SUSU does not care about other other religions and cultures - NO post about Holi (Hindu Festival) AGAIN!

Anonymous submitted on

Thursday 21st March 2019

Complete

Last year SUSU conveniently forgot to post about Diwali (BIGGEST Hindu festival). Emilly wrote the following reply.

Today is Holi, and yet again the student union has not made any post or remark about it. 

Do international student and their cultures not matter? If you are not supposed to post about religious holidays then surely Christmas and Easter would fall under that category too?

If you are paid for a role representing international students, maybe do the job you and make an effort to make an inclusive environment for everyone by respecting all religions and cultures. 

Hi there,

Thank you for your You Make Change submission.

Firstly, I apoligise that there was not any communications about Diwali on the actual day. I was on annual leave for that week and was not here. As you might have seen, there was some social media posts from the main SUSU page the day after highlighting the events put on by various societies, such as Hindu Society, to celebrate the festival. I also posted with delayed well wishes and apologies when I was briefly in the office on Friday.

However, I absolutely appreciate that there should have been a post that went out on the actual day. I have raised this within the Union and am working to ensure that the delivery of things such as this is not reliant on one person and so things should be picked up in an absense of a Sabbatical Officer.

The videos are a lovely idea, however due to recent events we have not had the time to organise these. Following your YMC submission, I have booked in some time with our videographer to film a series of videos for occassions such as this.

We are very committed to acknowledging other cultures and important festivals. For example, in October we had Black History Month where we worked enstively with various relevant societies, such as East African Society, Ghanaian Society and ACS to put on a series of diverse events and campaigns celebrating various cultures. This was our biggest Black History Month to date and saw the most engagement from students yet which was fantastic! We have also financially supported the East vs West Fashion Show which is being put on by East African Society which is a celebration of East and West African fashion and culture. We plan to continue to support students and societies in celebrating various cultures throughotu the year. For example, we will be decorating the concourse for Lunar New Year again and are also currently in the planning stages of Cukture Festival which we will be holding again in March.

If you have any ideas for what you would like to see us doing for future festivals or celebrations of any kind, please let us know beforehand and we are more than happy to work with you on whatever you want to achieve! You can contact me by emailing me at vpcommunities@susu.org.

Kind regards,

Emily Harrison

VP Student Communities 2018-19.

Answers

Let's keep this space positive and respectful! Feel free to share your thoughts and opinions, but please remember to keep the conversation friendly and avoid any offensive comments.

Emily Harrison submitted on

Friday 12th April 2019

Complete

Hi there,

Thank you for your You Make Change submission.

As per my reply to the You Make Change submission following Diwali, I did indeed speak to our marketing and communication team about ensuring there are posts on religious holidays. We sat down and created a calendar. However, it quickly became apparent that there were far too many to reasonably be able to post about every single one. It was felt that it would be worse to post about some and not others.

Additionally, we are trying to ensure that all of our posts have helpful and valuable content to students, such as promoting relevant events and information. We therefore did not want to be merely posting well wishes as that becomes merely a tick box exercise and I am sure students want us to be actually do events and things to celebrate religious holidays, such as Holi, as opposed to merely putting out a post acknowledging it. As such, we have been working with India society to plan and host the Holi Hai event, as we have done for the past few years. This is happening later than the actual day as the society wanted to wait until nicer weather. The reason this event wasn't promoted on Holi itself was because we did not have a definite confirmation of date from the society at the time. You can find a post about this event here: https://www.facebook.com/UnionSouthampton/posts/2333711026674346

Of course we absolutely value our International students and all the holidays they celebrate. For example, last month we hosted Culture Festival, two weeks where we celebrate International culture. This includes our Global Village event, which is always incredibly popular, where International societies showcase their culture with traditional dress, food, games and music in the Concourse (Reception area of Building 42). 

As I stated in my previosu reply to the submission following Diwali, we are always keen to work with students on any activities you would like to happen. If you, or any other students, had got in touch previous to Holi and had asked for something specific to happen on the day, we would have been more than willing to work with you/ them on this. However, as mentioned above, the students we were working with on Holi celebrations already did not feel that something specific was needed to go out on the day btu we should wait until confirmed detaisl of the Holi Hai event.

If you would like to discuss this further, please feel free to drop me an email to vpcommunities@susu.org

King regards,

Emily Harrison,

Vice President Student Communities, 2018-19.

Question for: Vice President Student Communities