Forge Press sat down with the candidates who applied for officer roles to discuss their plans and goals if they were to become successful in their applications.
Luke Hand, who is running for the Wellbeing and Sports Officer role, told Forge he has been around sports all his life.
He said his motivation for this role is how important sport is for people’s wellbeing and that he recognises sports and wellbeing ‘aren’t separate entities’.
Luke said: “I had quite a few struggles with anxiety the past couple of years and I think, getting myself out there, staying active and doing sports at uni, particularly intramural sports, I think they’ve been a massive help for me.”
When asked about why he thinks this role is important for students at Sheffield, he said: “I think it’s a great opportunity for people to get involved in the community as well.
“And even if you’re not someone who’s ever played football or the sports like korfball, even just getting involved and being a part of that wider Sheffield community, I think that’s really important.”
Luke’s manifesto can be divided into five key aspects; a dedicated transport budget, inter-club communication, a dedicated sports newsletter, Mindful Monday walks and encouraging an action plan to fill vacancies and wellbeing staff.
He said a lot of people have already come to him saying ‘transport costs are really quite high’ and so he wishes to ‘advocate for a dedicated transport budget’.
He said: “And if that is already in place, try and lobby for more money and more subsidies to be given to sports clubs.”
However one of the main things for him is inter-club communication because there is ‘a lot of untapped potential there’.
When further questioned on this, he gave the example of History’s netball and rugby team who did a joint charity netball game in which it raised £700, and emphasised that ‘we could not only raise engagement, but raise a lot of money for charity as well’.
Luke also sees great potential for a dedicated sports newsletter covering intramural sports, bucs results and various events like charity matches so ‘more people could see it and then more people would want to get involved’.
This could help with inter-club communication. He said: “Because when you see these things in a dedicated space, then it’s so much easier to get involved and have that communication.
“People will know they’re not voting for someone who’s just going to do their things in the background and you might hear about it if it directly affects you. Instead, you can see this newsletter.”
When discussing his manifesto, he spoke of an initiative called ‘Take a step for your mental health’, which would involve ‘walks and talks’.
He told Forge: “People can go and talk about whatever’s going on in their life or even just listen and have these spaces, I think that’d be really good.
“Because I think it can be very stressful sitting in a room full of people or even a one-to-one with someone talking about your mental health. So I think just going on walks, having those walks and talks, I think that’d be really good.”
He suggested this could happen on Mondays as a ‘Mindful Monday’.
Finally, he hopes to encourage the university to have a plan in action to fill vacancies and wellbeing staff. He said: “I’ve heard from a lot of people that there’s been quite long wait times.
“And I think if we had a very clear action plan from the university to say, yes, we’re going to fix this, that’d be great.”
