September was a busy month for the SRUCSA team! September is when it all happens – we get to welcome back returning students and show the newbies what it is all about. We kept up to date with the EIS/SRUC dispute SRUCSA has an on-going training plan for this year, so we had lots of that too.

Here are some highlights from what we got up to:

Welcome Week

We had our Welcome Week activities. We delivered online sessions for all SRUC campuses, got hosts in to deliver Cookalong, yoga and a quiz night. Our SRUCSA introduction session also introduced students to lots of other opportunities – becoming a class rep, a student ambassador, getting involved with peer support, clubs and societies and SRUCSA campaigns. We welcomed international students and held sessions to introduce students to their Co-President. Roz even managed to fit in being on the Barony campus to hand out some goodies! We had a blast getting to know you all.

Training

We had our First Responder gender-based violence training with Rape Crisis Scotland. It opened our eyes to lots of issues and gave us lots of things to consider. This training will support us in supporting students who are affected by these issues.

Cara attended Think Positive information session
Cara attended training days for her roles with Not On My Campus
We had Equality training from Fiona Thompson, who introduced us to Equality Impact Assessments that ensure everyone is considered when writing a policy, and different types of bias.

Class Reps

Class rep election should have happened in your class by now. We have received lots of names, but not all of them. If you are a class rep and haven’t heard from us, get in touch. Training will be on the 26th and 28th October, 1st and 3rd November.

EIS SRUC Staff Strike Action

We continued to discuss the strike action with EIS and SRUC. We wrote up a small blog post on how we see our role as translators for students during this ongoing action. If you have been impacted by the strikes – we want to hear from you!

SRUCSA’s 21/22

We continued our year planning – view our planner of activities here (LINK). See something you want to get involved in? Message us!

Projects

We are making lots of progress on Green Health Week our celebration of good mental health and being outdoors.
Went to SSEC and we are pushing SRUC to release with in advance of students starting so that students can manage their lives with study.
Roz has been engaging the SRUC careers staff over organising a student career opportunities event.

Other important bits and bobs

• We met with IDS over how they offer support to students.
• We met with sparqs about the SQA learner panel. SQA will now attend the NEON event to meet Students’ Association officers.
• We took part in the equality impact assessment for SRUC admissions policy
• We attended a Q and A to the minister for higher education etc, Jamie Hepburn.
• Amy took part in a review of the questions students get asked at the end of each module. This will remove bias and increase the number of students who chose to complete the surveys. So that we can see more improvements to modules that the whole class.