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clifford-fleming
11th March 2013

Campaigns Officer: Clifford Fleming

Clifford Fleming tells us why we should vote for him for Campaigns Officer
TLDR

Hey everyone, my name is Clifford and I’d love if you could vote for me! I want a big red difference and you can vote on your student portal between the 8th and 14th of March. Here are some of my ideas:

I want to campaign for better feedback from lecturers and seminar tutors before the final essay or exam. Producing drafts or doing activities that relate directly to the final mark will help us know more about how we’re doing and help us improve. We need a system where we can see the feedback from previous students on those modules and a system where lecturers and students can work together on improving each and every module. No course should be ruined by bad teaching. We need more access to online materials such as podcasts of lectures and wider resources.

I want to work on making both the south and north campuses better places to study and socialise. North campus needs a huge revamp and the Student’s Union on north campus needs better facilities. We need to reduce the amount of commercial flyering outside the student’s unions; it’s wasteful, pretty annoying and there are better ways to advertise! I’ll campaign for an electronic, interactive timetable in the union that will cover commercial and society events happening each day of each week.

We need more water coolers and clearer cycle paths. Water coolers need to have cups provided, so students without water bottles can access water during studies.

In my time as Campaigns & Citizenship Officer I want to produce a report into the utilities market and broadband companies. Loads of you guys get ripped off by companies, and that needs to change! I want to especially work on an international student support system, where new students to the UK are supported in things like accommodation applications, mobile phone providers and other stuff too. I want to work closely with international societies and students to build this idea into something really amazing.

I think it is crazy talk when many students want to work with a charity or campaigning society and are bogged down with paperwork! Then they are told that they can only get really limited funding with so many strict rules. We need to release more funding for charity and campaign societies. I want to work on increasing charity and campaigning society initiatives across campus. Great work was already done this University year by the religious societies working together in Platt Fields Park and the charity societies putting on a fashion show, not to mention the hard work consistently delivered from RAG, Student Action and loads of other societies too.

I want to work closely with already existing campaign societies; together we need to raise awareness of global issues such as poverty, inequalities, injustice and environmental degradation. I want to help tackle prejudices on campus, whether they are against women, against any religions or culture, against the disabled or against any sexual orientation. Prejudices on campus must end. Every person has the right to be who they are, whether they are black or white, Muslim or Christian, gay or straight. Nobody on campus should feel insecure or be discriminated against.

I want to hear what all you think by visiting as many students as possible – whether that is going to society events, student halls or lectures. I will promise to students that I will fight tooth and nail to protect their courses from closure. It is important for our University to offer choice and it is unfair to start closing courses.

Citizenship week is another one of my ideas – to run a week, with the help of the Community Officer, where students are encouraged to develop their citizenship through charity-work, local community work and campaigns. This can be tied into the brilliant work Student Action already do, not to mention an increase in funding to both Student Action and RAG. I want to try to introduce a better reward system for those who work hard in the local community. A Social Responsibility Award would be ace, where societies and individuals can compete for an award of social responsibility and citizenship.


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