Wow...Week 10

So Week 10 is here. What have I been up to for the last....age I suppose?

I've finally gotten round to completing last July's report on Volunteering from the UK Universities. It's available in the documents section of my page on the ULSU website.

Grant authorities are working off a unified scheme for the first time since the 1960s and there should be one national body for grants by 2012/13. This has been as a result of pressure from students' unions nationally as well as the University in our case. A number of governors of the University, as well as SAA and Don have been really supportive in this and I would like to thank them for it.

I had my hair dyed for charity (see right) and I've raised €370 doing this for Charity Week. It raised a few eyebrows and even Don commented
"and his hair is back to normal" when I received my Class Reps Certificate for the year at Council this week.


I started writing this on Wednesday morning and it's now Thursday evening. I keep getting up to go to meetings, lunch or to talk to someone who's dropped in. It's getting to the time of the year where meeting drop off an there's more time to focus on the more important policy and development issues that are part of the job.

Currently on my way to Exec. Looks like a short meeting, but who knows what can happen. The Alcohol Policy (UL) is on the agenda, but following a meeting of the Alcohol Working Group yesterday this is kind of a moot point as the Working Group is going to examine the Policy, its goals and its implementation at the next meeting. This will include a debate around whether an Alcohol Policy is actually necessary (I believe it is) and whether UL's Alcohol Policy is fulfilling its aims (I believe it isn't). A copy of the Alcohol Policy is also available in the documents section on my page.

I had the President's Volunteer Award Working Group this afternoon too. Floated the idea that the SU might take on the management of student volunteering so that there is one central point where students can come to get a few hours volunteering or get a full long term committed volunteering opportunity regardless of ability. This is now going to be recognised on students' transcripts, but there is still nobody on the campus with a full-time responsibility the providing students with an opportunity to volunteer.

Financial Aid is coming close to its end for the year and to date over €71,000 in financial assistance has been provided to just undergraduate students through loans, bursaries and childcare assistance since September. The postgraduate figure will probably bring this closer to €90,000. I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Chaplaincy in helping to administer this. I have moved this online dureing my tenure and I hope that has sped the process up for people receiving money.

The Student Assistance Fund trial has been partially successful and partially unsuccessful. We have gotten the money to students earlier than previously, but not as early as we expected. Thanks to the Access Office for assisting in this, but I am not wholly convinced of retaining it within the Students' Union for the 2011/12 Academic Year as it has significantly slowed the progress I could make on other issues, even with a running start, so I'm not sure how it would be for Tara trying to negotiate time for that as well as everything else.

Next Week is I-Grade Week, but also Organ Donor Awareness Week. Watch out for the lads on Tuesday knocking around with the pins and keyrings.

For now I think I've bored you enough, but any questions email me on SUWelfare@ul.ie

D

It's tricky thinking of titles for these posts

Anyhow...what have I been at....Well I'm actually off today, but I completely forgot to do the blog on Wednesday again when the BlackBerry told me to.

I'm just back from having a bit of craic in Galway with the NUIMSU President Brian and a few friends. There were some very well dressed ladies about for Ladies' Day at the races (which I missed because I didn't leave on time.).

We met with Jono, The Southern Area Officer from USI last week and had a bit of a chat about student issues and the thorny subject of Fees. USI still doesn't have a solution, but then again, neither do we.

Our good friend Batt O'Keefe hasn't increased the grant for the coming year, but more of you should be able to get what of it is there...which is always a good thing. Find out more on www.studentfinance.ie. Essentially those of you whose households earn less than €51,360 won't have to pay the €1,500 Student Service Charge. I still reckon more needs to be done with the grant, but Rome wasn't built in a day and all that jazz.

I've been chasing a few issues for a number of students around fees and accommodation.

FEES
If you repeat a year, you normally have to pay fees, the same if you are a non-EU student. Ignoring the letters the University sends won't make the issue go away. If you owe fees, try and pay them every year, otherwise you're going to end up seriously stressed when the University tells you you can't graduate (which you can't if you owe them fees). I can only do my best to have decisions around this dealt with consistently, after all it's not fair for those who have paid their fees, if someone else doesn't have to...so in essence....keep on top of your fees.

ACCOMMODATION
Don't sign anything if you are unsure. Our student solicitor has told us this week that students sign away a whole load of rights simply through not reading leases. He is available to check them out for you if you have any questions. Give myself or Ruán a shout for his contact details.

I have looked into a query on on campus accommodation pricing. Cappavilla was the particular query. The cost has not increased this year, but did increase last year to provide an extra Resident Assistant, extend opening hours and provide more security. I will still be requesting Campus Life Services to review its pricing strategy as soon as I have figures for national trends in rental, but the fact remains that there is an abundance of accommodation in various price ranges from approx €40 per week to €110 per week depending on quality and service. On campus is obviously at the higher end of that scale due to the services provided that are not provided off campus.

I am now referring all deposit issues with individual landlords directly to the PRTB. You can get one of the dispute resolution forms from me and I will go through the process with you, however calling landlords is heavily time consuming. One case can take upwards of 2 hours over the course of the dispute, whereas explaining the PRTB procedure takes less than 10 minutes, so I am discontinuing the practice of phoning landlords in order to be able to represent all students more efficiently.

For students living in places like Troy, Groody, Brookfield, Parkview and Courtyard it is quite easy to deal with issues in these villages as they are easily identifiable companies who do not want to gain a bad reputation and will speak with me and move to resolve issues quickly, whereas landlords are pretty much anonymous and have no great desire to follow my advice or listen to complaints from me.

Long story short......have leases checked by a solicitor before you sign them!

We met with the Student Representaiton Solicitor during the week to review the service....it's all pretty mundane, but we'll be hanging on to him. He has lots of experience in dealing with student cases and we're considering expanding the service to incldue one evening a month on campus to start with and that might become more frequent if it gets used.

Condoms for next year should be ordered next week after some (ahem) investigation.

There's lots more mundane boring stuff that isn't all that noteworthy.

All the best

D