Coming up soon...OBSU Elections

Elections….

Yup – it’s this time of the year again!!! You’ll soon see people just like me last year, running around, talking about the SU, wanting to make a difference and get things done better, and well – that’s the whole beauty of Elections! Some people will be running for an Exec Officer position, others for a student rep, union council or NUS delegate position. All the students participating in elections are effectively defining the future of our SU! I’d like to ask you to support and appreciate the effort of those who are campaigning this year, as it is not only a rather challenging thing to be a candidate for elections, but it requires a lot of courage and confidence!

To support people wanting to run at this year’s elections, the team will be out on each campus on our regular GOAL days, which would have a special elections flavour!

Remember nominations week is 11-15 Feb (week 3)

IMPORTANT: The Exec has agreed that NO SU Exec Officer should be able to nominate a candidate this year, so that each student is given equal support by us at the SU!

If you want to find out more about elections talk to Jason Manning, or anyone of the other officers ...or visit http://www.thesu.com/content/index.php?page=488

New Year … New start

This year brought a lot of new projects and even new year’s resolutions for us at the SU! So what is your team working on?

• Vision 2011 … what our SU will look like in couple of years time
• Students’ Safety on the agenda
• Making a difference to the Local Community we live in
• A much more effective committee meetings…as promised!

Vision 2011

Oxford Brookes SU is undertaking a Campus Redevelopment project, dating back several years to date, but it is now in its critical phase of Headington Campus redevelopment. Darcy building has been demolished and the University plans to develop a brand new Student Centre on the landscape. The building will accommodate all student facing services and the Students Union. The building work is expected to be completed by 2011. The SU needs to create a proposal to be presented to the university. The proposal, or the ‘business plan’ should contain a detailed picture of what the SU in 2011 would look like, what services it would have. To do so we have started an initiative called Vision 2011, so we are spending the next 4 months doing extensive consultations on the future of the SU.

This project is of ENORMOUS importance to every single student at Brookes, so any feedback and involvement would be essential to secure the best future for our SU!

Student safety

We are takig student Safety very seriously at OBSU…so we have started working closely with thames Valley Police, to make sure that we can address safety issues even better! Myself, but mainly Louise Golden will be working on various aspects of safety this semester!

Making a difference: Oxford Spring Clean

There is progress on the Spring Clean Initiative!! We have received the back up of the PR department at Brookes who are offering a small financial contribution so that we can make the Spring Clean a fun and rewarding initiative for all volunteers! Watch this space for more information!

Effective Meetings

Good news - the Open Exec has indeed gone through a real reform, and is now held every Wednesday fortnight, from 16th Jan, 30th jan and so on. This is the meeting where your exec officers take decisions that affect you and our Union on daily basis. The meeting is open for every student to attend and is held at the SU, as at reception for directions to the meeting room!

The 1st Open Exec of the year was held on 16th jan at Harcourt Hill - we have much more space now (above the bar) which is used for Advice Center and societies and reps space to meet!