When I started this role back in July of last year, this day felt like a light year away, but here we are! This year has truly been the roller-coaster ride of a lifetime and I’ve been having a wail of a time and cannot wait for someone else to experience this amazing opportunity.
As I come to the end of my tenure, I can’t help but look back at the amazing things we’ve been up to this year. I started out this year with three manifesto priorities and while they’ve shifted and changed slightly, I'm proud to say I've been able to complete them all in some shape or another.
This year I’ve been able to collaborate with FXPlus to tailor the event selection to better fit the student population of today and ensure we are providing a wide variety of events that can appeal to any and every student no matter their institution or their level of study. Thanks so much to everyone that took part in the polls, your input was invaluable and has been put towards a spectrum of brand-new events which you’ll be able to see soon on our ‘What’s On’ page!
In collaboration with our amazing catering team and the sustainability team, we have been able to greatly reduce the food waste produced by our catering outlets and increase biodiversity on campus. We have partnered with the Too Good to Go guys to make this possible, so if you have got the app make sure you look at what the shop is offering and grab yourself a bargain. We also achieved our Silver Hedgehog Friendly Campus certification, which is a certification which guarantees this campus to be a safe location for these rapidly declining creatures.
Finally, in the last few weeks I’ve been gathering your feedback on the library on Falmouth campus and feeding that information into our estates team. As we go into the summer, we’ll be making that space into a more modern, friendly space with more greenery and collaboration space for the students of the Falmouth campus to enjoy. I’m sad I won’t be able to see it in person, but I sure hope they invite me to the grand opening ??.
Outside my manifesto developments, I have also worked with Myles Brammer, food consultant to the stars to review the food available. The food offer on campus up will soon be going up a notch and will provide the widest possible culinary options for those with cultural or medical food requirements.
Also, I have been working with our fabulous Part-Time Officers, especially our Exeter Open officer Lauren. Her and I have been working on getting a lending library for fictional books set up in the exchange building, which we are hoping will promote more recreational reading for students and provide another means to connect with one another over a shared passion.
I’ve had a massively jam-packed year this year and as I move onto new places in future, I will always hold this union dear to my heart. Thank you so much to every student for their amazing feedback and to every amazing staff member for supporting me along the way. Goodbye!