Wednesday 19-04-2017 - 13:59

Union Affairs Officer and lead delegate to NUS Conference, Jamie Cross, discusses the upcoming NUS conference, who is representing you there, and how you can get involved.

This year has seen a lot of discussion about the National Union of Students (NUS) at Bristol University. It is clear that Bristol students recognise this organisation as more than just a discount card, and the recent referendum on our NUS affiliation provoked a huge dialogue around what the NUS does, and what they stand for.

NUS is a voluntary membership organisation in which 600 students’ unions are members. It therefore looks to support and represent the lives of more than 7 million students, and you should feel represented within it.

Each year NUS holds a National Conference which will be taking place in Brighton between the 25th-27th April, and is the main way that Bristol students can set national policy, elect NUS’ leadership, set the direction of our national union, and reform NUS’ democracy.

We send six students to represent Bristol SU to this conference each year. One full-time officer and five other students, who were elected by a cross campus ballot in November. Your delegates this year are: Jamie Cross, Sally Patterson, Laura Ho, Almas Talib, Mason Ammar and Rebecca Filer. Find their contact details here.

These delegates are your representatives at the conference, so there are many ways to get involved with shaping policy even if you are not attending the conference yourself.

You can lobby a delegate to vote on policy a particular way or for a particular leadership candidate.You can also hold delegates to account on decisions they’ve made.

After the conference the lead delegate will be writing a formal report available for all students to read which will outline key policy decisions made at the conference, who was elected and also the impact Bristol delegates had on those decisions.

Make sure you feed in your thoughts to your representatives and ensure that NUS represents you!