What I've been up to...

I gave an objectives update to Students Union Council tonight so I thought I'd let you in on what I have actually been doing this year as well;


Union Council Update 21/02/08 – Matt Wiltshire

Since my last update Showcase happened, it was pretty much a success with about 14 societies performing from across the range of societies. Medieval Re-enactment, Dancesport and even Countdown Appreciation Society took part with a live game of Countdown to close the first half. It was well attended and in total 195 tickets were sold out of a maximum of 200.

Over Christmas I significantly re-worked my objectives and reduced them to fewer but measurable and achievable targets (see below).

I have also continued with planning the ‘Summer Volunteering’ event that myself and Mark Willoughby have been working on. Its basically a chance to hang around after term finishes in the summer and get stuck into community volunteering projects fixing railings painting playgrounds, that kind of thing! The Sheffield Volunteering Board have agreed a significant amount of budget for it and Student Connections have also found some commercial sponsors of the event - all that is left now is the students and there has already been expressions of interest in the event. I would hope most members of council would be up for getting involved… we’ll keep you updated!

There are good things happening with the computers in the Source I had a meeting with CICS today and although they’re still pretty dire the modifications to make it easy to log out etc should be happening soon. Printing will be available on four computers in the Source very soon and possibly in the future on all of them.

There has been numerous problems with room bookings across the University and a lot of societies are pretty annoyed at the University at the moment. There have been several unrelated issues to do with the residencies, University House and elsewhere, slowly but surely we are working it out (a lot of credit to Tom Bramall for using his politics degree to resolve these issues far better than I could).

The refreshers fair went generally well, unfortunately most societies were pretty annoyed at getting such a small pitch, this is something I will leave in the handover notes to be addressed next year… its not the easiest of tasks to fit everyone into the Octagon though!

The performance space in the Source area that has been talked about in the past has this week been used by the Islamic circle, I’m still looking to get SUTCO in to use it as a one-off venue for one of their short plays but they haven’t yet got back to me.

There is a perennial problem with storage in the Union but again the issue is slowly but surely being resolved. After Film Making society kindly moved up to be based in the Media Hub we have reshuffled around the storage for societies, fitted some new doors to cupboards on the finance corridor and hopefully by the time you read this shelves should be fitted as well to make (most) of our societies happy.

The Societies Committee and I are making progress on the Working Committee/Society review and after initial not-very-far-ranging research had been undertaken it was decided to mostly rely on last years research on the same issue… who would have thought… next job is to dig that out. I hope to have proposals for council after Easter.

All forms for new societies and extra funding forms are all online (http://www.shef.ac.uk/union/activities-and-sport/extra-opportunities-form.php) now woohoo! This is part of a broader plan which didn’t make it onto my objectives but I will drive by the by to build the profile of the Activities Space on the website.

The three most recent things I have been working on are the Society Awards, Uni Challenge and EEK Week. Next week the online form should be launched for societies to nominate themselves or others for awards. Secondly with the success of our University Challenge team this is a prime time to launch our campaign to find next year’s winning team ( Monday 3rd March 5.00pm SU Auditorium http://www.shef.ac.uk/union/event.php?contentID=2500). Thirdly I have been working on Ethical and Environmental Knowledge (EEK) Week this week and as far as I am aware (being buried in my office all day) it’s gone pretty well so far!

Working on Faith Matters Week with the Chaplaincy, which falls at the same time as International Week has been unfortunate but seeing as me and Marika love each other we should be able to resolve the conflict and all live in peace and harmony like Krishna.

Just after Christmas we managed to finally resolve the issue of Societies using Coffee Revolution and not being charged to do so. There needs to be further discussions on whether we incentivise student activity to stay within the Union, especially with other venues but for now a good compromise has been reached.


Revised Objectives as of 24/01/08

a.) Student Activities Review
To increase support for student societies and improve communication by;

i. creating a ‘Society Bible’ with everything a union society needs to know.
ii. introducing staff post specifically to support societies.
iii. re-categorising Societies and Working Committees to make distinctions clear (implications on Society Councils)
iv. supporting the Societies Committee in running an Awards Event for Societies.

b.) Support RAG and Volunteering
To support both the RAG and volunteering committees by;

i. attending committee meetings twice this semester
ii. supporting and leading on the summer volunteering project
iii. supporting RAG week as much as possible
iv. supporting the new community fundraising post – (focussing on society involvement)

c.) Environmental Excellence
To improve the environmental performance of the Union and University by;

i. supporting ‘Environmental & Ethical Knowledge’ week
ii. providing limited support for implementation of the ‘Sound Impact Awards’
iii. taking environmental considerations into account as part of the 2012 building project group
iv. reviewing other student unions’ practices

d.) Start a band