SU Spring Elections Question Time Day 1: Full-Time Officers

In the build-up to this week’s Students’ Union (SU) Spring elections, The Boar attended a Question Time event for all candidates competing for Full-Time Officer positions.

Candidates for the positions were able to talk about their campaigns in a short speech, followed by questions asked by The Boar and RAW 1251AM in the SU’s Kevin Gately Room.

VP Welfare and Campaigns

Beginning the event with a fully present panel of candidates, all five VP Welfare and Campaigns hopefuls, Harri Paget, Dae Pomery, Khadija Malik, Jack Thompson, and Tyler Wang Sabot, were present at the Question Time event.

On the welfare side, all candidates placed a heavy emphasis on improving the transparency and accessibility of wellbeing services and their processes. Harri Paget, current Co-Disabled Students’ Officer, highlighted that the University has “let a lot of freshers down” regarding their integration into campus life this year. This was met with several nods from the room including all other candidates.

Regarding campaigns, Dae Pomeroy immediately underlined in their introduction that “campaigns have been undervalued for far too long”, while Tyler Wang Sabot expressed their interest in continuing existing successful campaigns such as ‘End Period Poverty’ and freezing bus fares. Khadija Malik, Harri Paget, and Jack Thompson all also pushed for creating greater access for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, be that ethnic, socioeconomic, disability, or otherwise.

In a Boar survey last year, only 52% of readers said they would go to the Community Safety Team about their concerns regarding, or experiences of, sexual misconduct on campus. What more can be done to increase this number, and increase trust in the Community Safety Team?

Wang Sabot and Thompson both began their responses questioning the training of the Community Safety Team (CST) and whether it is sufficiently equipped to deal with cases of sexual misconduct. Thompson went on to suggest he would push for students to be consulted on the creation and development of this training so that it can better serve them.

It’s not just the CST who need reform, as Wang Sabot also characterised the culture around the Report and Support system as being one of interrogation rather than support. Pomeroy took this a step further, saying that “misconduct and misogyny are embedded into our culture”. To tackle this, they want to clearly separate the CST from wellbeing and from security services, highlighting that wellbeing services are not provided as a first-response in cases of sexual misconduct where they should be.

This was echoed by Paget who called for mental health first responders, noting that the CST are seen primarily as emergency responders. Wang Sabot, Pomeroy, Malik, and Paget all questioned the effectiveness of the existing Report and Support system, with the lack of transparency on whether your responses will remain anonymous, what the process looks like, and the level of probing all seeming to greatly put students off reporting incidents.

In the event that first year students are placed on off-campus accommodation again next year, what steps would you take to ensure they’re supported and represented by the SU?

Paget opened with a pledge to push for subsidised bus passes for these students, calling it “ridiculous” to place this extra cost of commuting on first-years living off-campus when they have little choice in being there.

As The Boar found, there are enough rooms on campus to house all first years but these rooms are being filled with returners and postgraduates. Pomery and Malik would both like to see an investigation into this issue questioning why people are returning to campus accommodation, with the former highlighting that students like themself may not be able to live off-campus because they don’t have a guarantor, and the latter highlighting that perhaps quotas should be placed on returners living on-campus.

While Thompson is pushing for a greater diversity of events on campus, particularly art and culture events, to encourage an increased engagement with campus life across all years, Wang Sabot and Paget both also suggested bringing events, particularly the SU Advice Centre as Paget proposes, to students in Coventry to have their voices heard too. 

VP Sports

Every candidate for VP Sports attended the Question Time event, with all four – Hugh Gunton, Nazrana Meghji, Thomas Starr, and Stuart Rance – pushing for an increased presence of Warwick’s sporting prowess both on and off campus. As Rance said: “We all know Warwick is an academic excellence uni. I believe we can also be a sporting excellence uni.”

The biggest issue that seemed to be raised in every introductory speech was the lack of support for sports club execs. Gunton and Rance both highlighted that sporting at Warwick could become a more inclusive place if execs had the proper training and support to make this happen, while Starr focussed on the lack of overall support execs receive from the SU regarding both funding and the “sheer amount of work” execs have to do.

Meghji also emphasised the “sense of empowerment” she found through sports, not only through being a woman in male-dominated sporting fields but also as an international student, with sporting enabling her to find her place in what she described as a “crazy intimidating” environment when moving to a foreign country.

There is often a perceived culture of heavy drinking and humiliating initiations associated with sports societies. What involvement do you think the VP Sports should have in maintaining a safe environment for students?

Meghji called directly back to her manifesto pledge of mandating more sober socials in all sports societies, as well as having a sober exec member at socials. This comes following interviews where she found numerous students did not join a sports club because of the fear of the drinking culture, and she concluded, “Who better to address this than your VP Sports?”

While conceding this impression of a heavy drinking culture is “pretty impossible to get rid of”, Rance wanted to emphasise to exec that they can neither force people to do things they don’t want to do nor discriminate against them for not doing certain activities, then enforcing “severe punishments” on any exec who act otherwise.

Starr seconded Meghji’s call for sober execs, adding that there should be both a sober and a welfare-trained exec member at every social, which he deemed a very “reasonable” policy to put in place.

Honing in on initiations specifically, Gunton said “we’ve taken a step back in the last year” where such big socials previously had to be risk-assessed but are now left to the discretion of exec members. Leaving “a 19-year-old social sec, who’s not trained, with the entire responsibility of making sure these big events are safely run” is, to him, a step in the wrong direction. He reiterated that execs need to be supported and trained about what makes a safe drinking event, as well as how many non-drinking events should be available.

Many disabled students feel sidelined from Warwick Sport and unable to participate in equal measure. What steps would you take to make Warwick sport more inclusive for disabled students?

Both Gunton and Meghji highlighted that, as able-bodied people themselves, they cannot with certainty say what needs to be done, so the focus should be on speaking with disabled students to find out what they need to be able to access sports. With Meghji wanting to concentrate on “listening and representation”, not only from disabled students but also working with Part-Time Officers to make sporting more inclusive, Gunton emphasised that inclusivity in sports will not be achieved from “impos[ing] top-down solutions” but engaging with a diverse range of people to create solutions.

Starr focused on a shortage of funding being the main barrier that inhibits the accessibility of sports clubs. He wants to look into which sports clubs are currently best equipped to help disabled people get into sports and then focus funding there, as the “most efficient way to get disabled people into sports”, and then expand accessibility programs from there.

Coming back to exec training, Rance called upon an example where Warwick Cricket were asked to make their training more diverse-friendly, yet none of the exec had the tools or knowledge to facilitate that. He emphasised that it’s a point of training execs to be able to include a wide range of people in their clubs so that less able-bodied people can “have the same experience as everybody else in university”, and echoed Starr’s point about the lack of funding in sports budgets. 

VP Societies

All three candidates for VP Societies – Ben Cavasi, Aadi Nandedkar, and current position-holder Adam Skrzymowski – were in attendance.

Nandedkar spoke about their experience as an exec member on five societies, “working with the SU and having collaborations with countless societies”.

“I want to make the SU an easier place for societies to work with”, they said, “and to create resources that will more sufficiently guide exec members into their roles.”

Skrzymowski began by detailing his achievements as VP Soc in the past year, “getting through promises” such as the “Term Two Societies Fair, advertising new funding opportunities, overhauling exec resources, digitising loads of manual processes, and lots of other things”.

He told the room that he wants to “keep that momentum going”, listing his aims this time as being to “end the socs fee once and for all, overhaul exec and SU communications with a new support portal, introduce participation funds, create a new events platform for all society events and a taster programme, and lobby the University for institutional support”. 

“Vote for a candidate with a track record of results”, he concluded.

Cavasi listed “affordability, accessibility, transparency, collaboration, and opportunity” as his key aims. 

Stating that “societies are one of, if not the, most important things you can do at Warwick”, he detailed his desire to “foster an SU that supports you”, letting people go to the awards ceremonies and competitions they would like to but maybe cannot afford.

Reform UK is seeing increasing support on UK campuses. If a student group applied to create a society affiliated with Reform UK, would you support its approval, and how would you ensure the process behind approving the society is transparent?

Nandedkar responded: “As an SU we can’t say a political society can’t exist because we don’t agree with their views. In terms of transparency, I would let people know about the discussions that happen.”

Cavasi clarified how Reform UK is a “recognised political party” and that the SU would have a “legal obligation to recognise it under law”.

“I want to make sure that it’s made clear that this doesn’t mean support in any way”, he clarified. “If anything, it’s the opposite. I think that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from accountability, and I think it’s better for us to ensure that we can hold political societies like Reform accountable like we have done in the past, and it would be better to do that under SU affiliation.”

Skrzymowski noted his opposition to Reform UK’s “toxic political rhetoric”, but stated that he believes in “students’ right to express their views”. Approving the society “would go through the same process as any other society, through the societies forum”, he told the room, adding that the details of this process on the SU website are already “quite transparent”.

Societies often struggle to find the storage space for equipment on campus, with exec members often having to haul it on the bus from home. How would you support societies on these issues?

Up first, Skrzymowski outlined how he has been “working on this”, securing more cabinets for society storage, but that he has not made as much progress as he would have liked so far. He hopes to “try and lobby for more institutional support for activities that two-thirds of our students engage with”.

Cavasi would liaise with the University over where we can put things, he said – “a lot of societies can’t function if they don’t have places to store their equipment”.

Nandedkar added to their competitions’ responses by noting BioSoc’s success with finding space in Gibbet Hill campus, and said it would be good to get the University more involved in similar efforts.

VP Democracy & Development (DDO)

Of the two candidates running for this role, only James Varney, incumbent DDO, was present at Question Time.

Varney listed some of his successes in the past year in his opening speech, including the ‘Better Buses’ campaign which has seen him secure more consistent U1 buses past Parish Church.

“It’s unacceptable that we can’t get to lectures, seminars and back home without paying hundreds of pounds to Stagecoach for terrible service. I’ll continue the work I’ve done this year by forcing senior University leadership to take real action regarding Stagecoach.”

He noted how he’s currently got the company’s regional manager “around the table” and expressed his intention to take his campaign into the future.

Varney also intends to “create an SU that works for you” through upgrades to SU spaces and its website, and said on accommodation: “I’ll lobby for a rent freeze, especially for the cheapest accommodations, and against freshers being put off campus.”

How do you plan on making students more closely involved in day-to-day SU decision-making?

Varney explained how he has tried to make sure this is a “student-led SU, whether that be Operations, our societies, our work on sustainability, and our democracy”. His work, he said, has been about “making sure that power is in students’ hands, not the hands of staff”, something he claimed he’s been involved in on the Trustee Board and at Student Council. 

He clarified that this is “a long-term project”, but affirmed that “we are an independent body, and we should start to act like one”.

If the students feel that the SU doesn’t represent them, is the problem low engagement from students or a failure of the Union’s democratic structures?

“I think the problem is neither”, Varney outlined, but rather that we “don’t communicate any of our wins or any of our work to students”.

He continued: “Part of it is a structural problem with things taking two or three years to happen … but we as an SU should be keeping our students up to date on what we do day-in, day-out.

“One of the problems is that people don’t necessarily know what we do stand for”, he added, noting how he has tried to make this clear through his buses campaign and his reaction to the visit of Reform councillor George Finch to campus in January. 

“If people disagree with that, then they’re welcome to get involved in our democratic structures and challenge that”, he concluded, praising the number of candidates assembled in the Kevin Gately Room with just that intention.

VP Education

Raj Hacker, the incumbent Environment and Ethics Officer, and Raven were present, with the remaining three candidates absent from the event.

Hacker used his speech to call for a general improvement in educational standards, including lobbying “at the university level” on mitigating circumstances. He suggested increased standardisation, for instance regarding the use of self-certifications, across departments, while pledging support for students during the cost-of-living and rising far-right rhetoric nationally. He concluded with a promise to “fix the buses as they’re terrible”.

Meanwhile, Raven highlighted their time at the Academic Forum as a faculty rep, having spent five years at Warwick. They used their experience to comment on the “fundamentally broken” system of academic representation, in which students are often unaware of the work of faculty reps. Finally, they said they would use this position to raise issues with departments.

The VP Education role often promises big academic reforms, but most decisions on this matter sit with the University. What leverage would you actually use to influence change?

First to speak, Hacker described his experience as EEO and on educational committees to advocate for the value of student involvement through the SU, and pointed to SSLCs as a point of contact between students and departments, while agreeing with Raven’s criticism of the system. 

Raven drew attention to their existing involvement in the system and contacts in departments, saying that this would allow them to “hit the ground running” – which they said is absolutely necessary. They did, however, strike a more realistic note and acknowledged that “not everything can be achieved by one person”.

With the pending roll-out of the attendance monitoring project, how will you help support students disadvantaged by these measures, such as those with chronic illnesses or access issues?

Saying that they were “already involved in active discussions” around the systems, Raven suggested that the University’s communication had been unclear about the proposal’s implications, for instance for students who struggle with lecture-based learning. They stated that “everyone has an access issue” regardless, especially considering the high numbers of students entering and exiting some lecture theatres.

Hacker said that he would “go a bit further” and suggested that disabled students would be hit particularly hard by the change. After questioning how two-hour lectures would function with the new system, he raised the issue of “surveillance” from the University. He disputed the idea that the system would actually improve attendance, which he said is the real issue at play.

VP Postgraduates

It was a particularly crowded field this year, and four of the 12 contenders showed face: Ronny Whetton, Manya Gupta, Vaishnavi Ravi, and Arjun Jain.

A former undergraduate at Warwick, Whetton began by highlighting his experience on the Student Council and as the postgraduate representative Societies Forum, where he lobbied for greater integration of postgraduate students within societies. Having contributed to campaigns on campus, he wants to “make sure [Warwick is] the best it can be”.

Gupta, a Marketing and Strategy student, said that officers “have the power to do so much”, while urging a pragmatic approach centred on solving what she sees as the SU’s communications issue. She would “bring in clarity” by making postgrads aware of events and facilities through weekly updates and streamlined promotion.

Having already been the VP Postgraduate in 2023, Ravi said that she was running because they’d like to do more in the SU, including building a “more inclusive postgraduate community”. She would achieve this by organising events accessible to all students and working with societies and departments to create a centralised timetable, while improving communication.

At the heart of Jain’s pitch was a desire to represent postgraduate voices in the SU. He listed four main priorities: stronger representation, fair access to opportunities, improved career support, and VISA advocacy for international students.

Given the significant financial costs of postgraduate study, how would you balance supporting PG students financially, especially those from WP backgrounds?

All candidates struck upon a common theme: using the full resources of the SU to prioritise the needs of postgrads. While repeating his earlier pledges, Jain emphasised that the additional costs faced by postgraduate students should be made worthwhile through a more inclusive environment which would make degrees feel better value for money.

Ravi said she would lobby for cheaper rent on campus and introduce a scheme to help students find affordable housing. Touching once more on the comms issue, she stated that she would ensure the postgraduate body is aware of the SU’s Hardship Fund, working with other student representatives to achieve this.

Gupta cited her personal experience struggling to find scholarships – this is a gap the SU can fill, according to her. After backing her contenders’ points about exorbitant postgrad expenses, she reiterated that the problem is awareness about SU support, since “we have the resources” yet that is not being communicated.

For Whetton, who referenced his own background in a deprived area of East London, the most important principle was that those from lower income backgrounds who want to study at a postgraduate – or indeed undergraduate – level shouldn’t be held back by their finances. As a result, he pledged to “massively expand” financial support including the Hardship Fund, accommodating the cost-of-living crisis.

Many STEM postgraduates have teaching hours in Gibbet Hill campus. How would you ensure these postgraduates do not feel left out of the main campus life?

Whetton’s solution is for the SU to “proactively seek out” engagement with students and “meet people where they are” rather than maintaining a passive role. This would mean rescheduling and choosing venues convenient for postgrads. He also proposed immediately informing students who agree to study at Warwick about opportunities for student representation.

Once more focussing on communications, Gupta suggested that postgrads are “bombarded” with information so could benefit from more concise information and better-timed events which work with postgrad schedules. Again, she said the key step is raising awareness.

Ravi said that she would attend SSLCs and work with the PGR Collective to make sure that representatives can be heard in places like Graduate Studies Committees. According to Ravi, VP Postgraduate shouldn’t be the “sole representative of all postgraduates” – instead, a variety of voices should be heard from directly, by groups like the Committees.

Having spoken to those personally affected by the issue, Jain opted out of backing a complete reorganisation of timetables, saying that this would not be practical nor necessary. For him, comms should clearly differentiate between activities which are and aren’t pitched at postgrads. SSLCs should also be used to bring issues to the SU, not just departments.

President

Of the four candidates vying for the SU’s highest elected position, three were in attendance: Ollie Chapman (the current VP Welfare & Campaigns), Ilyan Benamor, and Alex Prepelita.

Prepelita began his pitch with a string of ambitious pledges centred around well-being, transport, and cost-of-living. He promised a 24/7 wellbeing service (which would keep Senate House open 24 hours a day), 24-hour buses to ensure safety for clubgoers, and a freeze on SU prices, with the same for Warwick Food Group. This would be accompanied by a campus rent freeze.

A familiar topic by now, buses were also targeted by Benamor, who proposed better provision of double deckers during peak times, a GPS in every bus, and frozen fares. On housing, he criticised the disregarding of renters’ rights, which he would address with a blacklist of exploitative landlords. Better hardship grants and more financial transparency were also on the cards.

With a manifesto centred on affordability and cost-of-living, Chapman listed his achievements as VP Welfare & Campaigns, including the ‘Food for Thought’ campaign, free STI testing, holding a Menstrual Health Day, and representing the SU on the national stage, for instance at the All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Students. In his words, he’s “someone that gets things done”.

What do you think the number one change that the SU must make to support students is, and why?

Alex repeated his early 24-hour bus policy, comparing the ideal provision to that found in London. His reasoning is that many students are “priced out” of options like an Uber to return home at night, which presents a safety risk. He would also expand wellbeing services to accompany this.

Affordability was Benamor’s focus, since “that’s what improves our mental health [and] physical wellbeing”. He placed emphasis on the inordinate access fees for sport, spending £200 on equipment himself. For Benamor, improved affordability could look like bus fare freezes or cheaper gym passes.

According to Chapman, “we need to be bolder” in providing financial support to students, with other universities in England and Scotland taking extra steps that Warwick isn’t. He would improve the offering of “nonprofitable provisions”, with a basic needs hub, greater anti-spiking provision across campus outlets, and a safe space outside the Copper Rooms.

As SU President, how would you go about defending students’ right to protest on campus, especially in the face of pressure from the University?

Chapman said that he had held “difficult but firm discussions” with senior university colleagues after reports of an arrest at the George Finch event, and had earlier exercised his own freedom of speech protesting outside. He conceded that he hadn’t thrown a shoe but said he wasn’t “sure that’s what people want in their SU President”. Chapman would also ask for commitment to protecting protest from the University, while working with student groups.

Benamor spoke candidly about his mother being threatened at gun point in Algeria for refusing to wear a hijab, outlining his own personal stakes in the right to protest. He said that he had been arrested at protests and had tear gas thrown at him. Students should feel confident in backing from the SU if they choose to express themselves, he concluded.

Acknowledging the current debate between free speech and hate speech, Prepelita clarified that hate speech should be outlawed and cited his own act of protest. Freedom of speech should, on the other hand, be “perhaps” tolerated, unless a protected characteristic is targeted. He finished: “This uni is for all and should be for all.”

 

A recording of the entire Full-Time Officer Question Time event can be found here, courtesy of RAW 1251AM.

A list of all Full-Time Officer candidates and their manifestos can be found here.

Voting closes at 5pm on Friday 13 March.