UCLU Weekly Officer Video - Mariana and Annie

• published: 23 Oct 2014
• views: 63

UCLU Weekly Officer Video - Mariana and Annie Annie: Hi, this is Marianna and she is your Postgraduate Students’ Officer. Mariana: And this is Annie, she’s your Women’s Officer. Annie: So recently I have been working on the zero tolerance to sexual harassment campaign, which is about making sure that our Union wont tolerate sexual harassment in any form in any of our spaces. Just last week we released a pledge that clubs and societies can sign up to, to say that they wont tolerate sexual harassment either. It’s really exciting because within only a couple of days about 115 clubs and societies have signed the pledge, and if your club and society hasn’t done so too you can sign up online (uclu.org/ZeroTolerancePledge). Another thing that we have both been working on is for better provisions for student parents and carers - it is one of our campaign priorities for this year. We have been working on getting more child friendly events at the Union, we’ve just had high chairs installed in the bars and we are conducting interviews to see what support there is for parents and carers in academic departments. Mariana: Now in the Postgraduate Association there is a significant number of student parents and we are doing whatever we can to support them, like what Annie said. We are also providing affordable nurseries and space and capacities for the students. Other campaigns that the PGA is running are do to with more funding for education at research level and masters level as well as helping with the free campaign for national education. There’s going to be a demo soon and, since Germany have just passed free education, I think it is important to campaign in the UK to let them know that it is possible. Other campaigns that the PGA is running are for more funding for education at the PGR and at the top level, and also helping part time students get cheaper oyster cards for travel and cheaper council tax rates. We have lots of events in the Postgrad Association as well, we have a big bowling party coming up soon, we have bike tours, we have a barbeque in the summer, and we have specific events for specific sections, for example, LGBT drinks, LGBT coffee meet-up. Annie: The Women’s Network also runs lots of events too. We’ve just had our first ever forum, which is where we make decisions as a campaign and we have our next forum coming up at the end of the month. The most immediate thing we’ve got coming up is we are running a series of “herstory” events in collaboration with the BME network for Black History Month. They are going to be running next week and all the information is online at uclu.org/BHM. Possibly the most exciting thing we are doing at the moment is electing our new committee. We haven’t opened nominations yet – we’ve got a large committee of about 12 places – and I’m looking for lots of women students to run, and it’s all going to be happening online, so keep an eye out for that. Mariana: And actually one of the positions you can run for in Annie’s committee is the Postgrad rep in the Women’s Network, which also sits on the PGA – the Postgraduate Association. We have already started elections for our main committee, but the liberation roles are still open: Women’s, BME, Disabled and LGBT. You just elect these at each specific forum. Annie: We are also electing lots of different positions across UCLU. We are electing our NUS delegates, our faculty reps and halls reps – so you should all vote because everyone should have a say in how the union runs.