Meet your new SU President, Natasha Barrett

After an intense week of campaigning the results are finally out – Natasha Barrett is our new President! On Friday night Vernon Kay revealed to screaming and sweaty SU-goers that Natasha had won.

In the middle of Women’s History Month we voted in an all-female sabbatical team. Laura Lewis is our new Co-President, Welfare & Diversity,  Pippa Gentry our Co-President, Societies & Media, and Steff Milne our Co-President, Sports & Development.

We spoke to our wonderful new president to hear her plans for the upcoming year.

What are your main plans for improving student life at Royal Holloway?

I want to look at Sshh Bus service timetables in order to increase student safety, pressure the college into creating forums in order to ask students what they wish to see in the new library build and encourage the university to broaden curriculums to decrease erasure of LGBT+, BME and disabled authors.

In addition I plan to look at introducing payment schemes for large scale events and increasing the number of accessible, cheap nights like Toast as well as encouraging societies to run more themed nights and supporting them in doing so. These are just a few examples of my plans but I hope to address as many of my manifesto points as possible!

What do you hope to have accomplished by the end of your year as President?

Despite having a long list of ideas and plans, my over-arching aim is to get more students to engage with the SU. This is something the current staff and sabbs work really hard on already but I just think it’s always relevant. I want to increase the feedback we receive from students (positive and negative) in order to properly address requests, queries and suggestions.

How did you celebrate winning?

I celebrated with some pretty embarrassing hysterical crying on everyone there, including Vernon Kay! Some lovely girls offered me make up in the toilet because I clearly looked like I needed it.

Apart from winning, what was the highlight of your campaign?

The entire week was utterly fantastic and I have so many hilarious memories with my campaign team, but I think the highlight has to be a student telling me I could make the campaign more authentic by ‘doing squats to increase testosterone in order to grow a moustache’.

Fave drink?

If I could choose anything, it would be a really good Scotch whisky, as obnoxious as that makes me sound!

Congratulations to everyone who ran, there were definitely some fierce campaigns.