NUS Reform

Hello all,

The NUS (National Union of Students) are currently undergoing a governance review, as the Guild did earlier in the year. The NUS represents millions of students like you around the country, and their work is primarily focused on leading campaigns on issues such as top-up fees and free prescriptions for students. However, they can only continue to do this if their structure can change to be more relevant to students.

This is where you come in. The NUS are leading an e-consultation that ends on August 31st, and they want as much student input as possible. Obviously the summer is a difficult time to be doing this, but it is certainly doable!

To be part of the NUS reform and to have your say, go to this website http://www.officeronline.co.uk/news/275620.aspx and get involved!

If you would like more information either e-mail me at h.lazell@guild.bham.ac.uk, or come and see me in my office (top floor of the Guild directly above Spar).

Our first few days!

Hello all!

On our last day of training we got sent on a "suprise" trip to Alton Towers, as one last day of fun before we started properly. I say it was a suprise, but most of us had guessed despite the efforts of Sparky (our VPS) to keep it a secret! With limited time we managed to go on a lot of the big rides (I loved Air!!) and also, more importantly, we spent lots of time (and money) trying to win cuddly toys...most of which are now going to be living on the exec corridor for the next year! On the left you can see a picture of the seven sabbs at the end of the day, along with our winnings.....

Friday, August 1st was our first full day. Needless to say, we were all quite excited about getting our offices and shifting them round so not much work got done....

Naively I thought that this week would allow us to get our heads round things and get settled in, but we were properly thrown into it with a 9am-6pm day with the University! Since then I've been occupied with appeals, one to one sessions with staff to find out more about the job, and showing people from UCL round the building so they could learn about us and we could learn about their union!