Here are your Sussex presidential candidates

The Students’ Union elections are now well on their way with the candidates standing for election being released early this afternoon. Five candidates have put themselves forward for presidency who are: Frida Gustafsson, Annie Pickering, Irati Michel, Will Law, and Chris Seymour.

The president of the Students’ Union is in charge of overseeing and leading many of the activities and meetings in the union. As the main figurehead, they are in charge of communicating between outlets and societies within the university.

So who on earth are the people running for elections? Who are these people who make vague pledges? We compiled a brief profile of who they are and their pledges below:

Annie Pickering

Hoping to win a second term, Annie Pickering is running for SU president again. She pledges to create a ‘carbon neutral’ SU and to continue her campaigning against the NSS.

She also wants to provide home energy-saving kits to students. The pledge reads:

“I will to provide home energy saving kits to students so that we can keep our homes warmer, cut energy bills, and save carbon”

The details of what the kits contain is not on her manifesto.

Annie also wants to create a ‘societies night out’ that is as good as ‘prysm’ in town. Her pledge for ‘transparency’ is:

“I will carry out a democratic review of the Students’ Union looking at our referendums, voting and other mechanisms to make it as transparent and engaging as possible”

Chris Seymour

Chris makes a huge promise of providing £50,000 to the societies and clubs in Sussex despite the current budget for 2016/17 being £22,000 (not including media fund which is around £13,000 extra). His pledge means that he would attempt to double the original amount.

Chris also pledges to allow Sussex students to receive 20% off in Co-op simply by showing their student card, negating the use of any pre-bought NUS card there.

Chris also will try to create more buses running at peak times and cheaper drinks at the SU bars.

He also pledges to create more study space as the library is too full. The location of the new study spaces are not detailed on his manifesto.

Irati Michel

Irati pledges to look for ways to ‘improve the Wi-fi’ and to create a USSU app.

He makes a promise that equal opportunities for all will be had and will create a platform, for those who are artistic, to perform on. He also wishes to empower women and international students

Frida Gustafsson

The previous woman’s officer wishes to make the SU’s “free period Wednesday” as a constant feature of Sussex. She also wishes to focus on making the Wi-fi work “as it should”.

She also would like to make it official that students can eat in the group study areas in the Library.

Frida would like to extend the ‘Take Care’ taxi scheme, which allows students to be taken home via local taxi should students not have money, to buses.

Launderettes will also be campaigned to be free under Frida’s presidency.

Will Law

Before getting into his pledges, Will wished to let every one know that he is a Vegan and only eats plants.

With his priorities expressed, he wished to ‘take back control’ of the library by allowing 24/7 access. He also wanted to appoint library monitors who would tell people to be quiet.

He also wanted to change how Library Square looked. He suggested more benches.

Vegan options were also pledged to be changed with more affordable and better options available on campus

You can read their full manifestos here along with the other candidates.