My final year lab project went on far longer than anticipated and the write up took away a LOT more of my time that I thought it was. Tis very difficult being a final year science student and a Union Officer at the same time. Hell of a workload.
I have a few Officer reports I want to put up here, there are two SU Councils this month, I had a report for both. Just tried to download the early January one but the file is corrupt. Guess I will wait for it to appear on the SU webpage then copy from there.
Here is the latest one anyway;
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Officer report, end January 2012-01-24 Will O’Brien Equality Officer
Since the last class reps I have been busy with the
following
- ·
Chasing up the buildings department regarding
the new lift outside the library.
It is faulty, of terrible quality and the maintenance contract is for 48 hours which is unacceptable.
I am trying to get buildings to outsource the contract to a more reliable provider who can guarantee a 24 hour fixing period. I am making this a priority for the next month.
- ·
Started planning and making a short documentary
about students in NUI Galway who are living with disability to demonstrate the
everyday difficulties faced by these students
- · Helped organise an open forum with FEE for the discussion of tuition fees and to build a campaign against rises to fees.
- ·
Started organising another documentary featuring
students/ex-students of NUIG who have been either forced to drop out or are
likely to drop out because they cannot afford to pay their fees.
- ·
Attempting several times to put motions to class
reps to clarify they position the students want to take on fees and how to go
about combating them so that the Union can act collectivly and with coherence.
- ·
Met with GiG Soc and the regional action group
of LGBT Diversity. This is to try and strengthen ties between local LGBT
support groups and GiG Soc to as to maximise the effectiveness of LGBT Support
groups in Galway city and to build new relations between campus organisations
and local ones. There will be a monthly meeting like this for the rest of the
year.
- ·
Guest speaker at a Lit&Deb debate in
opposition of the motion “This house believes that civil disobedience is not
the answer to Ireland’s problems
- ·
On the 2nd of Feb I will be
representing NUIG SU at a debate organised by the Irish Feminist Network on the
topic of Slut walks.
- ·
In order to combat the lack of attendance at SU
Council I set a target for the Education Officer and the 4 convenors to make
sure that at least 100 reps attend the next council. I outlined the importance
of means of communication other than emails as they have shown thus far to be
of little effect.
- ·
Have offered a number of suggestions and
positive criticisms to the Exec Officers whose duties it is to organise class
reps to improve the running of the council.
- ·
Investigating a report of racist comments posted
on Twitter by a NUI Galway student
- ·
Nominated myself as a SU Rep to sit on the
planning board for Green Week (13-17th Feb)
- ·
Working on a number of projects for Green Week
including an opportunity for postgraduate students to display and talk about
work they are doing currently on campus with regard to green technologies and
climate change.
- ·
Pushed to get Exec meeting minutes published and
up to date on the SU website, emphasis on accountability from the Exec.
- · Given out 250 donor cards so far as part of my campaign initiated earlier this month.
This is since my last report which was about 2 weeks ago, I have been very busy!
More updates soon I promise!
