SU Spring Elections 2025 Interviews: Bhawini Rathor, VP Postgraduates
In the run-up to the Warwick Students’ Union (SU) Spring Elections, The Boar and RAW 1251AM collaborated to offer all Full-Time Officer (FTO) candidates the opportunity to be interviewed.
Bhawini Rathor, one of a wide field of twelve candidates running for the position of Vice President for Postgraduate Students, sat down with RAW 1251AM. The interview showcased Bhawini’s vision for the future of postgraduate life at Warwick and her strategies to support the diverse needs of postgraduate students.
What are your key manifesto pledges?
Referring back to her manifesto, Rathor outlined her four key priorities:
- Financial support
- Sustainability
- Academic support and accessibility
- Engagement and community
Rathor explained she intends to “look into all the four [aims] collectively in terms of wellbeing”. Her proposed ideas for meeting these priorities include wellbeing weeks, inclusive networking opportunities, collaborative events with reserve slots for postgraduates, transparency for assessments, and efforts to bridge the gap between different study disciplines.
Many postgraduates feel disengaged from the SU, societies, and sports clubs, especially in relation to undergraduate students. How would you make the SU more inclusive to postgraduates?
Rathor identified a few key areas where she feels postgraduates are disadvantaged and underrepresented, including the high cost of sports memberships, time constraints when balancing studies and other commitments, difficulty in accessing information regarding extracurriculars, and sustainability concerns.
To address these issues and promote inclusivity Rathor said: “I believe that if we could provide them [postgraduate students] with networking events which fall into their own calendars, that would be a good opportunity for them to look into their co-curriculars and extracurriculars.”
She added that, “We should have a central newsletter for the postgraduates concerning all the links”, so students can read about “the events that are happening”.
To alleviate students’ concerns about climate action and sustainability, Rathor pledged to bring students together to “speak about it at a platform where everybody shares their view”.
What new services, provisions, or spaces would you aim to introduce to support postgraduates studying at Warwick?
Rathor highlighted a lack of networking opportunities for postgraduates with students from other universities. She said: “If we could give them a chance to have different collaborations with universities, I believe that […] all the students could share their own views on a particular discipline, and that would somehow increase the interest and spaces” for postgraduates.
In addition to this, if elected, Rathor would establish a buddy system for dissertations, enabling joint problem-solving and sharing of subject information.
Rathor then mentioned a lack of quiet spaces for postgraduates. She said: “I believe that the postgraduate spaces that we have on campus are somehow always full, and we do require a few more.”
How would you ensure that postgraduate students who come to Warwick from different universities/countries feel welcome and supported?
Rathor began by saying that most postgraduates are international students who face a “culture shock” due to a variety of reasons. To overcome this and help students settle in, Rathor will set up an “international student mentorship program” informing how “things work over here” and “how is it different from where they have come from”.
Rathor then shared her plans for creating a more inclusive Welcome Week as presently “it’s a bit too short” meaning new students “miss on the societies and to actually get to know what Warwick has to offer.” She advocates for restructuring the timetable so students are “exploring opportunities” and learning about “different societies” while meeting “different people”.
Touching on her previous point about “culture shock”, Rathor believes Welcome Week can be an opportunity for students to connect with “people from their own countries” which would “help them get a grasp of how things work”.
The postgraduate community at Warwick comprises both master’s and PhD students who may have different needs, dependent upon the level they are studying at. How would you ensure you are advocating for both groups’ interests?
After mentioning she had put a lot of thought into the fact that undergraduate, master’s, and PhD students are all voting for her position, Rathor emphasised that all their needs have to be addressed. Rathor proposed “interdisciplinary meets” to bring PhD and master’s students together to create “one community”. She suggested this could be done through informal “coffee hours”, where students “could just sit and speak and network about particular things that they want to”.
Rathor continued: “We have different PhD students coming from different universities as well, so we can always include them in different activities that we have, so that would actually give them an edge over academics.”
Many postgraduates also deliver teaching to undergraduates. How would you represent these postgraduate’s particular interests?
Rathor stressed the importance of postgraduates sharing their past experiences and advice for future decision-making. To facilitate this, Rathor said she will establish “meet-ups where the postgraduates and the undergraduates come together and they speak about their own interests”.
When discussing the teaching aspect, Rathor said: “I do not really feel that there is any space that has to be worked on, because it’s completely optional.” However, she did follow this up by saying, “If there is anything that is required by the postgraduate student, I would like to make sure that I’m there and there to speak on their behalf. And if there are any needs that are required, they could reach out to me whenever they need to.”
What makes you stand out from other postgraduate officer candidates?
Rathor emphasised that whilst she may initially appear introverted, she likes to listen to people and allow them to input their own ideas. Rathor stated: “I spoke to a few students that were around me, and […] I believe I’m standing for this position, not just for myself, but for the people. It’s not just about my own perspectives and my own perceptions about a particular thing, but everybody as a whole.”
To finish, Rathor said: “I would really like to explore different disciplines and the different problems that people go through, and I somehow feel that at some point it’s the same thing that we actually face. So, learning about that and working for them, I believe would make me stand as a different candidate and a distinctive candidate.”
This interview, along with other interviews for the Vice President positions, can be watched in full using the link here, courtesy of RAW 1251AM. [coming soon]
Read Bhawini Rathor’s manifesto here.
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