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► Campus Officers

Campus Officers

The proposed structure has some significant implications for how the Union operates on the main campuses. These proposals are underpinned by research into the who and where are students are in 2009/10 and reflects the hard reality of the operational decisions being made by the University itself. Many current students will be familiar with the notion of the ‘Four Main Campuses’, meaning Ambleside, Lancaster, Newton Rigg in Penrith and the collection of sites including Fusehill and Brampton Road in Carlisle. These main locations have long been the main operating base for the Union, however the University itself has been slowly relying less on students who study in a traditional manner at these locations and instead recruiting more part time, distance learner and hospital-based professionals to courses of study. As such in a recent poll 61% of respondents stated they rarely or never spent any time on any site of the University, which corresponds the fact that 51% of all students registered in 2008/09 were either part-time or distance learners.

As such, and in light of the Universities response to recession and it’s own financial problems by closing the Ambleside campus at the end of the 2009/10 Academic year the proposed structure recognises that the ‘Main Campus’ is no longer the over-riding focus for either the University, students or the Union. Obviously they remain a vibrant and much-loved centre for many students, but the Union has to recognise the fact that more of its members do not study at a main campus than do.

As such the proposals advocated retaining a significant level of main campus based representation through the part-time paid Campus Representatives and also through a mixture of elected and peer-selected officials whilst freeing up resources to provide meaningful representation for the global (or cross-campus) student community.

The types of campus based official under the proposed structure is detailed below:

Campus Representative	Elected, paid for some part time hours as well as unpaid volunteer local organiser
Faculty Representatives	Elected, one per faculty present on the campus
Further Education Representative	Elected, at Carlisle and Penrith only
Non-Portfolio ‘Issue’ Officer	Elected, 3 vacancies at Carlisle & Lancaster and 2 at Penrith
Group Chairs	Peer selected, lead special interest Groups like the Activities Group, Inclusion Group

The Campus Representatives are three part time officials, one each based at the Carlisle, Lancaster and Penrith sites. They combine a paid office-hour element where they run open surgery hours throughout the week so students can come and discuss issues with a student representative and also have a unpaid volunteer role to include all other aspects of their work, which is essentially leading the Unions’ student organisation at their site.

The proposals recognise the fact that striving to recognise academic excellence is a major shared concern for all students by creating elected Faculty based Representative officials elected to each site, who work with students and Academic Reps to identify issues within the University learning and teaching experience and campaign to bring about positive change. Where the campus has Further Education students the specific representational needs of that group are recognised by the Further Education Representative who is elected from amongst their number.

The locally elected non-portfolio ‘issue’ officers reflect the permissive nature of the proposals, where a campus has a specific campaign or activist need then the students at that campus can elect an officer into being to meet that need. As non-portfolio officers these positions will be defined by the issue upon which an individual candidate stands. The Non-Portfolio roles have a minimum voter turn out of 25 to be legitimate, but as long as the issue which the officer wants to stand on is not replicating that of an already existing Union official or staff member and does not break any rules of the Union (or could potentially bring the Union into disrepute) the possibilities are wide open.

Group Chairs are not elected in the conventional sense, these are rather the leaders of local ‘special interest’ groups of students with shared goals or values. The Chairs are appointed by and from the members of the local Groups, which are defined further in the section entitled Student Groups. As local leaders they form the main point of contact with the Union in organising the actions of the group, and the role is more flexible in nature than the current elected officer designation it is proposed to replace (like Sports, Welfare, Clubs and Societies) as the Chair can step aside when on placement and be held to account by the other members of the Group if they are not performing as they said they would.

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