Hustings: the elections continue with a whimper

The hustings for the SU elections took place in the LPAC on Monday, March 18th as each candidate got a chance to say why they are running and encourage people to vote for them.

Although the Atrium might be full of people campaigning making students aware of the elections the audience for hustings was small and consisted mostly of the candidates and their supporters.

The evening was chaired by Les Acklam and was the first time candidates have had a chance to speak to the students since the election campaign began.

The event began with the part-time officer roles of which a number of have not been filled.

There is only one person in the running for liberation officer, Maryam Saghir who talked about her work with Socialist Students Lincoln and the LGBT. The candidates running for community action and student fundraising officer, Alex Hancock and Samuel Whewall spoke about the ways that they want to raise the profile of RAG.

The newly created non-portfolio officer has three candidates running for it, Dave Stanley, Gemma Cobby and Kelly Nicholls who mentioned supporting the full time officers, especially as a lot of part time roles will not be filled until November in the by-elections.

Kayleigh Taylor is running unopposed to keep her current position of vice-president welfare. She mentioned that she would like to continue with healthy campus week and the sexual awareness campaign “Get it on” amongst others. She would also move the housing fayre so it would be in November or December in a bid to prevent the housing chaos that happened earlier this year.

In comparison academic affairs is drowning in candidates as five people are running for the position. All candidates recognised that the higher education cuts will be important over the next year but had different approaches with how to deal with the the aftermath of the cuts. James Spittlehouse said the cuts are happening so we need to get on with it whereas Jack Dobson said he would “fight in the interest of students”.

Activities saw Andreas Zacharia defending his year in office saying there are 1,000 more people in sports and societies and another 20 clubs have been created this year. Michael Stewart said that sports and societies helped him through university and wanted to make sure the same happened for others. Whereas John Conway, a sports student who is involved in societies, wants to redress the balance between the two and give them equal amounts of time.

As part of the presidential speeches Dan Derricott spoke very passionately reaming of a list of things that he says have been delivered whilst in his time at the SU, with Ary Sharif knocking it saying he has not seen any of the things that Derricott claimed to have delivered.

The two presidential candidates demonstrated marked differences in their approach to the role with Derricott having been heavily involved in the SU since the beginning of his time at the university with Sharif new to the system.

The evening ended with an encouragement to vote either online or at the ballot boxes around campus all week.