So it Ends, So it Begins

Day 1, Week 1, Semester 2, year 7; so it ends, so it begins.

Though I’ve been back at work since 3 January, today is the first day of my last semester at UL. That’s a bit of a scary prospect. This will be my 14^th UL semester. In six months from now (almost to the day) I’ll be finishing up a three week handover process with my successor. If I’d started a PhD when I graduated I’d almost be finished now, but it could be argued that the insights and experience I’ve gained are more valuable to me than a PhD.

There are a lot of important issues coming up this semester.

·         Consultation and vote on new constitution for ULSU. Long overdue and necessary to protect the Union in the future interest of students

·         Plans for new Student Centre are at a site layout stage. The presentation given by the campus planner is attached

·         Extraordinary General Meeting (week 2) to discuss motions on the removal of 2 sabbatical positions (Vice President Campaigns and Engagement, Vice President Communications) to refocus the Union on its core representative functions with 3 full time officers supported by a Council with a wider focus.

·         Finance and Funding sustainability for ULSU

A lot of unpalatable decisions have been taken already to ensure that as your Union, ULSU is enabled to continue operating to provide the representation necessary to ensure your voice is heard, more will be necessary, but I believe that looked at in an overall sense, studetns will understand where we are coming from.

Throughout the year the team here in the Union have taken up a lot of representative slack while I was knee deep in resolving a financial and structural storm. I have done this on the basis that it will be finally resolved and that future Presidents will be free to focus on solely representative issues. I was never elected to take operational decisions in the running of events, shops or clubs, but due to the comings and goings these things have factored as a major part of what I have ended up doing.

Having management draw up policies and procedures so that whoever follows me won’t have to is one of they key things I hope to have left behind. It’s something the average student will never see, but it has consumed lots of my time. HR issues and negotiations, finance and operational direction are functions that should never arrive on the desk of the President of a students’ union, I hope what we have put in place will ensure that is the case going forward.

I hope to close out my outstanding items by week 10 and shift the focus of the Union to preparing the incoming team for year that will pass all too soon. My main disappointment will be that we haven’t been able to engage with the SUEI process due to cost, this was one of my priorities in my early blogs, something which I still firmly believe in, but I hope that a future team will be able to implement it.

There will be much more to come, so we could say that this is the beginning of a long goodbye.

D