State of the Union

On Monday 25th January, Simon Gaskell (QMUL Principal) and Carolina Mantzalos (QMSU President) held the State of the Union. Here, they gave updates on what the university and the Students’ Union have been working on over the past academic year and answered a series of questions from students present in the audience.

Here Carolina outlines the themes of the discussion:

“The key points that were raised were what the University and Union have been doing regarding the Prevent strategy, the welfare of candidates running in the Students’ Union elections and engaging students more generally. 

Simon and I discussed that there would be communications going out regarding what the University and the Union were doing around Prevent, and how we would work together on raising awareness of what Prevent actually is. I stressed that as a Union, we have a policy not to engage with Prevent, and commented on the fact that we would probably need to reiterate this to the student body as well.

In regards to looking at candidate welfare during the elections period, I noted that we would be carrying out different activities to allow candidates to debrief after the husting debates, hold breakfast mornings, and other drop in sessions to ensure that students are able to bring up any issues they may face.

We also commented on the fact that we want to work on improving the different mechanisms in place for seeking student feedback, and tailoring alternative techniques for different student groups. We recognised that some students do not feel comfortable giving feedback in more formal forums, like the State of the Union, and would thus prefer virtual and online feedback forums, and vice versa.

The discussions held brought a good level of feedback that both Simon and I would like to take forward, and it was certainly an enjoyable event!”