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 application.
Noemi Li, running for International and Welfare officer, told Forge that what motivated her to apply for this is because she experienced ‘a terrible placement year’ and ‘didn’t feel as an international student I was given enough care’.
She said: “When I was running for campaign last year I talked to a lot of international students, and they all had this difficulty of feeling integrated into a different culture.”
Noemi explained this is the reason she wants to create a place to support other people and emphasised the importance of having an International and Welfare officer.
She said: “I think having international and welfare together, they fit in well because there’s a lot of overlap between international students’ welfare and home students’ welfare.”
Noemi has been the President of the ‘Save our Sandwiches’ society for almost two years and feels she has learnt a lot of valuable leadership skills in this position.
As part of her manifesto she hopes to implement financial support to help with the cost of living, and mentioned how she already redistributed surplus food from the University as part of her role at ‘Save our Sandwiches’.
She said: “I can see there is a need for students to have accessible food so therefore I put that as my first point in my manifesto.”
Her second point is about supporting placement students and year abroad students. She said: “I want to make them feel more connected to uni, I just feel like I want to help more students who are in a similar position as I was.”
Noemi emphasised the need to improve mental health services, and as part of her manifesto she wants to ‘increase the provision’ of these services.
She added: “I think there’s a shortage of wellbeing advisors currently and the waiting time for them is quite long. Also I’m neurodivergent and I want to advocate for more neurodiversity support.”
She then spoke about the changes she hopes to make that are more tailored to the needs of international students.
This included re-implementing a mentoring scheme by pairing home students with international students ‘as a way of making people feel more connected’.
In addition to this, her manifesto states she wants to implement a job opportunity scheme ‘specifically for international students’.
She said: “I feel it’s important for international students to have opportunities to have the experience they need to be able to stay in the UK after they graduate.”
Linking to this, she thinks a scholarship is ‘necessary as a way to support them financially’ as well as the need for tailored academic support as she doesn’t feel this is ‘designed specifically for international students’.
Finally, her manifesto includes a foundational global opportunity for home students. She explained: “If they want to do a summer school or any other international experiences. It would make home students more connected to international cultures.”
Noemi is also the student staff committee chair at her school, where she actively engages with the university to encourage change.
She said: “I’ve been advocating for students and go to my department’s director’s office every week just to kind of discuss and ask them to create some services for international students and students who need support.
“It’s the kind of thing I’m already doing and I feel like I’m getting experience from advocacy and representation and I feel like this would be something that would make me stand out to run for this role.”
