L: Hello and welcome to the UBS Elections 2015 podcast. My name is Luke and I’m here with Joshua,
who is running for VP of the College of Business, arts and social sciences.
J: Hello!
L: So Josh, can you tell me what you feel you can bring to the role?
J: I’ve been a course rep for and a senior rep and both times I have noticed a complete lack of
participation, representation system. We have 1271 positions available for people to represent their
student’s voice and yet only 256 ran this year. In the college of business arts and social sciences, only
80 people ran for election in September, and now it’s gone down to 72 today. To put that into
perspective, there’s more students per course rep than there are actual course reps.
L: What incentives can you offer to fill those positions then?
J: So one of the things I want to try and do is to boost course rep presence, so I want to make sure
they get two minutes of time in lectures, to say what they’ve actually done to improve it, I want
them to be in the lecture centre so it’s easy to find them, talk to them about the issues. But course
reps themselves, I want to get them hoodies, volunteering hours because they don’t get that at the
moment, I want to give them incentives for when they do a good job, so if that week they did most
work, they get a free night at the academy.
L: What are your other two manifesto points, then?
J: So, housing safeguards is one of my most important ones. It’s one that I’ve put a lot of research
into. On campus accommodation- we’ve had a lot of discussions about that over the recent years,
the whole fee rise thing, but I want to make sure that its living got better student accommodation
because if student accommodation is not adequate than its going to affect student studies. So if
you’re on campus, and you’re living in substandard accommodation, I want to make it easy so you
can get a refund, and it’s all efficient, and you get an apology of that as well. If you’re in private
accommodation I want to make it so if any landlord wants to advertise on campus or through our
affiliates, they must be living up to the London Rental Standard and be signed up to the scheme,
which is completely free, but its mainly a honour code system between landlords to ensure they’re
all living up to the same standard.
L: Do you think that the arts are slightly overlooked at Brunel?
J: Um, possibly- we had the piano been moved in the Roberts Room into the Eastern Gateway. I
mean, as a pianist myself I find that absolutely tragic, that’s a Steinway piano, and I can’t see how
the university could justify it being moved. Um, besides that, yeah.
L: What obstacles do you foresee as being the representative of what is clearly the largest college at
Brunel?
J: Obstacles? One of the main issues at the moment is that CBASS is a fragmented identity. (2:30)
One of the least selling point of the university, which apparently, I don’t see that myself, where
politics and history- usually that’s quite high in The Guardian university rankings and quite highly in
National Student Survey, however, we weren’t put into the same groups as others where we’re all
similar, we’re just put in as the misc.(2:48), that’s why we had the most students, not life sciences or
engineering. Engineering has their own home in the village, we don’t have that, we’re just scattered
across the campus. Business is in Eastern Gateway, Politics and History is in Marie Jahoda, and Law is
still in Elliot Jacques, and we don’t have a central space. So it’s very hard to find out what students
want to do, for them to collaborate, and for them to pass issues back to the Union.
L: So you say you want to make, create a unified CBASS identity, and that’s part of your manifesto.
How do you think that will work? How is that going to, how are you going to implement that?
J: So as I said, I would like to see a main social space which I know the university has said before, that
they’re looking into this as a possibility, but I want to make sure it is a reality. We have a collegiate
atmosphere and departments(3:30) with the societies and as of it I want to try and boost one thing I
actually campaigned on in Senior Rep and as President of History society is to try and create more
research opportunities for students so students can actually help professors with their research
duty, gain adequate skills and use that in their academic studies, and I want to try and boost that
across all college, and that’s not going to happen without that unifying identity. Well that’s the kind
of thing I want to achieve.
L: What do you think the biggest academic issues are that CBASS students face?
J: For starters, they don’t get feedback on their exams. I’ve heard that a few other candidates might
be running on this as well, so I’m not alone, but it shows how important this issue is. Personally, I do
better on exams than I do on course work, and yet I don’t know how to build on that because I don’t
get the manuscripts back, with marker’s notes. Therefore, this is one of the many things I want to
try and improve this year in academics: I want to make sure students have the correct feedback so
that they can improve themselves and then they can do better for next time.
L: Obviously, with the governance referendum that we had at the end of last term, the academic and
welfare officers have been axed and merged into one VP for each college, so how do you feel you
can differentiate between the academic issues that a student faces with their welfare issues that
they would face?
J: See for me, they both go hand in hand. The main way is that- one of the things that have
happened now in the new governance review is that there’s now three offices instead of two that
can look over these issues which means there’s going to be a lot more team work, for us to kind of
come together, and fix the problems that are with academic and welfare. It all depends how this
year’s going up, because we actually don’t know how this governance review is going to work out in
the long play, it’s just happened, so we get to see how that works.
L: How do you plan on engaging with more students within CBASS?
J: First of all, question time. I’ve been doing this already in the History Society along with Model
United Nations and Politics, it’s a great way to get views, and it’s a great way to raise issues. We’ve
had this with office already this year, that’s where we heard Martin say no comments in return to
the question how much do you all raise before retax(5:43), and it gives a good idea of the character
of the officers. And it’s a good way to engage students: social sciences won the active voting
statistics in the elections, so they’re quite active in Brunel politics, but I believe this is a good way to
raise the issues that are going on well within the university.
L: Would you accept a salary of fifty percent less than what it would be if that meant every student
at Brunel voted? If we had a 100% turnout in elections?
J: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (6:00)
L: So would that mean you would still run for the position even if it wasn’t paid?
J: Yep. I believe, as I said, the main reason I’m doing this is because I was caught up in a senior rep,
and I don’t believe the representation system is represented in the student posts. That’s why I want
to essentially redo the union from scratch to make it so its doing its fundamental job properly. The
representation scheme needs to be fixed.
L: If you didn’t get elected this time around, what would your plans be for next year?
J: Um, I’ll probably try and pursue a graduate scheme. The main one I’m looking at at the moment is
a self-service fast stream, so its very relevant to the role I’m trying to get into at the moment, but
that’s not the reason why I’m trying to get this role.
L: So what exactly is the reason? What’s drawn you to the role of VP CBASS?
J: I want to leave Brunel in a better state than I leave it. I know the university’s investing a hundred
thousand pounds into the representation scheme but I believe I’m the best person to ensure that it’s
structured, there’s an ethos there, I’ve been a fresher’s week contact before, and a fresher’s week
head contact: one of the main reason that program’s such a success is because there’s an
atmosphere there, an ethos that gets people involved. They see the fresher’s weeks contacts all
having fun and they want to become one the next year, and that’s kind od what I want to do with
the course reps teams. If it’s successful one year, it’ll try and build on that success, and then
eventually, it should lead to good quality representation.
L: So what do you feel is the most important responsibility of the position?
J: There’s no just one thing, you’re at the service of students, so it’s whatever they deem you to be
the most important issue.
L: If you had to pick one?
J: Personally, I believe representation is as I said before, at its critical level. Only one in six students
are represented at the moment. So that something I really want to try and pursue for next year but I
do not want to forget welfare issues either because I’ve been living in a bad house, and I know how
that affects my studies.
L: How do you feel your current position in the union would help you prepare for your Vice
President-ship?
J: As a Senior Rep it is my main job at the moment to represent the views of everyone within the
politics and history and law departments, though law is shared with Rebecca Chambers, the Senior
Rep for Law. Our position this year will be the last of its type because next year we’ll have
department heads come in. My main job is to represent student views in student assembly, I have
done that with many different votes I have cast in different issues, from BDS to the living wage,
within the students union, but I’ve also represented views in university committees such as Health
and Safety to make sure student welfare is improved overall. These might sound dry but they’re
important times top produce issues that students have especially with Health and Safety, this is the
first time CBASS has had one overall.
L: Okay, then one final fun question to finish off with- I know you’re a history student, so who is one
person from history whom you most identify with?
J:Clement Atlee. Who is the academic’s favourite prime minister even though everyone usually goes
for Churchill or Thatcher, but I’m a Clement Atlee fan.
L: Josh, thank you very much for coming, and thank you for listening to this UBS Elections 2015
Podcasts. Voting opens at midday on Wednesday the 11th of March and you can vote online at
brunelstudnts.com/vote until 4pm on Friday the 13th of March. Results will be announced in
Academy on 8pm that day.