Sussex Students’ Union releases annual plan for 2017

The Sussex Students’ Union has released their annual plan, dictating some key themes they would like to address this upcoming year.

The themes announced include: Low cost, liberation, support, and engagement. But what does this all mean?

Low cost

The “Low cost” theme addresses both local and national issues that affect students and their spending. A long campaign that has been running within the union is their opposition to the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) which aims to marketise education.

The union have also announced they would like to set up a food waste cafe on campus. Sussex University and Brighton have both played host to a number of successful pop up cafes which utilises wasted food.

Housing is another issue the union wish to address with plans to tackle affordable accommodation both on-campus and off

Liberation

The Union have stated that they wish to “start a process of decolonising” the curriculum by promoting  more inclusive and varied knowledge being taught in lectures.

Students with disabilities suffer with accessing certain parts of the university. The Union want to make sure students with disabilities are as comfortable in their academic life as everyone else

Support

Affordable drug-testing kits are planned to be distributed among students according to the report; in an attempt to increase knowledge and awareness of drug misuse.

Mental health support has also been mentioned as a target for the Students’ Union. The aim is for the university to employ two more full-time councillors and to provide suicide prevention training for key frontline staff.

Engagement

A huge emphasis on participation both on local and national voting has been put forward by the Union. A major plan for Sussex is to revamp the website in order to make it easier to navigate and find items that usually are much harder to access.

Sussex Students’ Union president, Annie Pickering, will be in charge of promoting greater engagement in Union elections and national elections.

A volunteering scheme will be introduced in which students will go out into the local area to knock on resident’s doors for feedback. The idea is to listen to what issues people face and ways to tackle them.

The Union also want to promote more networking opportunities for societies to come together and meet each other.

The full annual plan can be found here