We had our final Assembly meeting of this academic year last week. The final assembly is one of the most exciting meetings of the year because we get to set out the key priorities for the newly elected officers. There were many exciting debates around what positive change students would like to see next academic year. We also welcomed our newly elected assembly members, including the Students’ Union incoming Officers. 

A new speaker was elected. Alan Clark-Gutierrez will be directing discussion and leading debate at our Assembly for the next year. 

The Assembly heard from our current Students’ Union Officers, who gave updates about where they have got to with their key campaigns. 

• Akanksha has secured a 20k fund for fund nap pods and an additional 30k for student communities. She has also been working to ensure cultural events are added permanently to the academic calendar. These events will include Lunar New Year and South Asian heritage week which were celebrated this year for the first time. 

• Following on from Akanksha, Jackson spoke about his successful Lunar New Year festival. He is still working on a student handbook as a useful guide to student services both academic and non-academic. He has also secured an APP Seed Fund – 10k hardship fund for Muslim students and also VR headset which were used at the recent Wellbeing Fair. 

• Yavuz has ensured that microwaves are now available in Bayes and Law School buildings. He has also worked with our communities and events team to guarantee a £50 start up fund for societies. Within his work with catering, he has been continuing to work with the University to reduce lunch prices to £4.90. Yavuz’s project to have Bidets installed into the toilets at City is still ongoing. He has also successfully negotiated Gym prices down to £60 a year. 

• Lastly, Fortune has secured laptop loans for both PG and UG students. He is continuing to work with the University on their hate crime reporting centre. Fortune has also been negotiating with the University to get Turnitin to show the percentage of similarity for students submitting their work. His calculator loan scheme been very successful and continues into next term. 

Policy Assistants also gave an overview of their work this year. They have been helping to support the Officers with the 23/24 Priorities.  

Aisha, our student voice coordinator, delivered a presentation about student feedback on our GetHeard@City platform. She also showed the assembly members the most spoke about priorities from elections. 

Within their schools, assembly members decided on which four priorities would be most important to them and fed this back to the assembly. All together there were 9 top priorities which were then voted on.  

The assembly decided on four draft priorities for this year, which are; 

• Student Communities and Events  

• Education and Academic Priorities 

• Cost of Living Crisis 

• Careers and Employability  

This conversation is not over! We are still yet to set in stone the goals of these priorities. If you would like to add your input to the discussion around these priorities and have your say about what our officers are working on then be sure to keep an eye out for our next assembly meeting which is open to all!