Forget the holidays, it's the upcoming elections that are keeping us excited at Students' Union HQ

What elections?

Your Union is led by five elected students, who spend a year taking a ‘sabbatical ‘from their studies to work full time on the student experience.  We ask students to put themselves forward for the positions in February each year, and then hold a week-long voting period, encouraging as many students as possible to choose their representatives.  The elected students (who we sometimes call Sabbatical Officers, or Sabbs), take responsibility for a School or Schools, ensuring that students views are taken into account when decisions are made that impact us all.  In addition, the Sabbs work on campaign areas like student wellbeing, sport and activities, community engagement and many more.

Something is changing for 2016…

In a recent meeting of Student Senate, it was agreed that there will be a couple of key changes to our election process.  Rather than explain how it used to be, here is a summary of what will happen in 2016:

There will be five separate roles up for grabs, each with a distinct election.  The roles are:

• President
• Business and Law Officer
• Science and Technology Officer
• Arts and Media Officer
• Health and Social Care Officer

Students can stand for any of the roles they like (but only one), and can vote in all of the elections.  We particularly encourage students to stand for the Officer that covers the School in which they study i.e. It makes more sense if the Officer for Arts and Media is a student from Arts and Media! 

Who on earth is ‘RON’?

RON will be a candidate in all our elections, and stands for ‘Re-Open Nominations’.  It is essentially an option to allow voters to express their dissatisfaction with the choice of candidates; a bit like saying ‘none of the above’.  Because of our previous block elections system, we’ve not used RON in elections at Salford for a number of years, but he will be back for 2016 as a choice in all of the elections.

Why not think about standing for election next year? 

The elections are a fantastic opportunity to throw yourself into campus life, meet other students, find out more about the Students’ Union and if you win, will land you a full-time paid job with bags of potential for changing life at Salford.  These roles are held in every single students’ union in every single university in the country – they are part of a well established system, which means your Sabbatical year will not negatively impact your academic progression (think of it as a really productive year out!).

More information can be found here: www.salfordstudents.com/elections or you can email elections-ussu@salford.ac.uk with any questions or comments.