Summer blogs

Well hello!

Dragging my eyes away from the Olympics today to write a quick blog on what's been happening over the last 2 weeks in SU-land (and who isn't interested in that in July :P). The writing of this blog is also helped by the fact that I am in unprecedented pain levels after our tag team Tagtical Chunder competed in (and won) the Superbowl all Ireland tag finals yesterday yay! Check us out and spot our beaut of a cup here!

The week before last was Student Union Training run by USI in Athlone. The event is a 5-day 8.30am-7pm intensive training week which all full time officers in USI participate in. I took part in it last year and the modules in things like mental health campaigning, answering the legal issues students' face, communicating were all really helpful to me throughout my year so I was looking forward to attending. Last week the modules I found best were President 101 (building a productive team), lobbying, negotiating and working with college authorities to get the student outcome, how to recruit and organise effective class reps but there were many many more that were very useful, I've attached a full-list of the modules I attended here.

USI also invited Tom Boland the Higher Education Authority Chief to attend the event. I think it was a fantastic idea to give sabbatical officers the opportunity question him at such an early stage in our term and get some real answers on the pressing student funding questions. I asked about the UCD overspend on top-level wages and the deal that UCDSU, UCD and the HEA had agreed that monies equivalent to the overspend would be invested in Student Services. He assured me that the UCD President would receive a letter this week directing what is to happen and when. This is great news for student services here as the deal will mean more than €1,000,000 extra available to our front-line services such as health and counselling this year. (There's a lot in that paragraph so for more info on Tom Boland, the HEA, the overspend and the deal click these linkies)

This week it was back to the routine in the office and I have to say I don't think it was my most productive week, probably because of the hundreds of emails I had left over from SUT that had to be answered and generally catching up on things from the previous week. Nonetheless, I'm pretty happy with the week's end product looking back. We've organised a great launch to our March for Marriage Campaign (wanna be involved? Free on Tuesday @12midday? Email me!!), made big progress on organising online-voting for class rep elections, advanced plans for the SU shops including our new shop opening in the new Aras na Mac Lein, fed back the students' views on what we want in our new President to the Search Committee (massive thanks to everyone who emailed me their thoughts!) and more.

One of the most exciting things I worked on this week is a project with Ernst and Young and Nova UCD. We're all keen to show that students can be successful and profitable entrepreneurs even when in college and so we're developing a plan to help you guys turn that idea into something you can make into your own business! I'll update you with the policy in my next blog as I'm currently writing it and want to feed it back to both groups first to see if its possible from their end, but this is something I think will really take off, and it's a new direction for the SU to support, help and encourage students and that's exactly what I want to do this year.

I mentioned in my first blog that I had met AIB to discuss a loan scheme for students to help pay our contribution fee in a more affordable way. In a cruel coincidence the following week TCD announced their previously secretive student finance scheme! I then approached Bank of Ireland to look at rolling out the scheme to UCD but we're thwarted by UCD's exclusivity deal with AIB. I hope AIB come back with a scheme very soon in advance of September 2012 or our students will suffer and I'm pretty annoyed at the prospect of that. I'm confident AIB will work with us though and I will continue to contact them and I know UCD are too so watch this space.

Swimming is nearly on so I think that's enough for me. Keep an eye out for RTE's swimming commentator Earl McCarthy who is UCD's Swimming Coach and Pool Manager. I'm willing on all Ireland's team but especially UCD's own Annalise Murphy (sailing - first event is tomorrow Monday at 12:05) and Arthur Lanigan O'Keeffe (modern Pentathlon - August 11 at 8.45). Crazy to think some people in college with me are competing at such a ridiculously high sporting level and I hope they do well! GO UCD!

Rach