue, but we need to increase the diversity of events we’re putting on. There are so many students that don’t drink alcohol and are put off by those kinds of events. If we increase the kind of number of alcohol-free events and events that celebrate international holidays, I think we’d be satisfying our whole community. Incorporating all these different communities more will bring students together, and naturally, the SU is going to thrive from that. Some feedback I’ve heard from international students is how in societies it can feel like there’s a big divide between home students and international students. That’s something I’d really want to work on next year, to try and bridge that gap. Going back to the unified community, I think if we start making it more inclusive and more accessible for everyone in every sense of those words, the SU is going to thrive.
Could you explain how the climate justice fund would work and what sort of work experience would be available through that?
This is built on the bursary scheme that the Careers Service offer. Essentially, it would be lobbying the university to take this on and prioritise that. It would be for ethnic minority students and disadvantaged students, as they are both receiving a bursary from the University already. It would fund them to go on work placements in the green sector, which might be engineering internships in renewable energy or in conservation. A lot of those things can be unpaid, they might be in places where it’s really hard to find accommodation or where you are paid a bit but not enough to subsidise your accommodation. That can be a huge barrier for people to apply. The whole point of this is to alleviate that barrier and start helping them to make these connections and apply to more things.
How would you implement anti-racism training?
This should be quite an easy thing to implement. When you are on a committee then you have to do some kind of training anyway, and the SU already offers anti-racism training within that. That would be really easy to make compulsory and you would have to do it for HEAR accreditation. In terms of the wider student population, I think it would be something that we could incorporate into Intro Week. Start at the very beginning, plant the seed, make people aware of it and continue to nurture the seed throughout their degree by showing them the kind of community that we support here and the things that we’re doing to be anti-racist.
How will you support and protect international students to continue their studies in Sheffield?
I want to make things really accessible and really transparent for them. In the wake of Covid, there’s been a lot of issues about money so it would be making resources for them really easy and showing them that we’re going to support them every step of the way. If they ever need to make any claims for compensation or access additional funds, it would be making them really clear and really easy to access. Another point that’s really relevant to this specifically is increasing culturally competent mental health support. For international students and ethnic-minority students in general, mental health services right now don’t understand the burden of being in a society that’s built against you, that is inherently racist, and the effect this has on your mental strain and your studies. The University is currently failing these students and it needs to be built on a lot better. It would mean increasing the diversity of counsellors themselves, so that students are seeing themselves represented in the people that are helping them. It would even mean translating the resources that we’ve got. This is a potential barrier to some students and it’s such an easy thing for the university to do. Those things will have a huge impact.
How will you ensure SU events are sustainable and inclusive?
I want to increase the breadth of SU events: more alcohol-free events, celebrating more international holidays. What I also want to do is develop a set of requirements for any organiser for events and campaigns within the SU. They’re going to be developed based on the lived experience of marginalised groups. This might involve going to representative committees, but obviously their role is voluntary so I also want to emphasise using part-time Officers. I had a really horrible encounter recently at Morrison’s where a security guard was really degrading and I felt really uncomfortable by the language that he was using. Even when I walk past the shop, it makes me feel horrible. Obviously I can’t account for every marginalized group, and that’s why it would be built with the representative committees and part-time Officers, but I never want anyone to feel like that in the SU. I think that we should be striving for our SU to be a beacon of inclusivity and accessibility. I want to build on the great work that was done by Martha Daisy in developing accessibility policy to make SU events more accessible for disabled students and continue the great work that’s been done on that already.
In one sentence, why should people vote for you?
I’m fighting for justice that students deserve after the way we’ve all been treated after Covid, I’m the only student that’s fighting for climate justice and against racism, and I’m fighting for a more unified student community.
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: Evie Croxford
