Daniel, your VP Community Engagement - What I've been up to
IM Marsh Travel
A student put forward an idea through our “do something about it” platform to ask for “an extension of the travel pass to all IM Marsh students.”
Currently only first year students who live in halls get a free travel pass to IM Marsh, as the University believes that in your second and third year you can choose to live by IM Marsh if you study there.
So I have been working on a paper that has gone to Ops Panel to ask for the bus pass to be extended to all students (the cost for this is around £950,000), the paper points out that this rationale is flawed as there is a lack of choice, amenities and higher rents in the IM Marsh area, whilst also pointing toward some of the possible benefits for the University if they were to go ahead with this.
Student Switch Off
Starting from the 1st February and running for the month, 5 halls have signed up to the student switch off event. This event encourages the students in these halls to make small changes and therefore decrease their environmental impact through energy use.
The changes in energy use are being monitored by the halls in comparison to the previous two years and the money saved over this period will be put back into the halls for the students.
#ListenUp Campaign
Planning has started for the #ListenUp campaign running in March. This campaign will engage students around men’s mental health issues, asking them to pledge to listen to males who come forward with their experiences of mental health. The plan is to get sports teams, university staff and others involved.
The point of this is to break down stigmas, as the biggest killer of males under 25 is suicide, and engagement of males within mental health services is much lower than females, also on a personal level this is a campaign very close to my heart.
Investigating the attainment gap
This campaign starts for a week at around campus from the 13th February, and engages students on the existing attainment gap between Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students and white students at LJMU. We will be giving information and increasing awareness of the attainment gap and asking them why they think an attainment gap exists and what we can do to break it down. It’s a very important campaign for a significant proportion of our students and highlighting this area may create future work for the SU as students become aware of the problem.
