33 days til’ Christmas... we’re so close everyone!

You’ll want to be around the SU building this Friday, December 1, when you’ll see our decorations come up and the officers hang around to have a chat with you guys. But that was just a quick invite, let me dive into the update now.

As I’m sure you saw on social media (and perhaps even on campus with one of us bugging you to vote) we’ve held two referendums in the past couple of weeks. The first was about affiliation to the National Union of Students (NUS – you can see explanations of what it is in the SU website as well as in previous blog posts I’ve made) and on the University College Union (UCU) strike action – essentially, strikes and other actions that disrupt the day-to-day work of lectures. The outcome was that we remain affiliated with the NUS (who, by the way, are coming to campus on November 28 to promote voter registration- make sure to come to the ground floor of the SU to have a chat with them!). On the UCU question, students asked us to support industrial action. None has been called for this year, but if they did call it, as an SU we’ll be supportive of it.

We had our first international forum, to which 30 international students signed up to give us feedback of their experience in Bath. It was almost unanimous that they all agreed that arriving early as a first year would be a really positive thing (which is part of our top 10). I’ve also started having development sessions with the heads of media groups (URB, Campus TV, and Bath Time) alongside our head of marketing and comms and our CEO. We want to make sure we’re empowering our students as much as we can!

VC recruitment is still going on... I’ve met some of the candidates informally prior to their visits to campus later this month, and I’ve invited a few students to participate in the last bit of recruitment. I’ll have more to tell you about this later!

Certainly, the most exciting stuff going on this week are team photos (see the Futsal ones below, which is the club I play for). It’s been a lot of fun to see everyone in their kits and trying to get the silliest pictures (whether us trying to carry Bella is the silliest one, I’ll let you decide). But it does sadly mean that we’re halfway through the season, and I’m already dreading the end of it. If you’ve never tried a sport at uni before, I would really encourage you to! It is so much fun and it’s a great way to make friends (or to embarrass yourself in score pictures if you’re me).

Will come back with one last update before Christmas break, so make sure to check in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, stay warm and be kind to each other.

Much love,

Jiji x

Futsal BUCS teams (and us carrying Bella):

Women's 1s: