Sara Khan has had an eventful first year as Liberation and Access Officer at the Students’ Union (SU), having been at the centre of the clap-gate media storm, Reclaim The Night controversy, and an effort to introduce a “sensitivity reader” to The Mancunion.
She was also the largest spender of any Officer, having shelled out £4,318.81 on various projects. She received an allocation of £1,000 from a different Union department, taking her net spend down to £3,318.81 – 41% of the total budget for all eight Officers.
Most of her spend – £2,525.81 – was on Black History Month, which was the reason £1,000 allocated to her. Khan says this money was spent before “the SU took the measure to allocate budgets specifically for each history month.”
Following Black History Month, Khan says she learned lessons from this and delivered “a much more cost-effective success” in LGBTQ+ History Month, spending £391.45.
Khan attended 65.2% of her scheduled meetings this year, citing “complex mental health issues” in semester one as the reason as to why she took sick leave, causing her to miss a large portion of her meetings. She added that she believed her “attendance and performance in semester two, along with [her] health, has been improved”.
In terms of her manifesto, Khan named five pledges for 2018/19, which were: “Make the mitigating circumstances process more accessible”, “improve childcare provision on campus”, “improve and diversify the counselling service”, “lobby for more multi-faith prayer spaces on campus”, and “lobby for a diverse curriculum that is inclusive of the achievements of women, ethnic minorities, and LGBT+ people”.
