Our Vice President Equity Diversity & Inclusion, Aimee Prior, was a guest speaker at a recent Office for Students event. She has shared her experience of the day below (and how she is raising awareness of the needs of OU students):
As your Vice President Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, I recently joined an Office for Students (OfS) event to talk about student representation, the issues students are raising, and why it is SO important that OU students are included in national conversations around higher education.
One of the biggest parts of my role as VP EDI is making sure all student voices are heard, not just within Open SU and the OU, but in wider conversations about higher education too. I had the chance to do exactly that at this event by joining the OfS ‘Students in Focus’ series as a guest speaker.
The OfS is the independent regulator for higher education in England. Their Students in Focus series gives OfS staff the chance to connect directly with students and hear more about their experiences, priorities and concerns. This session focused on student representatives and student voice. We spoke openly about what representation actually looks like day-to-day, how we bring student experiences into decision-making, and how we can use campaigns and governance structures to push for change.
My day
I joined representatives from three other student unions: Daniel Garton (President at Hartpury University and College SU), Gina Tindale (President at Newcastle University SU) and Sharan Khemlani (Postgraduate Education Officer at The University of Bristol SU). We all come from really different institutions, which was one of the things I actually found the most interesting about the session. We spoke about what surprised us when becoming a student representative, the issues students are currently raising with us, the campaigns we’ve been involved with, and the priorities we think organisations like the OfS should be paying attention to.
For me, one of the most important parts was being able to bring the OU student experience into that conversation. Studying at the OU can look very different from studying at a traditional brick university. Our students are spread across the world, and many are balancing study with work, caring responsibilities, health conditions and all sorts of other commitments. That means that student representation can look different too. Making sure OU students are included when national organisations are talking about what students need from higher education is incredibly important to me.
I also really enjoyed hearing about the work happening at other student unions. One example that really stuck with me was hearing from Gina about Newcastle University SU’s involvement in the ‘Make Misogyny a Hate Crime’ campaign. The campaign involved student officers from several SUs working together nationally. Its petition eventually gained more than 114,000 signatures and was debated in Parliament on 7 September. Hearing about something that had started with student representatives and grown into a national campaign was genuinely incredible! It was such a good example of what student voice can achieve when representatives across different institutions work together!!
Working together
Despite how different all our universities and student communities are, there was actually a lot of overlap in the challenges students are facing, and in all we are trying to achieve.
We also discussed which of the OfS priorities are most relevant to our roles, where we think there could be a greater focus, and how the OfS can better support student representatives. The session ended with a Q&A from OfS colleagues working across areas including policy, regulation, student engagement, communications and data.
It was genuinely so encouraging to see so much interest in hearing directly from student representatives, and I am so grateful that I got the opportunity to be a part of a wider conversation about what meaningful student representation can look like. Most importantly, I got to take OU students' experiences and perspectives into that space!
For students, I hope this is a reminder that your experiences, concerns and ideas really do matter and make a difference. For other student representatives, I hope this is a reminder of just how powerful our collective voice can be when we share what we’re hearing, learn from each other, and keep pushing for students to be part of the conversations that affect them 🙂