Monday 18-12-2017 - 21:16

The first 17/18 term has seen Edge Hill Students’ Union go through some huge changes, in staffing AND strategy. We’re really pleased with the way our first term in office has gone, with some huge pieces of work AND (most importantly) some great wins for us (and you!) already!

Here’s a bit of a run-down of some of the things that have happened so far……….

·  Dan B (VP Activities) launched his £9000 Student Coach Fund, Team Edge Hill Panel & Forum, Societies Spotlight, and the Societies Council which has released about £1500 in new funding

·  Rosie (VP Welfare) launched Faith Forums, a Hate Crime Reporting Centre, and free sanitary products in the Shop, to lots of positive attention online

·  Luke (VP Academic Representation) launched the 7 new liberation & section committees, had a win on timetabling improvements, lobbied 5 MPs on student funding, and responded to 600 pages of major government consultation! 

·  With the incredible support of the Policy & Campaigns team we’ve already broken last year’s Student Led Staff Awards nominations record in 3 weeks!!!

·  I secured a new printer, drug and alcohol support, guide dog events, and a Guinness-world-record-winning keynote speaker all without spending a penny, and have also fought and won favourable outcomes for students in 11 appeals & panels

·  We ran an autumn election and managed to secure two pretty awesome Part Time Officers, including our first ever Trans & Non-Binary Officer, one of the only positions of its kind! Bex has already run some events and done a feature for Degree magazine.

·  Our Disabled Students Officer ran an amazing Disability History Month campaign that saw us featured in the press, her receive a commendation, and one of our societies shared worldwide online by Christina Perri

·  We’ve put on & hosted around 102 Give It A Go events – from Crafternoons to Student Skills workshops…. We’re pretty excited to start it all again in the second term.

·  The Advice Centre have dealt with well over 200 student cases, and Phil and Esther continue to be our Advice-giving superduo.

·  Our teams have had some great success recently, including Hockey in their grudge match against Chester and Women's Football across the season (roll on VARSITY next year!!!)

·  We launched a BRAND NEW SUBWAY store AND a brand new SU Shop, and between that and the SU Bar we are the biggest student employer on campus!

·  We’ve run a completely new set of night time events with national AND international organisers, including the world-famous  BONGO’S BINGO!

·  We’ve worked with brand new businesses to bring our students new events, including MISSPAP sample sales and vintage clothing fairs, which have gone down a storm!

·  We’ve managed to enter a brilliant team for the official University Challenge, and had about 40 students involved with selection events!

·  We rebranded the whole organisation… from logo-ing up the outside of the Students’ Union building and our website, to producing a whole lotta literature, it’s been a huge piece of work and (we hope) a very welcome change for you all!

·  And finally… we got John Cater in a santa hat.

Bring on 2018 – we’ve got a massive GIVE IT A GO! calendar, some great campaigns, a HUGE Election (which we want you to smash the voting stats from last year on) and we’re fairly sure it’s going to be bigger and better than ever before....

Here’s to the next few months!!,

Ben Whittle

Edge Hill Students' Union President