Leacsaidh Marlow
A group of Impact Magazine writers have looked over the candidate manifestos for this year’s Student Union Elections. Our team of elections reporters interviewed every candidate who attended Media Day, discussing their motivations for running and their manifestos. Editor-in-Chief Leacsaidh Marlow has summarised and discussed each candidate’s main manifesto points, and given her views on the manifesto. Voting opens on Monday 10th March at 9am and closes on Thursday 13th March 2025 at 5pm.
Allay Alhayek
Alla describes her campaign as “Fun, short and trustworthy”.
Key manifesto points:
- Developing better teamwork and organisation in the officer team
- Listening to different groups to improve engagement
Alla is applying for the role of President predominantly to develop her communication skills and challenge her social anxiety. She has extensive experience leading projects in an academic context, and has also run her own business in the past which demonstrates her responsibility and strong organisational skills.
Alla’s manifesto centres around bettering the organisation of the sabbatical officer team and ensuring the team is more cohesive, incorporating every officer’s voice. The manifesto point she is most passionate about is “leading a strong, united community here at university, and everyone being together on the same page”. Alla recognises that the wide variety of different personalities, beliefs and backgrounds in the university community can make engagement difficult and so she wishes to focus on talking and listening to as many different people as possible to ensure that engagement strategies can include many groups. Improving student engagement does, however, pose a problem for every officer team, alongside increasing their own visibility within the student population. Alla will therefore have to ensure that she sufficiently works with as many underrepresented groups within the university as possible, and may struggle to effectively tailor engagement strategies to so many different student needs as it is a large challenge.
Favour Samuel
Favour, describing her campaign, told Impact: “My waves of change campaign is basically transforming student whispers into powerful waves of action by revolutionising support systems, creating inclusive spaces, and ensuring every student, regardless of their background, has every resource to thrive.”.
Favour is a Masters student in Human Rights Law and cites her legal background as providing her with the “negotiation skills and critical thinking” which she believes make her well-suited to a Presidential role. Favour is running for the role of SU President to “amplify student voices” and facilitate meaningful change within the student community. She has named her campaign ‘Waves of Change’ and explains that it has 3 key pillars:
- Revolutionising student support: launching a 24/7 mental health system which, with the help of funding, aims to facilitate crisis intervention for students and provide resources aimed at students’ wellbeing, such as free breakfasts
- Focusing on international students: Favour’s manifesto suggests a ‘Soft Landing’ program that will provide much-needed support to international students to guide them through their arrival and initial challenges at UoN
- Inclusive campuses: Favour aims to focus on bettering transport and links between campuses, redesigning the systems that students use, and increasing accessibility
Favour’s manifesto is specific and lays out key issues she intends to target, detailing strategies she will implement to achieve these goals. It is impressive but ambitious. The student support aspects will require large pots of funding, and recruitment of staff/volunteers who are able to keep these programs running, which may pose a problem for the longevity of these strategies. The points which fall under the ‘inclusive campuses’ section of her manifesto, however, are likely more achievable and will hopefully have a measurable positive impact on students, potentially creating a better sense of community between UoN’s different campuses.
Head to the UoNSU website to check out all of the candidates and their original manifestos. Cast your votes from Monday 10th March at 9am.
Leacsaidh Marlow
Featured image courtesy of UoNSU, no changes have been made to this image.
In-text logo image courtesy of Joseph Banks, no changes have been made to this image.
