Adi Gunjal is one of the candidates for the role of Student Union President in this year’s SU elections. Forge Press sat down with him to discuss his motivations, the importance of the role and his manifesto, as well as his plans for his campaign.
Adi’s main motivations for the role are due to “always really wanting to be a politician” and he sees this as a great opportunity to gain experience in leadership, and believes this has the possibility to “leverage his career” in the future.
Adi sees this role as important as he found “making friends can be really tough because of cultural differences”. He finds the relationship between home students and international students as an area that needs improvement. Adi sees the role of president as essential because “students really want someone who can feel their feelings” and believes he will be able to do this very well.
Within his manifesto, Adi’s most important policy is to create “academic self-help groups”, ran by a combination of domestic and international students, to share experiences on the academic processes of university, as Adi himself thought the new methods of assignments felt “overwhelming” and overall “a lonely experience”, as he was not used to this form of study previously. These groups would be successful at both academic support, but also building friendships and understanding about the variety of backgrounds of the student body.
Following on from this idea, Adi thinks there should be “an easy system to make any group” whether this be social or academic. These would typically be more accessible, affordable and “less pressure” than a society of committee. He also believes in establishing sport events where people can “just play for fun”, without having to pay an expensive membership or be at a professional level. This would also achieve Adi’s goal of building friendships easily across a wide range of students.
Another idea Adi proposes is introducing “campus placements”, where “instead of searching for companies, companies come to your campus. They are then able to choose people they would like to employ”. This would take pressure off of many students as it would make job-searching less anxiety inducing. This would potentially put an end to the “really tough” process of job hunting that many students experience.
Adi also recognises the “hard work” all SU committees put in to aid the student experience, and aims to implement a “certification system”, introducing a form of formal qualification for holding a committee position, giving students a brilliant way to “improve their CV”, and also “provide more motivation to run for these roles”.
Alongside these key points, Adi also aims to assure “a wide range of brands” of food, drinks and confectionary within “all uni buildings and vending machines”, to support those boycotting certain products in an affordable manner.
Within his manifesto, Adi’s other policies include bringing back “cross cultural events”, improving the application process using “anonymous student helplines”, alongside maintaining a consistent “fight for affordable living” and introducing “rent caps”.
Adi’s main plans for his campaign are “just going round and asking people”, acknowledging the need to “make myself seen” by a wide range of students and become a familiar face across campus. He wants to utilise a more personal approach, rather than focusing solely on using social media.
