August is a time planning and preparation for the start of term and welcome week. We are super excited to have student back studying soon and can’t wait to meet you all.

Your Co-Presidents all met together for the first time, a working brunch of pancakes – Which led to our most liked Instagram post yet.

Most of our time has been spent preparing for student starting back at SRUC. Both planning our welcome week activities and asking SRUC to give out regular updates. To make sure you are informed about what coming back to study will be like.

After encouraging SRUC to create a celebration for our graduation students. We assisted with the organisation and took part on the day with pre-recorded speeches and watching live. Or, in Amy’s case, graduating.

Because we think it is important that there should be no barriers to graduation, we introduced a grant scheme for anyone to cover the cost of hiring a gown. We have given out 41 grants so far. If you would like to, apply by 12pm on Friday, 3rd of September with this form.

Cara and Roz received training to sit on the SRUC board from Colin Peebles, the Company Secretary. This information, that told them lots about the way that SRUC works, will help them to give a great contribution to the SRUC board from the student perspective.

Amy has been busy with the Annual Quality Dialogues, where teaching teams have a conversation with SRUC about how they have improved and how they will continue to improve. This gave Amy a great chance to question teaching teams about how they are listening and responding to your needs, the needs of their students.

Your Disabled Students Liberation Officer Fi wrote this great blog post of her experience of living with a hidden disability.

This great blog post from an SRUC PhD student about the grades you get at Highers not being as important as they feel at the time really struck a chord with us.

We explored with SRUC the reasons why they can’t get timetables out to student in advance of them starting their courses. We don’t think this is good enough, and we will continue to push them to get timetables to students well in advance of their start dates.

Our campaign to increase awareness of Gender Based Violence has been making important progress. We will be undertaking training with Rape Crisis Scotland in October. We are arranging campus walkarounds once it gets dark with SRUC to identify places that may be feel safe.

We’ve been running a series of introductions to everyone at SRUCSA on our Instagram profile