Volunteering Awards

This year’s annual Volunteering Awards were held at the Barbican Theatre. This was a refreshing change from previous years, and was a really enjoyable evening. The Awards have been by far my favourite UPSU event for the last few years, and they certainly lived up to expectations again this year.

Volunteering at UPSU has continued to grow in terms of volunteers and performance – for example winning another Outstanding Project Award from the Higher Education Academy in December. This was recognised this year by an increased number of awards, and within many of the speeches given throughout the evening.

Claire Massey - Volunteer Manager

What impressed me (as always) was the sheer number of volunteers that were recognised as deserving of an award through being nominated last term. I was glad not to be on the judging panel for this ceremony – as I’m told it was a difficult job deciding who should win. Some were so close that two winners had to be chosen!

I’m very proud of our Volunteers and the work they do in the local community – and grateful too! Their commitment and motivation to help people is a constant inspiration, and shows that students want to give something back to a community within which they are often only short-term guests.

Winners!

Next term brings the Sports Awards, and Societies and UPSU Awards – watch this space!

James

Governance – It’s Important!…and Super Fun!

First off, what is Governance?

Governance is simply a name for the process by which a country or organisation is Governed! Simple really… or is it?
The answer for Students’ Unions is, actually, no!

Currently, the five Sabbatical/Executive Officers are trustees of the charity that is the University of Plymouth Students’ Union, which means we hold the charity “in trust” – making sure its staff are acting in the best interest of our members and hold legal responsibility for the Union. Among other things we have monthly Finance and Staffing meetings to approve the monthly accounts, hear reports from senior managers and approve/decline large-scale spending and staffing decisions.

Sounds simple enough, but as elected officers we are also the political leaders of the Union. This sometimes causes confusion – people who are elected don’t always realise they are also becoming trustees, and there is sometimes conflict between what a political leader wants to do and what a trustee can do! On top of this, we can’t always guarantee that the Executive Officers elected each year will have the necessary skills to be an effective trustee. Finally, if this isn’t enough of a reason to change, the Charities Act 2006 means that Students’ Unions will be more strictly regulated by the Charity Commission. UPSU needs to make sure it is fulfilling the requirements of the Charities Act, and be sure that we are operating as best we can for our members.

This is why we need to change. Now.

So what are we suggesting? And how does this involve you!?

Recently, upsu President Darren Jones wrote a ‘green paper’ on Governance – based on months of discussion and professional advice on how best to reform our Governance structures. This paper can (and should!) be viewed in detail at www.upsu.com/governance

The major changes are to the Board of Trustees. We intend to introduce three external trustees – people with life experience and skills relevant to third sector charities, law and HR. Student leadership will be ensured on this board by electing an extra 3 student trustees. (The suggestion in the Green paper is that one of these should be alumni (ex-student), but in my personal these should simply be 3 current students.) The proposed changes also separate political leadership and trusteeship for the Executive Officers

Furthermore, the Executive Committee (currently the 5 sabbatical officers) will be expanded to include a representative elected from students in each Faculty within the University. This will make the Executive Committee more responsive to day-to-day issues within faculties, and will ensure that student leadership is even stronger within upsu. Good times.

So this is where we need you!

Consultation on the Governance review is open until the end of this term, so please please have a read of the Governance Green Paper (here) and tell us your thoughts. You can do this by commenting on this blog, emailing consultation@upsu.com or vpactivities@upsu.com or coming in to see us. Any of the Sabbatical Officers will be happy to discuss things in more detail with you.

The more comments we receive the better!

Your comments will be taken into account, and over Easter we will finalise the new Constitution and Action Plan for its implementation. This will then go out to Referendum before the end of the year, where we need you to vote for the changes (if you agree!)

Thanks for reading – I look forward to your comments!

James

Varsity, The Knowledge, and Placements!!

Hello All

My apologies for the long delay since my last blog!
I managed to escape  the week before last on a skiing holiday, and spent most of last week trying to catch up – no time for Blogging!

Last week was the annual Varsity Tournament, which meant I spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings watching our teams tackle Marjon – and there were some great games played! Unfortunately, despite winning 12 matches each, we didn’t win the tournament overall, so the trophey leaves our cabinet for the year!

Men’s rugby were particularly impressive this year – bringing home a win for the first time since 1993!

Overall the tournament was very entertaining, including some hilarious chanting and streakers! So well done to all who played, and to all who attended to support our teams – we will also have raised a significant amount for Charity through ticket and programme sales…exact amount to be confirmed – watch this space!
I spent Thursday putting together the new issue of the Knowledge newspaper – A long day, starting at 8:30 am and finishing 16hours later!
It was worth it though – the new issue arrived this morning and is packed full of articles by students, including a pull out section on the Varsity Tournament. Come in to the SU to pick up your copy!

If you want to get involved with writing for the Knowledge, please get in touch at vpactivities@upsu.com

Finally – We are recruiting 3 student placements to work in Entertainment & Events, Bar & Shop and Marketing. If you are looking for a student placement then please email theresa.aslett@su.plymouth.ac.uk for an application form or visit the Academic Placement Unit in the Plymouth Business School to get a job description.

Hurry though….the closing date for applications is the 31st March!

I’ll write another Blog soon about Governance… but right now I must leave work and have dinner!

James

Volunteer Festivals and Charity Dinners…

Hello All,

Saturday was an action-packed day, with 5 of our societies getting involved in the local community or raising money for charity.

First off I attended the “Vestival” in the City Centre, so called as it was a Volunteering Fesitval, supported by “V.” There were loads of voluntary organisations there giving out information and hoping to recruit some new volunteers. My job was to help out with hosting the Entertainments Stage, which had been organised by our very own Jellyfrog Events Society. They put a lot of work into getting hold of bands, dance acts and equipment to attract the crowds to the Vestival area. And it worked too – it was pretty busy in the Main Marquee all day! So well done to Jellyfrog.

Well done also to Big Band and MTG who played at the event, with MTG showcasing a rather good original piece of theatre, incorporating songs and lyrics from loads of popular musicals.

MTG at Vestival

It was great to see so many of our students getting involved with an event in the Community, and I know from standing in the audience that lots of other people enjoyed the acts too! There were also many UoP students helping out in the Vestival tent too, being stewards or manning stalls.

The Big Band at Vestival

The evening took me to the Holiday Inn, to attend MedSoc’s Charity dinner in aid of the Alzheimers Society and Devon Air Ambulance. Eva and Fred from MedSoc and Sexpression had put a lot of work into a) organising the event, and b) convincing me to part with my money! It was well worth it in the end, dinner was very nice with a good speech from a representative from Devon Air Ambulance. After dinner it was time for an auction, with prizes such as Powerboating lessons and weekends away the amount of money raised is going to be big I’m sure! I made myself useful by drawing the raffle, before enjoying some dancing to the live band! A good evening was had by all!

Well done to all of our students who got involved this weekend, keep up the good work!

Cheers,

James

RAG-tastic

Hello again,

Last week was another busy one, starting at 8am Monday morning to get to Radio Devon for an interview alongside some Raggies. Why? Because it was RAG week of course!

There were a load of events and activities organised by RAG this week, especially considering how busy they all are with their courses! Two highlights for me were the Pizza Eating Competition and the “Love Train!”

The Pizza eating competition was a great evening – held in Sub:lime in the SU and sponsored by Dominoes there were 150 students there aiming to be the fastest Pizza-eaters in Plymouth. Well over £300 raised for Eddystone Trust and Give a Child a Chance in One Night!

The RAG Team

Next up was the “Love Train!”

This was literally the most obscure thing I have ever done – essentially it was Speed Dating, but on a train. 7 girls and 7 boys took part, along with a few RAG people to serve wine to keep the conversation flowing! Here’s Steve and Vinnie hitting it off!

Steve and Vinnie on the Love Train!

That’s all from me for now…. Next Blog – Fairtrade Fashion Show, Pebblepad and UoP TV
Feel free to Comment below, or get in touch – vpactivities@upsu.com

Today in Parliament

Hello Again!

First off thanks for all the comments (admittedly on Facebook) on my last post. Very much appriciate people’s opinions, and will try and follow up on some of it!

Tonight we had a meeting of Student Parliament, as it stands the penultimate one of the year! There weren’t as many people as last time, but I felt it was a pretty successful meeting.
We had a lot of items to discuss on the agenda, mostly about catering, and people happily gave their comments (Look out for details of the UoP Catering Forum – submit your views on the quality of catering on campus!).

We also had a report back from the first meeting of Rolle Forum (thanks Nibbles!) who had not only held a meeting to find out students’ views, but also followed up on a number of issues. I was very impressed with this, and hope others have been inspired to follow suit!

Finally, I was very happy with the number of questions I was asked about my report. It’s important that we Sabbatical Officers get asked for clarification on what we’re doing – after all one of the key roles of Parliament is to hold elected officers to account!

So thanks to all the Parliamentarians who attended and engaged with the process this evening, I hope next month is just as successful!

James

Elections Results

Greetings all,

The Annual upsu Elections closed yesterday at noon after a long week of voting.

After a bit of a drinks reception in the Hive, the results were announced in Sub:lime around 7pm. So the Sabbatical team for next year looks like this…

President – Aleshia Sampson
Deputy President – Tom Vennard
VP Activities & Communications – Yours Truly!
VP Education & Welfare – Ed Marshall
VP Sports – Chris Rees

Overall I think we’ve got potential for another good year with this team, so congratulations to all. Further thanks and congratulations should also of course go to all the other candidates in these elections, both full time and part time!

The Sabbatical Team 2009/10

However, personally I’ve been pretty disappointed in the turnout in these elections…both in the number of candidates and the number of votes cast.

We had three full time positions with candidates running uncontested (apart from Re-Open Nominations of course!) and the others with only two candidates. For a University of this size (30,000 potential candidates, and more importantly 30,000 voters!) this isn’t great to say the least.
So the question I’d ask you is WHY?

Over the past few months I’ve talked endlessly to students in induction talks, lectures and training sessions about how the Union is run, how important Parliament is, how the Sabbatical Team are paid YOUR MONEY to represent ALL STUDENTS, and yet there were just 700 votes for my position!

I don’t think the problem is a lack of information, most people know the elections happen, they just don’t care! So…like I said…WHY?

I promise you now, I will be dedicating a lot of time to this question for the rest of my term in office… because I want students to be interested. I want students to feel that UPSU is THEIR Union, to know they can come in and effectively tell us how to represent them, to come to Parliament, to get involved in some training, to use our Advice centre…the list goes on!

We have over 40 full time staff at UPSU. They Care. They put their heart and soul into upsu, and are always happy to go the extra mile to make things work a bit better. They are, essentially, awesome. I can’t thank them enough for this, and that’s another reason why I want our students to get involved.

So here’s what I want you to do. Tell me….did you vote? If you didn’t….why? If you did (firstly thanks!), why do you think others didn’t?

The University of Plymouth Students’ Union is a great place, once you get involved you can’t get out…I was talking to someone last night who said “now I’ve been involved this week, I wish I’d have got more involved two years ago!”

I think that’s an important point.
The Union can offer something to everyone. I just have to make it my mission to go and tell people one-to-one exactly what that is for them.

Wish me luck!

James

Campaigning Time!

In order to get elected, we made a beautiful banner all about the fact that students should vote for Chris, Aleshia and James.

I’m writing this after campaigning has closed and back-dating it, as otherwise it would have been using my work Blog to campaign. I just wanted everyone to see it, in case they missed it on campus!

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3 - Job Done!

That is all.

James

Slacking…

Hey All
Well, I’m not going to lie…it’s been a long time since I last posted!

Hope you all had a good break over Christmas. I did, as I went off with some friends to Les Arcs for a spot of Ski-ing!

Lots has been happening around upsu…highlights have been “Green Week” and several sports clubs hosting regional competitons. Yesterday for example, I dropped in on the Trampoline Club who were hosting a BUCS Regional Competition.

I promise to update this blog a bit more frequently now, and will give you a proper update mid-week!

I’ve also just joined Twitter…so do join me there to see what I’m up to!
If you haven’t already…don’t forget to vote in the elections.
WWW.UPSU.COM – Every Vote Counts!

See You Soon

James

Chris Moyles…and other exciting events!

Hello Again!

First things first… As many of you will know, we recently had a visit from Chris Moyles and the Radio 1 Breakfast Team. A very exciting and exclusive event – with only 400 tickets avaliable I was innundated with requests for tickets. Sorry I couldn’t help everyone!!

The event was a great success, with students and locals alike attending and showing off their questionable karaoke skills (Including myself!). It also provided a good amount of press coverage, appearing in the Herald twice, on the BBC website and of course on the Radio!

It just proves that, as I said on the evening, Plymouth is the best Students’ Union in the UK!!

Chris and I have a quiet word...

It’s coming to end of the year now, so at the moment I’m working on tying up any loose ends and generally catching up with lots of typing – so nothing exciting to report. EXCEPT that I am starting to get sorted with upsu:media.

That means that if you are interested in getting involved with Newspapers, magazines, Radio, Photography or Film…upsu may just be the place to be! Drop me an email at vpactivities@upsu.com if you are interested in finding out more!