John Goodwin, UHSU President 2005/06, now works to improve student interaction in the iZone
In the 2005/06 academic year, the Students’ Union President was John Goodwin – which is granted before most of our time at Huddersfield.
Amongst the active members within the SU, he is well known within the Union as one of the better Presidents in recent history – and is now working in the newly created position within the Students’ Union for this year, the ‘Democratic and Student Representation Co-ordinator’.
John has come back to us after three years and is still pushing for the student body of Huddersfield to get active in student politics, which he suggested would be easier with the Students’ Union now being much more focused towards the representation of the students and increasing student activism than it was during his terms of office.
John’s new job, despite being “a bit of a mouthful”, will put him on the front line of Students’ Union staff in the newly refurbished iZone, which is the new place to go for any queries about student representation, sports and societies, volunteering and student media – but John’s specific role is to raise interest amongst students and make it easier for them to get involved in the Students’ Union and will be working alongside other staff and the VP Sports and Societies, Haydn ‘Tank’ Stead, who will be spending parts of his time in the iZone.
When asked why he got initially got involved in SU politics, he openly said that he was not a politically active student at the beginning, but between working – and of course socialising – in the SU bar, he decided to run for VP Comms and during his term dealing with the newspaper and directly seeing the problems around student politics every time he put the paper together, he decided to run for President to make a change. John did this with the goal of ensuring what he believes the true purpose of the Students’ Union is: “to give students a collective voice and improve their University experience” and I have to say, I agree.
John’s message was clear as to why students should get involved, as he once did, as not only are things such as Course Rep’s and Volunteering excellent CV fodder, which will substantially help students when searching for a job post-graduation by having more skills to offer than their competition, but with the fun side of the Students’ Union in various campaigns and a general sense of satisfaction in making a positive difference. The interview ended with John saying “I may have got involved by accident, but it ended up being one of the best things I ever did”, so if anyone would equally like to stumble into Students’ Union politics, or would simply like to build their CV, head to the iZone when you have the time and say Hi to John.
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