‘I’ve ran on a green platform, an environmental platform’: An interview with Jordan Weir

Although Results Night is tomorrow, our interviews with the SU officer candidates who have approached us show no sign of letting up.

Jordan Weir is running to be Development Officer, and told us about sustainability, his lobbying experience, and his hopes for the Union.

Why are you running for development officer?

I’ve ran on a green platform, an environmental platform. I want to make our university more sustainable from. I want to continue the fantastic work of Mel Kee and the previous officers who’ve been in charge of SU development and I want to influence a more sustainable atmosphere in our uni. Even if it’s the educational value of it as well, a lot of students aren’t aware of the many impacts of climate change.

We as a uni should pioneer and champion this and bring ingenuity to try and pioneer these solutions so if I am elected I’ll take these policies and I also work for a climate change lobbyist group so that’s outside university. Doing a politics degree and having a lobbying side of it, that’s opened my eyes to the local atmosphere and I really want to combat the issues in this county as well as in our university as well as nationally. I’ve lobbied an MP in the north west and feel I’ve got the valuable knowledge in the sector of sustainability.

Even if it’s just the little things we do, it can all make a massive difference.
Obviously a few years back we got rid of bottled still water and I don’t think we followed through on the policy. We’ve not really pushed it forward.

How would you translate all of this into policy terms?

I feel like the policies we’ve already got in place under Mel Kee are fantastic. I want to go a few steps further. I feel like our university is on the right track to be on a champion SU, and we are progressive but I want to ensure the policy is more sustainable.

For example, over the campaign I believe that the usage of paper leaflets and flyering is not sustainable, it’s not green and it’s not environmentally friendly. And I would lobby for a policy for there to be paperless campaigning, to an extent at least, or limit the amount of paper we would use in campaigns. I myself have been subject to it but that’s only because flyering is effective to get votes, but looking back now it’s not sustainable.

Over the past few days I’ve also decided to support more greener energy uses across the campus by ensuring that the university and the higher echelons of the university in terms of leadership is trying to pursue greener energy solutions across the university, to cut emissions across the board.

How have you got involved in the SU during your time here?

I love every minute of being in this SU, obviously it’s the best in the country and I can see why. It’s fantastic, it’s a lovely atmosphere, especially when you see all your friends and stuff. I personally work as a member of staff at the venues already, and we love our time and our job. It’s a great atmosphere, and it is what it says on the tin.

Sheffield is such a vibrant atmosphere full of many different people and many different cultures. Sheffield has become my home over the course of two years, and I’ve fell in love with the area. Being from the north west and coming to Sheffield, it’s been wonderful it’s a different sort of atmosphere and I love how there’s so many different cultures here with the international students and we encourage it. If I’m elected, I want to build on everything that’s been done and go 100 miles more, if not a million miles more, to always make it the best SU. I want to work with other SUs to make sure we’re not just doing our part for sustainability, but they’re doing the same.

There’s been a lot of high profile initiatives under the last couple of development officers. Do these go far enough?

What I will say is obviously we need to reduce plastic packaging, but we need to have a real concise debate about how we do this. My opposition has mentioned cardboard instead of plastic, but I don’t think that would be the greatest idea because there’s obviously a massive inconvenience factor with it. I’m for sustainability and environmental solutions but I don’t think having cardboard is the greatest idea.

Let’s try and cut down on plastics completely. We know the political atmosphere globally, plastic has a massive effect not only in terms of the pollution factor but in our seas, there’s a lot of plastic in our seas and we need to reduce that completely. So I certainly agree with reusable cups but let’s branch it out for food as well. Let’s make it an impact on all outlets and make all of our outlets more sustainable. But I believe the policies put forward by previous development officers have been fantastic and I want to build on that.

We need to make sure we’re not just lobbying for really niche areas of climate change, I want us to outsource different things, look at the stats and the facts. Let’s branch it out to students studying these sorts of areas as well. I want to implement my policies but I want the student body to have a huge say on my job. I want everybody to give me new ideas and perspectives, but I believe with the consensus of other people we can build a really sustainable platform for our university.

Anything else?

I believe I’m the more environmentally friendly and green candidate in this race for SU development officer. I want to bring sustainability across the university and I believe the other candidate, his policies are great but I’ve got the policies to bring more sustainability in.

I want to build on the previous work of the SU development officers and continue that. I would also like to state the importance of voting in SU officer elections. We are your student body and whoever gets your vote I would encourage you to go out and vote. It is so important students have a voice in your own SU. We need to have a student body in these areas to really encourage and fight for many different issues and make this SU more incredible than what it already is. And to do that we need to vote.

Obviously I’ve really loved my time in the election, it’s been very stressful and tiring but it’s been so fun meeting all the other officers and getting to know them more. I’ve made loads of new friends and it’s been a really positive campaign. There’s been a lot of talk in the background about disunity with many different officer roles. Whoever wins, wins, and they’ve all got fantastic manifestos. Let’s make it a friendly and passionate, but also positive campaign across all officer roles and president roles.