Here are the Sabbatical Officers who are leading the Union. Here’s a quick introduction to Aatikah, D’Arcy, Jim, Caroline, Ashley Nilisha and Sandra:
Welfare and International Officer: Aatikah Malik
Aatikah studies BA History
You can read Aatikah’s manifesto here, and below is a short summary.
- Increased awareness of mental health and support: Stronger zero tolerance on sexual harassment in both the Union and university campus. Stronger personal tutoring systems and mental health training. Permanent nap rooms and productive use of new space
- Combating discrimination: Decolonise the curriculum and ensure BME students sense of belonging and welfare. Ensure a more culturally sensitive mental health service. Strengthen the hate crime reporting centre and
- Student community: Support estranged students and those with English as a second language
- Remove attendance monitoring scheme
- Housing and finance: Cut the rent and help students with financial management and housing advice through lobbying the university
Activities Officer: D’Arcy McGuinness
D’Arcy studies BSc Psychology
You can read D’Arcy’s manifesto here, and below is a short summary.
- Processes: Refine administrative processes that hinder activities, focusing on the accessibility of room bookings and the efficiency/clarity of finance
- Space: Increase priority spaces available for activities. Pressure UCL to avoid wasted spaces.
- Storage: Reduce wasted spending on equipment/resources that cannot be kept because of the lack of facilities
- Support: Provide a regular and dedicated opportunity for club and society members to communicate with the Union. Ensure clubs and societies can support their members and be supported themselves
Postgraduate Students’ Officer: Jim Onyemenam
Jim studies LLM Law
You can read Jim’s manifesto here, and below is a short summary.
- Campaign for better pay and benefits for students who teach
- Improve bursaries and childcare funding for parents and carers
- Encourage the participation of postgraduate students in clubs, societies, and activities
- Career advice tailored for postgraduate (and particularly international postgraduate) students
Women’s Officer: Nilisha Vashist
Nilisha is undertaking a Research Degree in the Division of Psychiatry
You can read Nilisha’s manifesto here, and below is a short summary
- Increase financial support to disabled, women with care-giving responsibilities, improve women’s mental health and closing the gender pay gap.
- Stricter implementation of zero tolerance policy and combating all forms of misogyny on campus.
- Promote women peer-networking and mentoring, especially for BME and disabled women.
- Holding inter-cultural events for international women, especially postgraduates, to tackle isolation and loneliness.
- Work with the LGBTQ and disabled students’ societies to bring together all self-defining women and non-binary students.
Democracy, Operations and Community Officer: Caroline Paige
Caroline studies MSc Risk, Disaster and Resilience Earth Sciences
You can read Caroline’s manifesto here, and below is a short summary
- Democracy - continue to reform Union democratic processes so that students can more easily affect change.
- Operations - improve student facilities: more microwaves and kettles around campus!
- Community - address student concerns that many don’t feel like a ‘part of UCL’
Education Officer: Ashley Slanina-Davies
Ashley is studying MSci Neuroscience
You can read Ashley’s manifesto here, and below is a short summary
- A dedicated point of contact for interrupting students and facilitation of their return to UCL
- More dedicated teaching staff to bridge the gap between what it is necessary to learn and what there is time to teach within a degree programme’s contact hours
- More encouragement and guidance on pursuing internal and external academic opportunities
- ISD Meet & Greet at all external lecture venues
- Adequate funding for student mental health services – anything less is a breach of UCL’s duty of care
Black & Minority Ethnic Students’ Officer: Sandra Ogundele
Sandra studies BSc Natural Sciences
You can read Sandra’s manifesto here, and below is a short summary
- Fight for quality welfare support for BME students, by pushing for crisis accommodation, free travel cards for students in need and increased funding for mental health services
- Use student forums and society collaborations to build bridges across cultures and stand united against all racism, xenophobia and discrimination
- Provide accessible political education workshops and training to build capacity to collectively organise around campaigns like Decolonise UCL
- Support the fight for free education by resisting changes to higher education that hit BME students the hardest
The new team starts on 1 July 2019, until then our current officer team are busy working on ways to make student life at UCL amazing.
The spring election in stats
