A vice president at Glasgow Caledonian University’s Students’ Association is campaigning for a position at the National Union of Students in Scotland (NUS).
Jodie Waite, the current vice president for the Glasgow School for Business & Society, is going to run for the role of Vice President for Education.
In recent years the university has had students run for the women’s officer position but there hasn’t been a GCU student run for the Vice President role at NUS Scotland in recent history. In an exclusive interview for The EDIT, Jodie spoke about her hopes for her campaign as well as discussing her election promises.
When talking about running, Jodie said: “Education is important for everyone in society, it is the heart of everything we do. There’s still a lot of problems with our education system.”
She then discussed the inequalities within education and how she wants these to change, something that has influenced her decision to run:
“We have a lot of issues across colleges and universities that are affecting people across Scotland. After Brexit we have a lot of uncertainty for our international students. We have students on placement like nursing students, teaching students, midwifery students and their being really unfairly treated. We also have council tax being charged for apprentices. I feel really passionate about change so thought it would be great to run for the position.”
However, it isn’t just change that Jodie feels passionate about and wants to influence; She said that when she was a student she wasn’t sure what NUS was and what it stood for – she had no idea on decisions that were being made and it was only when she became a full-time officer that she really understood the ins and outs of NUS.
According to Jodie this isn’t right and students and apprentices need to be aware of what NUS is and it needs to be accessible for them.
To better explain the above point, Jodie has previously spoken at an NUS gathering but has never spoken at a national conference before. She said: “I’ve never felt confident enough to do that.”
“I just don’t want anyone else to feel like they’re in that position,” she says “I want to make people feel that they really can engage with NUS and that it is accessible for all.”
One of Jodie’s policy promises is to make it easier for people to understand conference by creating a simple document with definitions of a lot of common terms and a guide as to what goes on. Jodie hopes that by creating this document people will not face the same problems that she did.
Other manifesto pledges include:
– To use the work of the Student-Staff Partnership Agreement at GCU to help at other institutions.
– Campaigning for a fairer student bursary system.
– Lobbying to remove 100% attendance rate rules at colleges.
NUS UK has been surrounded in controversies recently following the election of UK President Malia Bouattia at the conference in Brighton last year. Ms Bouattia has been accused of promoting anti-Semitic views and has been heavily criticised by Jewish student societies across the UK. More recently, the Vice President of Union Development, Richard Brooks, was involved in an undercover sting whilst holding planning meetings to oust Ms Bouattia from her position.
When asking Jodie about these controversies she said: “If you are elected to do a role, you should be doing that role and nothing more. I mean you need to make sure that is your priority.”
She carried on by saying: “My job is to represent the students. I just personally feel that if I was elected into this position I would do what I’m mandated to do, what my policy areas are, what people need me to do and if anything like this came up just to make sure that if it had to be a part of my role, if I had to speak about it, if I have to get involved in any way to make sure that it’s not my priority because I think sometimes that’s what the problem is with NUS – it’s that sometimes things that shouldn’t be priorities are becoming priorities when the priorities should be the representation and the union of students of getting together as a voice.”
For video snippets of the interview, keep an eye out on The EDIT’s Facebook page.
Feature photo credit: Robert Wilson
