About

Hi, I'm a third year computer scientist representing students from the Computer Science department in the Students' Union Council. Please contact me if you have any queries.

Last Council Meeting - 7/3/2013

In this weeks meeting, the issues with Student Incident reports being sent to personal tutors were discussed. When a student is "reported as being involved in drug or alcohol related incidents that are treated as emergency, criminal or involving anti-social behaviour", the information about the incident is forwarded to the student's personal tutor. This is a clear violation of privacy and as personal tutors aren't often trained in pastoral care, they are unable to deal with such issues. Council voted to mandate the officers to lobby the university to revise this policy and examine alternative student pastoral care provisions.
A petition for "Eat WithUS to lower prices" received 50 votes for and was therefore discussed. Many councillors put forward arguments saying the prices in Eat WithUS outlets are too expensive compared to deli's and mini-supermarkets on West Street. However, if EatWithUS werew to lower prices, it would mean that the staffs wages may take a hit and therefore would conflict with the current Living Wage Policy. When this went to vote we had the option to vote to "lobby the university to lower prices in all outlets", "continue to lobby the university to pay a living wage", "lobby the university to do both" or to abstain. I firmly believe that prices in the IC should be lowered but also believe the Living Wage Policy needs to be campaigned for. Although it would have been difficult to implement both policies side by side, I thought the Students' Union could have at least attempted this, hence why I voted to "lobby the university to do both". However, the motion which passed was to "continue to lobby the university to pay the Living Wage".

During this meeting, we split off into our different faculties and discussed options for student development. One key thing to come out of this discussion was the scrapping of semester 1 exams for year long modules. This has been implemented already by the Faculty of Engineering for 1st (and 2nd years?). This was done to introduce engineering focus weeks such as the Global Engineering Challenge. From what I have heard, this is not popular amongst Computer Science students and is a poor use of valuable time. It was agreed as engineering students that having semester 1 exams reduces stress on students and reduces the amount to learn for one particular exam. I would be interested to here from anyone who has an opinion on the semester 1 exam situation.
Also discussed here was the ability for engineering students to do modules from other departments. As I am aware, when Computer Science students have unrestricted credits, we can chose modules form other departments; providing they fit in with our timetable and we meet the requirements for the module. A key problem with this is fitting it into our timetables and it was agreed in this discussion that Engineering studetns don't want an interdisciplinary faculty, but would rather have better administration and communication between faculties in organising what modules students from outside that faculty can do. Once Again, I would be interested to hear from anyone with an opinion about choosing modules from other faculties and whether it is something you have done or are interested in doing.

As for the upcoming and previous agendas of Council meetings, please see the 2012/2013 Agenda/Minutes page.
Please note, the minutes for meetings will not be available until they have been accepted by Council to ensure there are no errors in the minutes.

Next Council Meeting

If you would like me to vote a particular way on any issues (for/against/abstain) in upcoming council meetings or want any more information on them, please email me.

Latest Updates

ALL STUDENTS WITHIN THE COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT: Please make sure you submit any feedback you may have to your course representatives about any modules or course issues so they can relay this feedback on the Staff-Student Liason Committee. You can find the list of representatives on the intranet. In the absence of a representative, please email me and I will represent your views.