An update from Jon-Connor

Friday 02-02-2018 - 15:50
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Hello all! I’m Jon-Connor Lyons, your Arts & Media Officer at the Students’ Union! I wanted to give you a little update on the work I’ve been doing over the past 7 months!

LGBT History Month- I’ve been involved in the planning of LGBT History month for this year an am leading on several events and making sure all Salford students have an amazing time in celebrating LGBT history but also learning something too! I invited the Mayor of Salford to our LGBT+ Leadership panel on the 27th of February at 6pm in Atmosphere Café, which we are all excited about where he can give details and his perspective as a leader but also as a gay man.

The Living Wage- I launched the campaign to get all Salford students who work in the Students’ Union on the Living Wage, £8.75, in October. With the help of students, we rallied support across lots of different students who all believed that students should spend more time studying and less time struggling. We made history and are the most popular campaign to date. In April, the Trustee Board will be making a final decision on this and I am writing a paper alongside the interim CEO and the Head of Finance, I’m really hopeful about the campaign and am sure it will continue to make change here at Salford.

Safety- I have had several meetings with the Head of Security at Salford University about how we can make campus safer. I’m also working in conjunction with the Security department to promote safety on campus and tackle crime. In addition, I’ve met with local Councillors, the Mayor, and the Campus Police about how we can make Salford a much safer environment. Despite the disgusting cuts to Greater Manchester Police that has resulted in 4000 officers being taken of our streets, the GMP have seen a reduction of 50% of theft in Salford. More work needs to be done however and ensuring we as a Union have a good relationship with community stake holders is vital.

Gender Neutral Toilets- At the Students Union we opened the University’s 1st Gender Neutral toilet. I’ve spent my 7 months sitting on a very exciting ‘Toilet Working Group’ with a goal to make the University much more accessible in terms of its toilet provision. Through this we have launched Gender Neutral toilets in dozens of key buildings, with the aim to have a Gender Neutral toilet in every building by the end of November 2018.

Period Poverty Provision- After setting aside several hundreds of pounds to have a stock of sanitary products free for all Salford students in University House, we want to expand this policy and implement it in other key buildings across the University. We’re in the process of lobbying key stake holders in the University to ring-fence funding for this.

Student Council- What is clear is that Student Council structure we have does not represent Salford students fairly enough. We need to have more representation for certain stake holders, therefore I’ll be planning to work with our Student Voice department in the future to review its structure and how we can increase representation whilst reducing costs.

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