Q&A with the candidates running to be your SU President: Part One

Voting has opened in the 2025 Sheffield SU Elections.

All students are eligible to cast their vote for next year’s SU Officer team, which following a restructuring for next academic year, now includes six full time roles: Students’ Union President, Education Officer, Liberation and Activites Officer, Sustainability and Development Officer, Wellbeing and Sport Officer, International and Welfare Officer, and Elected Student Trustee.

Students are also being asked to vote in two referendums on whether Students’ Union should express ‘No Confidence’ in the University Executive Board and whether it should officially support the university’s staff in taking strike action.

Votes can be cast via the SU website.

At the Students’ Union Candidate Conversation on Tuesday evening, The Sheffield Tab spoke with candidates running to be SU President about their aims, what they believe matters to students, and what they love about the University of Sheffield.

Below, meet Daisy, Adi, and Alec.

Daisy Watson

 

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A post shared by Maintain the Daisy Chain — Re-Elect Daisy for SU President 🌼 (@daisy.president)

If elected, what are your aims?

Within the manifesto for this re-election, I have three sections. I have one which is improved student experience and accessibility. That’s very much about the on-the-ground SU and university.

For example, I’ve got an allergen and accessibility review on there. We’ll be looking at halal safety as well. Are students able to exist comfortably within our SU? A big problem we have – it might seem a bit stupid – is people can’t find enough seats in the SU. It makes us inherently inaccessible, and so when it comes to things like change anything, people don’t feel as if they can exist generally in this building.

Also, how can they make change here? That’s a huge part of my manifesto, a lot of that is about accountability within this building. It’s transparency on how we move, how we act, and making sure that our general structures work for students we serve.

The second part is about Sheffield as a city, what can we offer? What can we do? As students, we are also residents and often we’re not recognised that way. I’ve done a lot of work this year – particularly looking towards the city centre – and formed the first ever partnership between the Sheffield City Council, Hallam and Sheffield SU. Through that we were able to get every single bar and nightlife venue in the city centre to be re-reviewed for bar safety regulations and security regulations, we also pushed through the public ownership of the buses in Sheffield, which is now happening. The bus franchising is happening – that wouldn’t have happened without that work. I want to continue that I want to start getting students voting rights and committees on the city council.

I want us to be able to work better on housing regulations – why aren’t are houses serving us in the way they should be? We’re extremely lucky in comparison to other cities. We don’t have a housing crisis of the same scale. That doesn’t mean that will never happen, so we need to prepare and we need to make sure that we prepare. There are students living in houses that don’t serve them. I want to work on that. We have the connections there.

And then the final section is very much about the UK and higher education system generally. How does it serve students? It is not being funded enough. It is on the edge of collapse. We are seeing huge cuts across the board in the Students’ Union and University. We need to make those changes on the ground. We need to work to make sure that they aren’t impacted, but equally we need to look to the government and go: this is not ok anymore and you will lose a really, really effective higher education system if you don’t start doing the work. I’ve already started that this year: I launched the fight for our future campaign. We’re trying to get a petition through Parliament that’s looking really successful at the moment. As a result of that, if I was in next year, I would work with our MPs and also with other Students’ Unions to really mobilise on that.

What do you believe are the most important issues facing students at the moment and how would you represent them?

I think to say “what matters to students” is a really difficult question to answer because I think right now we have the most diverse range of what a student means. Students come from a variety of different backgrounds. It is so diverse. Every single student needs are different. However, I will say, first and foremost, the cuts that are happening to university will impact people who are in the most marginalised, but it will also impact people who don’t feel any marginalisation. We need to make sure that student services, both in the SU and the university, are being held to account.

I’ve spent this past year fighting within the Students’ Union to have alternative proposals for the cuts that are going through because I didn’t feel they were appropriate. I’ve done the exact same in the university as a result of that work, we secured necessary funding for the mental health services that otherwise wasn’t going to be provided. I want to continue to do that. I think that is a key priority because every single student has to exist in this university, it’s why they’re here in the first place.

I think the second thing, undoubtedly, is cost of living. Are students able to exist? Are they getting what they’re paying for? Specifically, we all pay rent here. Are we getting what we’re paying for? Do we feel safe? Are we healthy in our houses? I think it’s often overlooked that a lot of health issues that students experience in an already crumbling health service is from the places they live. Let’s start reviewing them.

I think the third thing notably is just belonging. Belonging and loneliness are huge amongst students. Massive levels of feedback I’ve had from students this year is that they feel that the structures they are forced to live under don’t work for them, whether that be things like they have severe allergens and they can’t come into our building because we don’t have enough allergens safety or they feel as if their marginalisation is not represented in our structures, or even just they find it a little bit difficult to make friends. I want to be able to sit down with students for another year and go look, I’m listening to you. I’m hearing you. I will start initiatives or I will platform you and give you the resources and time and support you need to find your people.

I think when you look at those three, it’s really just about where do you belong in the city you exist in as a student. And how do we change it?

What is your favourite thing about the University of Sheffield?

The community. I think the university as a structure is inherently flawed, as is the SU.

But I came here and coming to Sheffield and coming to university was a ticket of freedom. For me it meant that I could find a life that I could shape and I could find my people and I could find the person who I wanted to be. I would not have been able to do that without my community, like the people who have made me feel loved and made me able to shape who I am as a person are beyond anything. That has made Sheffield such a wonderful place to me, and therefore what has made existing on the umbrella of the University of Sheffield, something that I say I can be proud of.

I think we could do so much better though, like I think that I’m very lucky that I’ve been able to find people who make me feel the way I do. You know, many other students haven’t had those experiences.

I have experienced some really horrible things here and I felt like they haven’t been dealt with. That’s why I’m here fighting for student’s who I recognise their struggles and even those whose struggles I don’t recognise. Change has to happen and it has to happen within communities. And to be able to make change, we need to be able to build those communities. So I would, hands down, say the communities that are able to form here are so vibrant and full of love.

And I think that in itself is what makes Sheffield what it is.

Adi Gunjal

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If elected, what are your aims?

Everyone is going to say transparency and other stuff, but my main goal is to increase the student experience because we are international students and you know most people are here to just get the degree and go out. They don’t care about what’s happening, but they really care about their experience.

And when it comes to experience – right now, the things that people struggle the most with is assignments aside and exams. Personally, when there’s two assignments piling up on you, it gets too stressful. Trust me, it’s bad. So one of the policies goes with gaps between assignments.

The second one is timetables should be released earlier than they are because we have to go back home and it gets really tough for us because flights are really expensive. So that’s one of my goals: to increase student experience.

Other things are rent caps, because rent is going really high and everyone has to pay rent. I think it’s really bad because the fees and rent going up together is atrocious, really bad.

I really want to become the voice for students because a lot of people are boycotting stuff and if you go on the campus you can’t find any alternatives for people who want to boycott some soda drinks.

If you go around, even if you’re studying in the IC late at night, do you think you can just go down and ask for alternative? You can’t because it’s not there.

The closest alternative you can get in is in the Tesco, which is really far and it closes at 10pm. There’s no sense because everybody’s going to study at night, you need alternatives for your students. So I want to make this place equal for everyone.

What do you believe are the most important issues facing students at the moment and how would you represent them?

They don’t care about what decisions the SU makes, but they really care about where the money is going so for them I really want to make an audit which can be accessible by anyone so they should know that where the money is actually going.

Even randomly last year I wasn’t really social. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even know what’s going on. I didn’t care what was happening.

You have to get in these things to know what’s happening so you don’t know they actually did this today. No, you don’t know. But you know, you want to know where your money is going. So that’s my key point.

What is your favourite thing about the University of Sheffield?

What I love the most – the people are really good. I love the staff, really friendly. I love how accessible everything is. I love the way the city is built. I love the campus. I love everything about it.

Alec Kotz

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A post shared by DON’T PANIC, VOTE ALEC! (@alec.president)

If elected, what are your aims?

More than anything, I think it’s really important that we build a better sense of community and identity in our Students’ Union.

If we want students to get involved in things like decision making and the more super engaged parts of our Students’ Union, we first need to get people to feel like it represents them and feel like they are encouraged to get involved in things like societies and some society committees, and then eventually things like council.

So I think that’s generally the central idea of my manifesto is about building a sense of community and building community engagement.

What do you believe are the most important issues facing students at the moment and how would you represent them?

I think when we’re talking about important issues, the cost of living crisis has to be one of the major ones. I think it’s something that’s affecting all students.

Primarily, obviously things like rent are one of the major costs to students. The university has upped its rent for accommodation by 12 per cent from this current year to next year, I think it’s completely unacceptable and that’s something that I’d be challenging the university on if I am elected.

I also think we need to go further about expanding educational things like renters rights. I know work has been done on that, but you could go further.

And just generally making sure that when people are looking at their cost of living, more support in terms of stuff like that.

I think some of the other issues are obviously, mental health – students are very stressed at the moment, especially around think by graduate jobs in their final years. I’m really struggling to find one myself. And I think as part of my campaign, I’m really focused on how important it is to be part of society and be part of community spaces. Mental health is something that I struggle with a lot and I know that once I did get involved in things like societies it really benefited me as a person. I want to focus on getting that experience as widespread as possible, alongside obviously fixing things like mental health services, which are being continuously cut.

I think finally we obviously need to look more generally at the cuts the university are making. This is happening across the country, but obviously you know when we’re looking at Sheffield, there is going to be it’s looking like there’s going to be course closures, as we already saw with the School of East Asian Studies which is merging its courses and MALA landscape architecture which is being cut.

We need to make sure that we have a comprehensive response and I want to work with other student groups to make sure that we do respond.

What is your favourite thing about the University of Sheffield?

It’s just the opportunities to get involved and the societies that we have. There’s such a wide range. I mean there’s Tea Soc happening just behind me, who I’ve been involved with for about a year now and you know it’s a great place to be. It really helped me get out of my shell, which has also been improved by things like my roles on committee for the LGBTQ+ society.

The chances to get involved are really there, but we just need to make sure that it’s more accessible to people.

Stay tuned for a Q&A with the remaining SU President candidates at 4pm.