My Journey Campaigning for a Students’ Union full-time position: The Stress, The Reward, The Outcome
Early March, the University of South Wales Students’ Union 🗨️ (USWSU) experienced their annual Leadership Race for the academic year 2024/5. The Students’ Union, as a democratic organisation, run these elections every year to ensure that the students of USW have full decision in choosing their next student leaders, and the Students have spoken!
Who I am, my experience, why I ran
Currently, I am studying a Master’s Degree in clinical psychology, while also representing the student body within the Life Science faculty at my university. Coming towards the end of this academic year, I thought I would take up the great opportunity for running for the Vice President of Welfare role at the University of South Wales Students’ Union. Since my first year of college and my last year at university, I have represented students for 7 continuous years in several ways:
- Course Representative (6 years in college — uni)
- LGBTQIA+ Liberation Officer (1 year in college)
- Sabbatical Officer Representing all Further Education Learners (1 year in college)
- Student Voice Representative for the faculty (2 years in uni)
When I first started college, fresh out of high school, the class were prompted to raise their hand if they wanted to become a course rep (to represent the students with their feedback for the course). At the time, I thought I would go for it, as I wanted to absorb college as much as I could to help develop my skills and to build on my confidence. Since that first year, representing students created a new meaning and value for me — I realised how important it is for all students to be heard, because unfortunately at times, students are not able to speak up for themselves, and even when they do, will they be listened to?
With this representative experience coming to the end of my academic journey, I thought it would be a great opportunity to run for a 1 year full-time role in the Students’ Union, representing students of behalf of their welfare.
My Campaign
During my campaign, I was contested with one other candidate, so I had to put everything I had into this campaign (sorry lecturers, assignments can wait). The campaigning lasted for almost two weeks, which came with a lot of stress and barriers. I spent some of this time putting posters around all campuses and promoting through social media, I also had cool stickers printed out with a QR code on them which directed to my LinkTree. Although, the majority of the campaigning time mostly involved going up to students in person, informing them about the elections and why they should cast their vote.
However, travelling between campuses consumed a lot of the time, and there was no guarantee that students would want to talk to you. I get it, assignments are stressful at this time of year, I wouldn’t want some rando approaching me talking politics (except I don’t think I would mind 👀). The most stressful campaigning method I carried out was speaking to full class rooms and lecture halls. I think at one point one lecture hall had over a hundred students in, that was daunting!
During the final hours of campaigning, I was drained, trying to get students to vote, most of which just wanted to go home after a long day of study. While campaigning on the final day, I was watching the clock count down the minutes until polls closed, so I could grab an alcoholic beverage at the SU to finally breathe. At this point, the anticipation for the results was not highly anticipated, as I knew I did everything I could, plus I was incredibly exhausted and just wanted it to be over.
The Results
As polls closed, USWSU reached double the student voters compared to last year, with over 1,000 individual voters, and around 10,000 combined votes cast for the available roles, which is incredible 🗳️! This would not be made possible without the brilliant campaigning from all candidates, it was wonderful to see everyone’s posters and their engagements with the student body.
The results evening was met with live singers, beverages, and stress eating. Eventually, the current SU president read out results for each role, one-by-one.
Unfortunately, I did not win the election for VP Welfare, I am however incredibly impressed with myself and my campaign team for running such an informative and well structured campaign for the 2 week period. With almost 40 hours of campaigning cross-campus and online, speaking to hundreds of USW students, and receiving over 300 individual votes, I can confidently say that we have run a very successful campaign. So, thank you very much for your hard work and dedication towards this to my campaign manager, Megan, and the rest of the team, Kieran, Courtney, Faith, Ella, Hollie, and Izzy — I could of not done this without your support and encouragement!
Congratulations 🎉 to our newly elected Students’ Union sabbatical officers for the next (2024/5) academic year: Jahid Hasan (president), Georgia Powell (VP of Education), Imam Ringku (VP of Welfare), and DMSA Navid (VP of Activities). I look forward to seeing the rewarding and valuable work you do in the near future.
During this campaign, we were able to not only encourage students to vote for their next leaders, we also increased our Students’ Union recognition, informed students why the annual elections are so important, and listened to the valuable student feedback that will be brought forward at the next Student Voice Forum.
My hopes for USWSU next academic year is very strong, and I wish everyone the best of luck with their studies and final assignments 💛.
