Allow societies and Sabb candidates to use printed resources
Anonymous submitted on
Friday 4th March 2022
Complete
A lot of societies have been struggling due to not being able to hand out flyers or put up poster advertisements due to sustainability rules. I think that given the amount of waste from external businesses generated at events like freshers fair, it is unfair to restrict what societies can hand out when we're already struggling to recruit members. Furthermore, the sabbatical candidates not being able to hang up posters or hand out flyers means they have to increase their on-campus presence and spend more time online campaigning and talking to others, for two weeks they have had to do this which will impact their ability to engage with their degrees. If things such as posters were allowed to be hung up on campus, Sabb candidates would be able to reach more people in less time, which means they won't be falling so far behind on their respective courses. I think that the sustainability rules of SUSU detriment the societies and students but tend to be waived where businesses and money are involved.
Responses
Here, you can view the complete set of official responses from the sabbatical officers regarding this submission.
Students' Union replied on
Friday 18th Mar 2022 11:12am
Hello there. Thanks so much for your submission, and, if you were involved in the recent leadership elections in any way, I hope you had a really positive experience. I absolutely take your points on board, and will feed this back to the Activities Team. As you may know, we do, in exceptional circumstances, allow students to distribute physical flyers. However, as a general rule, to meet the spirit of our sustainability commitments, we would prefer to keep the principle that students should campaign and promote causes and society membership virtually. In addition, many through the course of the Freshers' and Refreshers' Fairs told us that they had a really positive experience of using new technologies when engaging with students in person, such as creating their own printed QR codes with links to membership sites. This allows for greater flexibility for sharing messages with different groups of students, and also reduces massively the paper waste we used to witness.
- Ben.
Students' Union replied on
Friday 11th Mar 2022 3:31pm
Hi, we do not allow posters within the elections due to sustainability purposes and fairness within the elections. Previously, where we have used bedsheets and/or posters, more complaints would come in due to students putting their posters over each other, and students wouldn't follow rules of where they could hang their posters. Social media is becoming one of the most effective ways to campaign online, and we also share student posters for the elections on our digital signage. We feel if we allowed posters to go up, it would cause more disruptions and complaints and go against SUSU's position on sustainability.
Unfortunately, I cannot respond to your queries about societies or why local businesses can use posters and leaflets during Freshers Fair, so I am going to reassign this to Ben, your Union President, where sustainability falls under his remit.
Let me know if you have any further questions about elections and we're more than happy to take feedback on representation@susu.org.
Actions
Forwarded to Union President
Friday 18th Mar 2022 10:04am
Forwarded to Union President
Friday 11th Mar 2022 3:32pm
Forwarded to Vice President Education and Democracy
Friday 11th Mar 2022 2:21pm
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