ELECTIONS: MAKE YOUR MARK

Every March, students choose who they want to represent their needs and interests during the following academic year. This is your opportunity to use all your experience of studying at UCA to make things better for everyone.

There are a five of positions available. In February 2017 students voted in a referendum to replace the 4x Campus President structure with a President and two Vice-Presidents.

RUN FOR ELECTION – NOMINATE YOURSELF NOW!

PRESIDENT & VICE-PRESIDENT

The President and Vice-Presidents (VPs) are full-time paid positions, running from 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2018. You can take a year out of your studies or start after you graduate. As a team, the Union President and VPs make day-to-day decisions about all levels of your Union’s activities, focusing on making changes to positively affect student’s lives.

The benefits of being a President or Vice-President:
• You will receive a salary of £18,023.
• You will receive comprehensive training for your role.
• Have job satisfaction knowing you are making a positive difference to students’ lives.

You will develop advanced skills in:
• Leadership
• Communication
• Teamwork
• Planning
• Problem Solving
• Motivating others

The President will:

• Be the figurehead of all four campuses
• Develop campaigns in students’ interests
• Sit on relevant committees, including the Board of Governors
• Ensure the Vice Presidents are working cohesively across their campuses
• Liaise with the University on the development of the student experience, complaints, equal opportunities and disciplinary procedures.

The Vice Presidents will:
• Be the figurehead for their region.
• Support and create events on their campus (including Freshers Week).
• Lead two of the four liberation groups.
• Organise Campus and Academic Forums with your Campus Executive Officers.
• Develop campaigns in students’ interests
• Sit on relevant committees.
• Liaise with the University on the development of the student experience, complaints, equal opportunities and disciplinary procedures.

This is an idea of what these roles might entail; what you choose to prioritise will be down to you and the rest of the President/VP team.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION:
• If you are a student in Farnham or Epsom, you may run for President or Vice-President Surrey.
• If you are a student in Rochester or Canterbury, you may run for President or Vice-President Kent.
• All students can vote in the President and both Vice-President election, regardless of which campus they study at.

STUDENT TRUSTEE

The Trustee Board is the highest decision making body of the Students’ Union; it has the ultimate responsibility for directing the business of the Union, and assessing how effectively it’s running. The board consists of the President and Vice Presidents, five student trustees, and three external trustees who are experts in their field.

Trustees are elected for two years.

Any current student who intends to study at UCA next year can run for this position. Student Trustees take office on 1 July 2017. Currently there are four Student Trustee positions open to students on any UCA campus.

RUN FOR STUDENT TRUSTEE – NOMINATE YOURSELF NOW!

NUS DELEGATE

In 2014 NUS National Conference passed a gender balancing policy which dictates that at least 50% of conference floor must be made up of women – this is due to the majority of students across the UK being women, and the fact that conference was always made up of majority men – often because the majority of SU Presidents are men.  As we get 2 conference places (the number you get in determined by your student numbers) this makes it nice and easy for us that 1 position is reserved for a self-defining women, and 1 place is open.

NUS National conference is a 3 day conference in Brighton on 25-27th April 2017, those nominating themselves must be available to attend, else there is literally no point! At National conference they will be able to vote on motions on behalf of all UCA Students as well as voting for the NUS National President and Vice-Presidents.  The elected students will receive a pre-conference briefing where we will go through with them what will happen, and the motions so they have an understanding before they attend.

All travel and accommodation will be provided for the delegates.
Any students can run for these positions but must be available from 25-27th April to attend (obv), they are voted for by all students. This role is volunteered.

RUN FOR NUS DELEGATE – NOMINATE YOURSELF NOW!

STUDENT GOVERNOR

The Board of Governors is a top committee, responsible for all the university’s activities, particularly issues around senior management, finances, and academia. You will be accompanied to every meeting by the President so you won’t be representing students alone. If you believe it is important for students to be at the heart of major decision making, you should run for Student Governor.

RUN FOR STUDENT GOVERNOR – NOMINATE YOURSELF NOW!

Wh4t’s the Numb3r?

In the week commencing 20 February 2017, UCASU held a referendum asking the question:

“Do you think the UCASU Officer structure should change from four (4) Campus Presidents, to: 1 President, 1 Vice-President Surrey and 1 Vice-President Kent?”

As this is a change to our constitution (our legally binding governing document) we needed at least 2.5% of students to vote in this referendum to make it quorate. Quoracy means enough of our members (UCA Students) have voted on this to be able to enact a change.

The quoracy for this vote was 152 students.

The total valid votes for this referendum was 201. Therefore quota has been met.

In order for a constitutional change to pass there needs to be a two-third majority yes vote. This is called the quota.

The quota for this referendum is therefore 134

The results are as follows:
Yes 152
No 49

Therefore the YES vote wins the referendum, and UCA students have voted to change our constitution and governing documents to reflect these changes, our new documents will be uploaded into the ‘governance’ section of our website as soon as possible.

This referendum takes effect immediately, and therefore will now change the full time positions available in our full time officer elections in March. Notice of the elections will go out next week with further information.

Six Steps to a Sweet Campaign

STEP 1 – WRITE YOUR MANIFESTO

A manifesto says who you are, what you want to do and why people should vote for you.

• Tell students what you are going to do
• Show students you understand their experiences
• Show students you will deliver the change they want.
• Appeal to as many people as possible.
• Use your creativity!

STEP 2 – NOMINATE YOURSELF!

Once you have your manifesto, you’re ready to nominate yourself!

• Fill in the form below.
• Make sure you have the other students’ ID numbers for the form.
• Make sure you have their permission too!!!
• You will be asked to confirm that you are eligible to run for the position
• Don’t miss the deadline!

STEP 3 – CAMPAIGN!

• Get out and see students
• But listen as much as you speak!
• Centre your campaign around an idea or a couple of ideas
• Keep your message clear
• Communicate your message in a fun and interactive way.
• Remember to get your ideas to all the campuses to maximise the number of votes you can get. Grab attention but remember, make a positive impression – don’t be breaking any laws.

We will give you a campaign budget to do this with. Full guidance on campaigning and rules will be provided at the candidates briefing.

RULES

To make things fair for all candidates, we regulate the elections through a set of published rules. These can be seen here.

How Voting Works

UCASU runs a system of voting called Single Transferable Vote (STV). This means voters have more
opportunities to make their vote count.We ask voters to rank candidates in order of their preference.

The candidate ranked 1st is the voter’s favourite choice.

Let’s imagine we wanted to have an official favourite 90s Disney film for the students’ union office. We ask all the Union staff and officers to give their preferences. They would fill in a ballot slip that looks something like this.

We fill in my ballot slip with Lion King as our first choice. We also put Tarzan is my 5th choice, below Re-Open Nominations. This is because we think there are better 90s Disney Films than Tarzan, like for example Pocahontas. So if our first, second and third choice don’t win, our fourth choice is for the whole election to start again and for new candidates to be looked for.

Our ballot slip looks like this:

For one of the films to win, it would need 50% of the total votes plus 1. So total votes here is 14 (all the union staff and officers) which means (14/2) + 1 = 8. So for a film to win it needs 8 votes.

Here are the results:

As you can see, in the first stage, Lion King has 7 votes in the first round, which isn’t enough to win.What we then do is eliminate the candidate with the lowest votes – in this case, Re-Open Nominations, which has one vote.

We then look at this voter’s ballot paper. They voted for Re-Open Nominations 1st and Lion King 2nd. As the second preference, this vote transfers to the Lion King and the new results look like this:

As you can see, in these elections, 2nd preferences are often extremely important. They can completely change elections – sometimes the candidate with the most votes in the first round of voting is overtaken in second round because of transferred votes.

Who’s RON?

If you don’t like any of the options, remember – you can always vote to Re-Open Nominations (RON). If RON wins, we’ll re-run the election process for this position.

Why do we use STV?

Single Transferable Voting, wastes fewer votes – the person who voted for Tarzan is not ignored because they voted for an unpopular candidate, their second choice decides the election!So basically, STV, gives voters more opportunities to influence the election and let’s them get their second or third preference when they can’t get their first.This means that voters do not have to vote tactically – they can just choose their favourite.