#sabb team

[lsesu]

Statement on Occupy LSE

As a Union we have been made aware of the decision of the School to potentially pursue legal action against the ongoing occupation of the Vera Anstey suite by the group ‘Occupy LSE’.

Thus far, we have defended the right of students to protest peacefully in the room, as long as it does not come at a cost to the rest of the student body, and lobbied against any legal action being taken against our students. We are continuing to lobby against legal action currently, as well as disciplinary proceedings being taken out. Universities should not be taking action against their own students.

However, unfortunately earlier this week an event was relocated by the group to the Old Theatre, without permission, and disrupted a revision class, and today four teaching rooms were made unavailable due to the occupation.

We believe that protest is important at university: but not if it prohibits the learning of other LSE students. We are also keen to ensure that space on campus is used for the purpose of LSE students and to facilitate their learning.

We are in contact with the School to ensure that legal action is not taken against the group, nor disciplinary. However, it has become clear that the current situation is unsustainable given the timing - during exam period - and we would urge the group to come to a resolution over their occupying of the space.

LSE had previously offered a tripartite meeting between the School, the occupiers, and ourselves, which was not accepted by Occupy LSE. Dialogue is crucial to achieving outcomes and we encourage dialogue as a means of moving forward, as well as clear outcomes.

Additionally, many of the concerns raised by the group in their list of demands are currently in progress. In today’s Ethics Policy Committee, the UGM motion about reviewing the Ethics Code will be discussed. Council on Tuesday passed a paper to review its ethical investments, which will examine assets in both fossil fuels and tobacco. Meanwhile, only yesterday a focus group was held on sexual harassment and we will be taking forward recommendations from this with a view to improving both the culture towards sexual harassment on campus and the way in which incidents are reported. We welcome participation in our 10,000 member strong Union in order to progress resolutions to vital issues within our university.

We welcome thoughts on this from all LSE students to [email protected].

Yours,

The Sabbatical Officer Team

[ussu-sabbteam]

Tom's Olympic Blog

Afternoon,

What an exciting week to blog on, the Olympics are finally here! We've had our little flags in the office since the jubilee and now finally I won't have to explain why they're there! It also means that if you were to head in to the office over the next week I'll inevitably be cheering to some obscure sport which we've all just found out that we're quite good at (equestrian as I type). Thought I'd include a photo below from fairly decent seats in Old Trafford where Team GB kindly posed for a photo for me.

We still have the regular meetings with staff members of the University to discuss student issues, an example this week being mine and Christina's meeting with IT. We then had an afternoon looking back at the first year of MediaCity:UK campus, the highlights of which were most definitely the students' work and in particular a student who's doing work to improve the way we watch football.

There's an unfortunate amount of Academic Misconduct Panels at the minute (panels to discuss cases of plagiarism et al. #lightreading http://www.governance.salford.ac.uk/cms/resources/uploads/File/AQA/Academic_Misconduct_Procedure.pdf ) you really don't want to end up at these meetings so get your referencing done!!

On a happier note and perhaps the most important thing we'll be working on is to get ready for next year. Other than the basics of getting to know the new team and how we'll work together we've made a beautiful plan which we'll be showing off throughout Welcome. A years experience of this role tells me that once the madness starts in September it's easy to forget about these plans and get snowed under with all the other things which come up so it's important to get as much of it as possible done before then.

But what will we actually be doing in Welcome? #shamelessadvertising  http://salfordstudents.com/welcome. If there's anything you think we've missed then be sure to get in touch and tell us we should be doing it.

Much of the sabbatical officer role throughout Welcome is increasing our profile so that as many students as possible know why we're here and what we do. We had one of our Engagement meetings to discuss how we should do it.

The easiest way to get to alot of students face to face is to do plenty of lecture shouts so many lucky students will get to hear my quality humour as we weave through our Prezzi presentation. We'll be trying to get to more than just new students so some who saw it last year may get to see this years updated version. We'll then be jumping in and out of various events throughout the week so clearly I'll run in to you at some point.

So that's summer,

Tom