During our Students’ Union Elections Media Day on Thursday 28th February, we chatted to the candidate who is running to be elected as your Mature Students Officer for the 2019-20 academic year. Take a look at what she had to say.
Becca Craven
Becca is a 2nd year Music Student and is running to be your next Mature Students’ Officer.
Becca’s main intent with her campaign is to build on the work done in the previous two years expanding the Mature Students’ Network. “I want to make the network more accessible and really build it up”. She stresses the importance of informing mature students as to where they can get advice “I think as a mature student you can sometimes feel isolated so I want to make [advice] more accessible”.
Becca also intends to work closely with full-time Officers, particularly with Activities. In this regard, she intends to work with the Activities offer to implement a more flexible membership scheme for mature students to still participate in societies without the time and presence commitments that these have sometimes.
“Some societies have weekly meetings and you feel like you got to go all the time or sports club you may want to play the sport, not compete”. She believes this deters some mature students who, due to a number of reasons, could be unable to attend every event organised by a society.
One of her manifesto points is making sure provisions exist for mature students with younger children with no access to childcare. Whether this is making lecturers aware that younger children could be accompanying their parents in lectures, or working with the University and/or external organisations to create a sort of holiday club centre for children, particularly in periods of school holiday that don’t match with University holidays. “I want to make it so you haven’t got that worry of do I go to uni or do I stay home with my children”.
One goal Becca would be very dedicated to completing is better signposting for mature students on where to get advice on matters that may affect them in particular (i.e: balancing University costs with mortgages, childcare, etc.).
Nicolas Caballero
For more information on the candidates read their manifestos on the Student Leader Page.
Featured image: Ella Taylor.
Article image: Impact Images.
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