Student Communities Zone (26th November 2015)

Anjit welcomed eveyone to the meeting. Apologies were recieved from Ben Franklin, Mike Allwright, Ryan Notman-Watt and Shruti Verma. Darren Richardson was also in attendance.

Actions from the previous meeting:

Nancy to speak to Ryan – not happened yet.

David to meet with Sam about buses to NOC – not happened yet

The minutes were approved.

Welcome to our World festival now has a volunteer team to help run the event. As part of the festival, there are workshops planned, looking at how culture affects the way we think, which would be useful for both international students and those who want to study abroad. 

Global Project team has been set up and are in the process of creating a survey as well as mapping out the key stakeholders at the University.

Rep awards – a chance to recognise all the hard work that’s gone on over Freshers’ and a really nice way to round off the freshers’ period and say thank you.

Elections for Halls Committees – there were 92 nominations and by-elections are being held for the unfilled positions in the JCR Committee meeting later. There has been lots of positive feedback about the quality of applications compared to previous years.

Training for Halls Committee positions – one generic session for everyone and then specific training for each position, aimed at making them much more effective. Caitlin asked if there would be inclusivity training for all the elected positions. It was explained that there would be and it would be great if Caitlin could be involved in the training.

Started making handover document for JCRs to Halls Committee so the new committees can get started in their roles straight away.

As Mike was unable to make the Committee meeting, Anjit updated the Committee that nominations are currently open for the four positions the PGR Committee.

Darren asked about the PGR Committee by-law and asked for the decision to be made publicly available.

Anjit updated the Committee that Ruchika Menon had been elected as the new PGT Officer.

Emily reported that as part of The Student Engagement Partnership (TSEP) project, she has been looking at postgraduate engagement, mental health and community engagement.

Interfaith week – a lot of events from various societies and the chaplaincy. The week ran really smoothly and the chaplaincy have reported an increase in number of people attending the events compared to last year.

Have a Jolly-Day – on Wednesday 9^th E&D are hosting an event alongside various student groups, promoting equality and mindfulness. The event will comprise of numerous stalls on things like mental health, sexual health as well as providing free tea and hot chocolate to hand out. There will also be free taster sessions throughout the day and an evening event of music, dance and spoken word with a raffle.

Anjit reported that there had been some confusion about the Christmas Lights switch on event, because student parents felt that they had been excluded from the event. This had led to a wider discussion about what SUSU does for mature students and they are looking at making things more professional, with a proper logo and budget.

Rebecca reported that the student groups in the Zone are still intermingling, with an international dinner held last week, which was well attended. A few groups had been organising events on different sites which would hopefully lead to more interest from other groups. Also the Student Groups Committee had met and had discussed the Student Groups debt situation to make the funding process more efficient.

Rebecca also spoke about a Winchester survey that she had been working on with Emily to ask students in Winchester what they think about societies. Rebecca also said that she was planning an event about sponsorship training, which would help a few of the groups a lot.

Anjit and Emily went to the NOC and spoke to Rachel Mills about student space at the NOC. Currently there are two rooms, one room for socialising and one with computers for work. They have secured a sum of money to renovate the space and have control over the branding as well plans to advertise SUSU more at the NOC.

Two sets of elections have been held. There were 37 positions available and 28 filled, compared to 13 filled last year. Now the academic structure has been put in place, they can now focus on the pastoral care and support side.

Iona has been giving Anjit and Emily feedback about what sort of events they’d like to see at SGH.

Darren also brought up the issue of security at SGH. Emily asked Darren to email her the details who will then make Sam Bailey aware of the situation.

Anjit used the remaining time in the meeting to give the Committee the opportunity to come up with ideas that Committee members could collaborate on.

3 main ideas were discussed:

Debates – the Committee discussed how the Debating Society have recently been collaborating with different societies and holding debates on issues relating to that particular society, which have been really successful.

A series of events involving tea – people would meet on different themes of diversity and have a chat, similar to the Community tea project in External Engagement Zone.

Quiz idea – inter halls quiz. There was a discussion about whether that would exclude people who weren’t in halls, but it was explained that they would fall under the private rented group.

Anjit also spoke about the Culture Week project – a week showcasing different cultural societies and was looking into setting up a working group for the project.

Rebecca also updated the Committee that they had received 64 respondents so far for the Avenue Campus survey.

As there was no other business the meeting was closed at 18:26.