You often hear politicians and governments speak about the first hundred days. There’s always a lot of pressure on those first three months, and critics of the elected person will sing praise of predict a downfall based on those 100 days. But little do people ever talk about the last 100 days, and what that ought to look like. 

So here goes my brief of what I want my last 100 days to look like. I will work backwards, because that’s how my brain works.  

By the 20th of June (AKA dooms day, when I have to face the reality of leaving Bath and my role as president which has, as you’ll know, become somewhat of my main personality trait in the last 2 years): I want to have given Benji specifically, but the wider officer team, the best handover ever made and have really set them all up for success. Handover starts on the 9th of June, so that’s when that bit will begin. We are already planning the group sessions, and I have started writing my own handover to Benji in the last couple of weeks. 

The week of the 2nd of June is when our last senate meeting is. Part of my work left in that space is about a proper handover to Benji, Sanya, and Helen (the three officers that will sit in senate), but also about working with the incoming deputy vice-chancellor on consistency across the faculties – looking at how we can make sure that, no matter in which one you’re a student, you’ll have the same level of opportunities. On the 3rd of June we have our closure of the Top 10 meeting with university leadership. 

May is always a slightly quieter month for us, since all you guys are mostly doing exams. This means we will hopefully be focusing on getting our part-time community organisers scheme off the ground. What this is, is an opportunity to have more students participate in the campaigns and projects of the SU. The first organiser will be working on cost-of-living and continuing some of the projects that we launched last year like the SU food pantry (as well as looking at what else we could be doing to support students through challenging financial times). Also, from the 7th until the 9th of May, your officers will visit some Students’ Unions of the North, to learn about how they do things – more on this later. 

April is always the craziest month. We have Blues Awards, Education Awards, SU Group Awards, and Varsity, all in the same three weeks. April is very much about thanking our student leaders. I also want to use this time to gather feedback from them on what we should be doing better, which I will collect on the last SUmmit meeting of the year (on April 22nd). In the finance side of things, one of the things I want to sort out before leaving is a plan to reinvest some of our free reserves (so the income that isn’t directly tied to necessary spending, and that’s above our essential reserves numbers) into student facing activities. This can look a lot of different ways, but I’m particularly keen on investing in student spaces and looking at storage space improvement for our clubs and societies.  

The last couple of weeks of March are crazy busy! Next week I’ll be visiting UCL with the senior SU team to learn about their representation models; spend Tuesday in a conference about students and all the areas we should be looking at; and then attending different meetings like the Student Experience Advisory Board and a local council meeting to speak about the condition of student housing in Bath.  

Hopefully, this looks like a good list of goals for my last three months in office. As always, I’m more than happy to be challenged on any of this. I look forward to hearing back from you. In the meantime, pray for sunshine and be kind to one another! 

Much love, 

Jiji x