Thursday 20-01-2022 - 16:26

Hello! It’s time for the next officer digest. Our key updates relating to any events, campaigns or news from the last couple of weeks are as follows:     

Senate House Hours

What do students want? More space! We’re excited to announce that our very own Union Affairs Officer, Ifrah Farooq, has successfully lobbied the University to extend Senate House opening hours!

Senate House will now be open on weekends, from 10am- 4pm, to provide students with much needed access to more space.

To find out more about the facilities available in Senate House you can visit our website.

Safer Nights Out Work

Your safety is our priority and we can now confirm that all University bars have supplies of drink toppers and testing kits. Both resources are available to request behind each bar and Security Services also have a supply of drink toppers available to collect in Royal Fort. Bar staff have also been trained in the Ask for Angela scheme. For rolling updates on all of the work happening around Safer Nights Out, you can visit the dedicated webpage.

Next week a series of events will be taking place as part of the All About Drugs campaign, including a Bristol Drugs Project (BDP) webinar, Students For Sensible Drug Policy: Education Session, Bristol Drugs Project Stall and ongoing Harm Reduction Drop in Sessions. To see the full programme of events, visit our website.

Finally, Resilife will be doing outreach at North Village on 24 January, to find out more click here.

Elections / Annual Members Meetings (AMM)

Some people maybe thinking of Valentine’s Day, with February just around the corner, but here at the SU we think of Democracy! That’s right, 1 February marks the start of Elections! Next month we’ll start the search for the next group of student leaders at Bristol SU.

Nominations open on 1 February for a range of part-time voluntary roles, and full-time paid roles.  You can help shape policy, decide our priorities for the year, represent students at all levels of the organisation, and gain great experience in the process. 

We will also be holding our Annual Members Meeting on 15 February, this is your opportunity to share shape Bristol SU by passing policy, and to hold your full-time officers to account. All students are welcome to submit motions, attend the meeting, and vote on policy!

Accessibility Toolbar on Website

As part of Bristol SU’s ongoing commitment to accessibility, we’ve introduced a ReciteMe accessibility toolbar, which is now live on our website. This toolbar adds a number of useful features for website visitors who have a disability or access needs, plus some other useful features which will help International students, such as the ability to instantly translate text into a wide range of different languages.

If you'd like to see the toolbar in action, you can visit our website and click on the 'Accessibility Tools' button in the top left hand corner of each webpage.

In other news

In other news, Oba had a great Christmas with family and celebrated the first exam free year of his life (that he can remember). The Officer Team had a Team Building session with joyful facilitator Sal Pearlman (@salvadorpears on IG) where they worked on giving and receiving feedback, teamwork, and general post-Christmas debriefing. And in an ironic plot twist, Muazam’s fit to fly PCR test came back positive on Christmas Day!