The 09/10 Exec consisting of President Junaid (centre), Sohail and Tank (right top and bottom), Zeshan and Haneef (left top and bottom)
The new academic year of 2009/10 is finally upon us; with it a whole new team of sabbatical officers who are there to push for the issues that matter to you – the student body.
As you will have read in their beginning of term statements, the Sabb team has been busy all summer with various training programmes, travelling across the country to network with other Students’ Unions and to develop their ‘game plan’ for the year, to push the issues that matter most to students.
With regards to the progress of this year’s executive team thus far, however, I can honestly say ‘leaps and bounds’ does not cover it. The guys, from two opposing election slates, have clicked together seamlessly, striving to achieve as much as possible before we all return.
All are agreed that the SU should be approachable and interactive – aiming to increase participation from the student body – and this has been achieved with the brand spanking new website that the SU techies have developed, leading to a Presidential Blog from our President Junaid, along with an interactive ‘Virtual Junaid’, allowing instant message contact with the President when he is online, or via email when he is out of the office.
Furthermore, Sports and Societies Officer Haydn ‘Tank’ Stead has even been given a desk in the new iZone to help with any queries, allowing an ‘even-more-open-door’ policy with sports teams and societies.
The entire Sabb team will this year be setting aside a few hours a week of their time for their Go Out And Talk (GOAT) and, more importantly, Listen (GOAL) initiatives to raise the profile of the Sabb positions. Given their monumental importance in all things SU related both on and off campus, this shows the team are hitting the ground running with ideas to increase participation.
Foundation laying is not all that the sabbatical officers have had to deal with thus far either, with Zeshan beginning his term of office with the foundation of the newspaper being in somewhat serious peril. The printing contract ended with the previous printers unwilling to renew, but Zeshan, and the back office team, managed to secure a new place to print the paper without it affecting a single edition of printing.
The majority of the summer break for the sabbatical officers is similar to a sports team’s pre-season training, get the preparations ready, make any needed changes and wait for it all to kick off, and if the 2009/10 Sabb team keep up this pace, it’s currently looking like it’s going to be a playoff season.
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