Nomination

1. How has the union ensured that it meets the needs of its members?

As over 60% of our members are postgraduates, nearly 65% are from outside the UK, we don’t look and feel like other students’ unions. Our annual survey has more respondents than the National Student Survey, nearly 70% have joined a club or society and just over 50% of undergraduates have voted this year.

With 11% of students from China, 10% of all students studying for PhD, we’ve developed a range of differential offers. Our Engagement Team undertook research projects, with focus groups, and have planned activities accordingly – including an annual Research Festival, student staff employed to write content in mandarin, employability workshops and Sport England funding targeted at increasing the sense of community for isolated PhD students.

Our research repeatedly demonstrates students who want us to do more for those involved in activities, and so with delegated authority from LSE to spend £300,000 from the annual fund, we’ve developed a Student Activities promise – five commitments we’ve asked students to measure our success against.

2. How have the activities of the union resulted in a positive impact for students and the community?

Due to our positive relationship with LSE’s catering team this year, we now receive 5% of all cashless campus payments, meaning that we now have £30,000 for student hardship. This has funded access to abortions for students in their home countries, housing payments for those struggling or food for those who have become estranged from parents whilst at LSE.

We have successfully won a campaign to freeze halls fees for those in shared rooms, received international press coverage for our work against Prevent and seen the University commit to do more work on post-study work visas following our petition of nearly 1,300 students.

We work successfully within the University to achieve change, including increased funding from the Annual Fund for society events, commitments on class sizes and more microwaves on campus. The number of students who feel strongly and deeply about microwaves is extraordinary, and in delivering this simple outcome we’re able to access students who wouldn’t ordinarily be interested when we’re asking them to help us campaign for a fossil-free campus.

3. What steps has the union taken over the last year to ensure that the democratic processes that are used to make decisions are open and inclusive?

We have record numbers of students involved in our decision making. Over 50% of undergraduates voted in the elections this year, with just over 30% of postgraduates voting. We have delivered a number of interventions to make this possible.

We ran focus groups post-election in 2014 to understand why students didn’t vote, identifying communication action plans and new support for candidates in 2015.

Our weekly Union General Meetings are considered by many as the pinnacle of democracy, but we have changed much of their structure to open them up. We have advice and guidance for any student wishing to submit a motion, and run campaign sessions to help them plan their activities. The final motion of the year had 833 students voting in favour of our Union lobbying for meat-free Mondays on campus.

In 2013/14 we launched a BME research project, looking at how we could increase representation from BME students. Using an expanded black history month and work with the Afro-Caribbean Society, we surpassed our target of 20% to see 35% of elected students defining as BME.

4. How is the union perceived by its members, stakeholders, officers and staff, and what is it doing to improve its perception?

Our activities are divisive and students have strong views about what we do. Our research repeatedly demonstrates opposing views about our campaigning, with the Union accused of being ‘too political’ by many of our members. We’re unashamed about this, and with nationally leading levels of involvement and engagement we believe this division is not necessarily detrimental to our success.

We disbanded our Mens’ Rugby Club this year, leading to a vociferous campaign of sexism against our General Secretary and Womens’ Officer. We were proactive in presenting all the information to our members so they could understand the process if not agree with the outcome, and with over 40% of students regularly reading our segmented emails we’re managing perceptions of ourselves.

Our relationship strategy identifies staff within the University we have positive relationships with and those we don’t, and we meet bi-monthly officer and staff meetings to discuss particular individuals and committee progress to ensure we’re proactively improving perceptions of us.

Our staff forum, which was established three years ago alongside a new People Strategy, was instrumental in enabling us to bypass bronze on our first attempt at IiP seeing us awarded Silver on our first attempt at the accreditation.