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Do you know someone who you think would be perfect as a Union Officer? Maybe they already run a club or society, maybe they're a rep on your course and have made some great changes this year or you just think they have the right passion to lead the students' union and represent students. If so fill in the form below and let us know about them, we will then get in touch to see if they would be interested.

Why?What Needs To Change?Level

Why do we use it?Parliamentary Elections use the First Past the Post System, which gives each voter one vote. The Transferable Vote System allows each voter the fullest freedom of choice between candidates and the maximum use of their vote. In a First Past the Post election a candidate is elected simply by coming top of the poll. Let’s look at a typical result in a Parliamentary Election:

The Voting SystemThe Union uses the Transferable Vote System in their elections. It can be a confusing system if you have not come across it before and you may find the following guide useful.

In the Transferable Vote System, each voter is asked to give an order of personal preference. A candidate either has enough votes to be elected or has too few votes and is eliminated. If this occurs, their votes are redistributed to the voter’s second choice. Thus a greater proportion of the total vote is used to elect a candidate who is more likely to represent the views of the majority.

Alternative Transferable VoteFor single positions, the Alternative Transferable Vote System is used as in the following example:

In a First Past the Post System, Kurt Hummer is the winner and will represent that constituency despite the fact that 27,499 voters did not want him to be their representative.

Finn Hudson 1

Kurt Hummer 4

Artie Abrams

Rachel Berry 2

Re-Open Noms 3

… I would like to see Finn Hudson elected. If he is out of the running then I would prefer Rachel Berry. If she too is no longer available then I would prefer that nominations were opened up again. If that is not going to be possible then I can live with Kurt Hummer. Under no circumstance do I want Artie Abrams to be elected….

The ballot shown below sends the Returning Officer a message: Once all of the complete ballot forms have been collected, they are sorted into first preferences. During this sorting process any incorrectly marked ballots will be set aside as invalid. This is usually because the voter has not made their intention clear; for example, they put two numbers ones.

Once all the ballots have been sorted, the RO determines a quota. The quota is simply the number of voters a candidate must gain in order to be elected. For single positions, the successful candidate must gain a minimum of 50% + 1. To use the top-most example, 37,499 votes were cast so the quota is 37,499 / 2 + 1 = 18750. In an Alternative Transferable Vote System, Kurt Hummer has not achieved the required quota, so the candidate with the fewest votes – Rachel Berry – is eliminated and her votes are redistributed between the remaining candidates. Let’s see what happens:

Candidate Round 2 Added Votes Round 3

Finn Hudson 12,999 +5,000 =17,999

Kurt Hummer ELIMINATED

Artie Abrams 14,000 +5,500 =19,500

Candidate Round 1 Added Votes Round 2

Finn Hudson 9,999 +3000 =12,999

Kurt Hummer 10,000 +500 =10,500

Artie Abrams 9,500 +4,500 =14,000

Rachel Berry 8,000 ELIMINATED

Round 2 gives us a new leader in Artie Abrams. No one has reached the quota so again the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and his votes are redistributed.

Round 3 gives us a winner! Artie Abrams has exceeded the quota of 18,750.

Whether it's a full-time or part-time position, all our elected officers represent students and work hard to make change that will improve every students experience at UWTSD. If you have loads of ideas about how to improve the university or the union and you're passionate then why not stand?

The exec team consists of 7 Full Time Officer positions. These positions are paid and each one has a different remit, but they all work together to make your time studying at University of Wales, Trinity Saint David amazing. There are 2 Vice-Pres-idents for each of our campuses (Carmarth-en, Lampeter and Swansea) then a global position that oversees the whole union including how we represent students on our London campuses and partner colleges.

Not only is there a great sense of satisfaction but the full-time positions are paid jobs, giving you a fantastic start to working life and giving you some amazing life/work skills for the rest of your life.

All positions look fantastic on your CV, you gain loads of skills; from budget planning to chairing meetings, event organising to conflict management, these positions have it all!

It’s all the more difficult – but all the more exciting – because you’re not seeking employment; you’re trying to get elected. In a job interview, you just have to be the best person for a job. In an election, you don’t just need to be capable – you have to get the most votes.

A less scary place is to start is by asking yourself What? • What do you want to change?

Think about it. Student life is not perfect. All students have things they’d like to see changed or improved. The fabulous thing about being an elected officer is that you have the power to change things. What you say to an AM, MP or to the Vice Chancellor or what you accomplish through the collective strength of the student movement can make a substantial difference in students’ lives.

So think again: What would you like to see changed? Be more ambitious this time. Candidates who call for a new Union logo or the need for a different system for student activities funding without offering an overall campaign perspective or a solution to the problems they lament rarely win.

Candidates who want to inspire students to get involved in their union, who argue for fairness and transparency, and who consider specific solutions to specific problems win much more often.

Candidates who believe passionately that students have the right to be represented by a union and organise their own activities – and want to make all of that easier – do win and do change things for students and for the wider community.

Elected officers operate on levels beyond just this university. A student sports officer can work with other university unions to organise varsity sporting events. A welfare officer can represent and campaign for students at institutional, local, and at national levels. A president can work with other unions and with the NUS to change the way the Government communicates with students.

With a bit of organisation, all these things are possible, but if you want to change them then you’ll need to demonstrate why they need changing. What rights should students have that they are currently denied? What responsibility should be the Union’s or the University’s responsibility?

Have another think. Jot down some ideas. Think again about what needs to change. To be a success in the

election – and in your year in office – you need an agenda to make the entire process worthwhile. As Digby Jacks, a former president of the NUS, said:

Representation must never be seen, except in strategic and practical terms, as an end in itself. Too many union officers see it as a question of communication and merely sitting on the appropriate committee. The purpose of representation is to secure social, educational and institutional change – large or small, grand or racious, collectively or individually. The best officers see this and work on all levels to change for the better.

Once you’ve worked out all of the things you want to change, you’ll need to focus on specific themes, rights, and ideas that you identify as the most important for your campaign. Use the chart on the next page to help simplify this selection process.

So now you know what you want to change – how are you going to get around student apathy?

You can, in a conversation, a speech or even in a campaign strategy, beat student apathy for good using the 4 steps outlined below.

You must do the other 3 steps first.

The Union as a Collective believes it could and should be different.

Explaining that the situation is wrong and could/should be changed.

Getting students to think about what their lives are like.

To further explain this model and clarify the 4 steps is an extract from a paper on apathy and students’ unions:

If students’ unions have always believed that students have a right to control/influence their own lives and surroundings (if not the future), then we must ask how and why people come to care enough to take that action. The action is action outside of the confines of usual routine, outside of the realms of what everyone does or what we do each week. We eat every day. We don’t vote.

The first step is experience. Students must first reflect upon the experience they have as students, or perhaps the experience others have as poorer students, or as poverty stricken inhabitants of the third world, etc. This is in itself a difficult step. For a start, we as people rarely have the time to reflect upon our own experience… Students’ Unions can and should provide a platform and space simply for people to explore and understand the nature of their own experiences, as well as introducing us to others.

Second comes the notion of injustice. [I]n the public forum and sphere (i.e. where the students’ union is hosting a meeting or printing the paper), there is rarely a sense given to students that

their experience is unjust… [M]eetings posters and publications rarely build upon any experience stage with an injustice stage. If done well and properly, this is the stage that can put fire in the belly and passion in the heart – this is the stage that makes people care… You can open up all the doors, but you still need a passionate reason to come on in. Caring about something that you believe to be unjust and wrong is perhaps the way to do that.

The third, then, is organisation. [M]ost people will want to be supported, to have others with them or behind them. This can take many forms – it might be the union declaring its policy or belief, an officer outlining what they and others think, or the organisation declaring that thousands of students are feeling the same. Again, this stage can be difficult… Rarely is union policy on an issue debated or agreed; rarely do student officers have a view on what the rights of students should be in a given situation… The belief statement must match the previously identified injustice, and the support around it must be tangible and real.

Only then, once the other stages are complete, do we then take some action. Even then the action must be clear and possible within the first stage – the students’ situation. Often, people reach this stage but are so unfamiliar or

unprepared for the given action that they opt out, feeling powerless and aimless… We know why we should care about student hardship or student council – others don’t.

… To effectively build a campaign, or engender democratic participation, requires us to get good at experience, injustice and policy… [y]et we only measure action… We need to recognise the skills involved and find ways of measuring the first 3 steps before we can hope for an effective action step. We also need to be creative about those first 3 steps. How can we have a chat, in public, about people’s experiences? In the paper? Public meetings? Websites? And all that is before we even talk about injustice, policy, action or debate… [W]e must conclude that empowering others is perhaps only hard because it involves the transfer of power away from ourselves… to the people.

So now you know what you want to achieve and have a fair idea of how to beat apathy.

Empowerment

EXPERIENCE

INJUSTICE

COLLECTIVE VISIONING/SUPPORT

ACTION

www.tsdsu.co.uk

If you would like any information about elections, whether you are thinking of standing for election or about the process in general, please email:

union@tsd.ac.uk