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

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 Activities 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 Will, Anton, Joey, Captain Brownbeard, Smoochie, and Justin.

Will Patrick

If elected, what are your aims?

My key aims are hat trick policies: Score a hat trick, vote Will Patrick. It will be the safety of women – mandatory anti-spiking education for first, second, third years in all lectures. We do for other things so why can’t we do it with that?

Second of all is rent to buy tech. I think people are choosing between buying tech like laptops and paying their rent. That shouldn’t be the case. With what I do there’ll be a flexible payment plan – credit free, interest free, all that sort of stuff and you own the products at the end of your studies here. You can either sell it back to university or you’ll own it pay the end of it which is great.

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Now the third one, and the key one for me is: Why are we making our future life savers –  our medics and our societies, which the heart of our university – pay inordinate amounts of money to travel to places? I can’t guarantee something that’s free, which is why my manifesto is realistic, but I’m looking to subsidise medics and societies for travel to represent our university.

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

My campaign is not flashy. It’s not based on cultural things. It’s based on the safety of our students – a safe campus is a happy campus – and affordability. Everyone wants a couple more quid to go down to West Street on a Saturday night, and societies are no different and medics are no different. What I want to do is bring real world problems that I have spoken to people and students all across the uni for and bring these real world issues and solve it in a pragmatic way, which I’ve done all my life and various different jobs. So it’s about the cost of living, affordability and safety.

What is your favourite thing about the University of Sheffield?

I’m always quite thin when I live here, to be honest with you, because I’m having to walk up Conduit and I’ve got a propensity to over indulge in food. I do like my food. So the hills and the walks and being lose to nature, that’s great. I think from a serious point of view, I came here a pretty rough moment in my life, and I came back here to do my Master’s at a place where, again, mentally wasn’t feeling the best.

It’s just something about the community, the culture, that does something for me, and it makes me feel alive, and it’s why I wanted to give something back. And it’s why I’m the right candidate this job.

Joey Legge

If elected, what are your aims?

A big part of my campaign is towards making things cheaper in the Students’ Union.

The way I’m going to do that is by buying unsold stock off companies and then basically sell it much cheaper within the SU. Another one of my policies is to work with charities, SU societies – to increase their engagement and resources.

I also want to help people find flatmates and whether they do that through social media and also through various different events.

I also want to implement optional delivery points of student buildings. So this idea that you get a delivery sent straight to any student building and then pick it up. The reason why I want to do that is people a lot of people have a lot of problems with their accommodation and I want to help people with their deliveries.

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

I think the most important issue in the Students’ Union is basically the a lot of indirect things that we are facing, so things like different deliveries going to housing, how much money people have in the pot.

I think that the way we resolve that these issues – going at it from a very outside the outside the box view – is that we implement systems where we can just get these stresses sorted out without spending too much money on tuition fees.

What is your favourite thing about the University of Sheffield?

I think the best thing about the University of Sheffield is it really has a very good understanding of students here.

Students are represented here so well because we have so many societies active for people, telling the Students’ Union what students like and don’t like. We have such good nights out here, we have such a good team working behind us, and I think that that’s what makes the university in itself great. The fact that students should out the freedom – the absolute freedom – to be themselves, because when people be themselves, that’s when they can become someone. And that’s what’s great about university, that’ what’s great about here. And our Students’ Union does that so well.

Anton Parocki

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A post shared by Sheffield Revolutionary Communist Party (@sheffieldcommunists)

If elected, what are your aims?

We have to look at the social election. It’s a total joke and I think everyone knows it. You talk to any students out there – no one thinks these elections are serious, no one thinks anything is going to change from this election, hence why we have such a low turn out for these polls. And really that’s because this whole thing is a joke. We have joke candidates running while there’s a genocide in Gaza and our university is taking funds.

We have like the cost of living crisis, cuts on campus, all these things and the SU is silent – it’s disgrace. But like what we need to do to solve any of these issues, right? Because all of this stems from the campus system. We have to understand that this isn’t happening just in this university. It’s happening in all universities around the country. NHS is crumbling, public services. All these things and to solve any of this, you have to understand that the only way is mass struggle. We need to mobilise students against this, we need to link up with other universities, with workers around the country. So this would be my goal as the Students’ Union President – I would be a voice for students, a way to mobilise students, like transform the issue into an actual weapon, a democratic body that we can then build movements around to then solve all these issues that students are facing.

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

Ask anyone: What’s suffering in your life? Probably the cost of living, the rising rents, the rising tuition.

Probably anger about the cuts on campus, 400 administrative staff have been cut [400 professional services roles were cut last year]. This is seriously going to affect the education over the next few years as students and this is what students are angry about. Like if you talk to anyone and for long enough, they realise that it’s fucked, the whole system’s fucked. And so we need to mobilise against this because that’s the only way to solve it. A lot of the other candidates will be like: “Oh, it’s not realistic mobilising students”. It’s not a matter of realism, it’s a matter of what can we actually do to change it. And the only way to change this is mass struggle. History has shown us this, women didn’t win the vote from signing petitions or vote asking for it. They mobilised. And this is what we have to do as students as mobilising with the workers and the other universities around the country. We have a lot of communists in this country and all across the world, running in SU elections. Iimagine the power we’d have if the Unions linked up and the Unions fought on this line. It would be beautiful, we could change society, we could start something way bigger than universities and solve the struggles in society.

What is your favourite thing about the University of Sheffield?

Not these SU Elections, I’ll tell you that.

I don’t know. What is there that’s so great about this university? We have insane arms companies on campus. No voice for students. I’ve been here for the last three years and rents have gone up, student loans have gone down, cost of living’s gone up.

It’s hard to draw positives, to be honest. The Peak District is quite nice, I guess. It’s an insane university and insane management. I mean, like the Palestine protests, we saw the encampments last year, a great lifetime of students taking power. And this SU silenced them.

In response to the above candidate statements, a spokesperson for the University of Sheffield said that while they were “unclear” over the meaning of the university “taking funds” that “if they are referring to our research in defence, then to clarify, the University partners with organisations that work in the defence sector to help them overcome productivity and sustainability challenges and support UK security and sovereign capabilities. If they are referring to University investments, then the University is committed to investing funds on a socially responsible basis and has an ethical investment policy, with an annual compliance statement and impact report.”

Regarding cuts to professional services staff, they said: “The University is in the process of creating new integrated professional services teams as part of our new school structure which will help create a more consistent and high-quality experience for our staff and students. These strategic decisions will allow the University to continue to deliver the excellent education and student experience for which Sheffield is renowned.”

And regarding their being “no voice for students”, the spokesperson said: “The University has established communication mechanisms in place to engage with students. These include regular meetings with Students’ Union sabbatical officers who are elected by the student body to represent them and student-staff committees in every academic school. We also regularly hold events to listen and engage with students on issues that are important to them. This includes online ‘Ask Your University’ Q&A sessions, and the recent in person ‘University Conversation’ event. ”

Sheffield SU did not respond to comment.

Other SU President candidates

Also running for election, but not in attendance at Tuesday evening’s Candidate Conversation, are:

• Captain Brownbeard, with a manifesto pledge of “putting the ship back on course”.
• Justin, who’s manifesto says: “I like pizza”.
• Smoochie, a stuffed toy frog, with manifesto pledges to: Advocate for an open and welcoming Students’ Union where all feel welcome; all Students’ Union outlets playing Charli XCX’s Brat album on repeat, a 15 per cent tax on Students’ Union purchases for anyone who has ever eaten frogs legs; and lowering to cost of Cadbury’s Freddos by 1p.

You can find part one of our candidate conversations here.