Sam took up the position after last year’s Ness Mambingo, who he says he worked closely with. His candidacy campaign offered a plethora of policies that largely targeted concerns with housing, student wages and repayments, and the cost of living.
A year later, Sam reflected on his time in the role, stating: “You sort to start of understand how everything takes its time, and that with the University it can be difficult to get anything done. They like to take the least amount of risk possible and sometimes it’s like: ‘but you know it’s for the best, why are you hindering in such a bureaucratic way?’ There’s so many things you wouldn’t think to be checked.
“Other than that, it’s been exciting, it’s been really good experience. All the officers will be gutted when we have to leave in the summer.”
In his policies to address the cost of living, Sam said he wanted a fund in place to support students, which succeeded in becoming a reality in November when the cost of living hub was announced, using extra funds given to the £3m Financial Support Fund.
Other successes from his original manifesto include introducing a bursary for students in unpaid placements, which is now in place, and improving student working conditions. The Students’ Union is now real living wage accredited, and the University raised the minimum wage to £11.03/per hour – well above the current national minimum wage and its anticipated increase (due to be implemented in April), and the real living wage.
Sam’s manifesto also pledged to remove unsustainable companies and arms dealers from the University. He said: “On Monday, I submitted my proposed changes to the advertising and sponsorships policy for the students’ union, and fossil fuel companies are now included on that list.
“On the digital screens you wouldn’t have seen, ‘Shell – come and apply for a job’ before, but you won’t for certain now because it’s part of our policy.”
There is still work to be done; the presence of companies on campus whose portfolios extend to the manufacture of weapons and combat vehicles and/or research for manufactures of such products is still contested. The Diamond was occupied by students in protest of such practices in November.
His goal to keep the worst offending landlords on energy and environmental ratings out of SU opportunities have been reached too. “The law is changing in about two or three years. We’re trying to have input in house – SNUG is a University, Hallam, and Council-wide initiative, and to be ‘SNUG approved’ you have to have an energy performance of at least a ‘D’. In the next couple of months we’re pushing for SNUG to be properly launched and more publicly known.”
However, one of Sam’s other housing policies to keep an eye on landlords fell through. A platform for students to sing their praises, and voice their concerns in an attempt to shame landlords into being better won’t work. He said: “Turns out, you can’t say bad things about landlords, apparently that’s slander. I think there’s overall concern about how much we say around bad landlords. At the beginning of our term there was a piece done by Shelter about landlords and they’d been taken to court and lost.”
On playing his part, Sam said: “I think it’s a mentality of: no success is your own, you’re leaving a legacy of success. In my head I see the successes as not of me personally, it’s the success of the job. It’s not the name that you have, it’s the email that you have, and so what can you do to help make sure the role stays on the right path.”