And the time is finally here! 

Thew much awaited, much acclaimed, report for SUmmit... 

Picture the university’s council chambers, filled to capacity with students from different backgrounds, clubs, and societies.  

Picture our chair, dressed in his usual smart fashion, calling the room to order.  

Picture me, sitting next to him, with a grin as broad as a five-year-old's on Christmas morning when opening her first present.  

If you can see all these things in your head, the rest of this post basically tells itself. 

On the 19th of November, we had our first SUmmit meeting. From 5:00 PM until 8:00 PM, we had 39 members present at the university’s council chambers (photos below) and at the ground floor of the Student Centre, discussing how to best use our time together, the merits of the attendance and engagement monitoring debate, and enjoying a slice or two of pizza and Plug fries. 

The format of the meeting went like this: first, Jackson (the chair) welcomed everyone, did some housekeeping, and passed it over to the officers for our updates. For the next twenty minutes or so, students got to ask us anything they wanted about the role, our updates (which we submitted and sent around to SUmmit members in advance), or anything else they found relevant. A lot of people wanted to ask about buses (shocker, I know); some had questions about renters’ reform bill, and the topic of PGT experience also came up. 

Next, Jackson welcomed Ben Goose (a university’s policy and programmes manager in education and student experience). Ben spoke to us about attendance and engagement monitoring (NOT to be conflated, but also NOT to be explained by me... give Amber a call, maybe) and the consideration that the university is giving this to see if we implement it. Disclosure: since COVID, we already do it a bit! The debate is about whether we should be more consistent across the board, and whether we can use it as a tool to monitor students’ engagement with their academic life for wellbeing purposes. Ben then responded to questions from SUmmit members and finally left the room to let us debate.  

Amber then had five minutes to explain why she had submitted a statement of issue (SoI) about this subject. Briefly, a SoI is a 300-word document that SUmmit members submit prior to a meeting when they want to discuss a topic and have SUmmit generate a standpoint (our policy briefs that have a call for action) with the rest of the committee. The conversation then went on for a while. I dare say the contentious bit was not the SoI in itself, but rather the confusion about the topic in general. After much debate and clarification, SUmmit had a standpoint proposal that we were relatively at peace with. The first voting round, on whether or not we were ready and happy to vote on the standpoint, passed. Mind you, the necessary majority in SUmmit is two thirds of the room, so this is not as easy as it sounds.  

The vote on the standpoint itself also passed. SUmmit agreed on the standpoint with four subsequent actions: 

1. The organisation of a Q&A session with students and University leaders on Engagement Monitoring and the plans moving forward (to be done by officers). 

2. The Education Officer to ask the University for clear definitions of attendance and engagement, and to differentiate between the two.  

3. Once next steps have been proposed, The SU is to organise ongoing events for students to provide feedback.  

4. The Education Officer to request a clear list from the University about what data will be collected and how this will be used. 

With the new format, we will have to update SUmmit on our progress on these actions at the next meeting (on December 2nd). We will then see how the format works entirely, as there will be an accountability space for standpoints created under this format. I am very excited about seeing the whole process through. I am also incredibly happy with how the first meeting went and the attendance that we got. I cannot wait to tell you all about our progress and what we achieve as a group. But with nothing else to add at the moment, I will see you next time. In the meantime, stay warm and be kind to one another. 

Much love,  

Jiji x  

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