Written by EXEC TEAM President Nosheen Dad
It is my unfortunate duty to inform you that Emily Wright VP Wellbeing and Equalities has formally handed in her resignation from her post. As saddened as we are to see her go, as an Exec team we fully empathise with her reasons to stand down. I have attached both her resignation letter and my acceptance at the bottom of this page.
As you will understand this now leaves a vacancy within the Exec team. Under the provision of the constitution (Byelaw 7, section 5.6) as a team we have agreed that the most appropriate action at this time is not to hold a by election for this position, but to divide the workload between the remaining 4 Executive Officers.
There are three key reasons behind this decision, which we hope will give you reassurance we have considered the matter in depth and arrived at the correct decision:
1. The earliest any by election could take place would be week five given the amount of publicity required for Sabbatical Officer roles. This means the training and induction to prepare an Officer/Trustee would take us well into (and beyond) January, as the main three month officer induction period has already passed us. This includes specialist training sessions run during the summer period for Officers, as well as planning and key meetings with individuals.
2. The election would cause significant disruption for any successful student, causing them to drop out of a course at least five weeks into the term. As well academic issues this causes (particularly for non-traditional degrees such as those that are NHS funded), this would also trigger large financial problems for any student who has received student finance for the year. To put it more simply, we believe too many students would be unable to stand in any by election, meaning they would not be open to the entire membership.
3. Fundamentally, although as a Union we place great value on democracy and ensuring the organisation remains student-led, we do not believe a by election at this time would benefit the members. Students will be able to stand for the position again in March, and until that point, we will synchronise the recruitment of our External Trustee vacancy to make sure there is no shift in the balance of our Board of Trustees.
I hope that you understand and fully support the reasons behind this decision. However, I would like to reassure you all that Emily’s responsibilities and work remit will be effectively covered by the remaining Officers. We are still working out some of the details, but some things we will put into place include:
- Nosheen Dad will take over all external dealings and University committee workload.
- Josh Elderfield will take over all internal dealings alongside working with the Advice Centre.
- More staff support will be provided to the Officers to ensure previous tasks and roles will not be affected
We also want to stress that we will be working to make sure key items from Emily’s priorities this year (including establishing a Digital Advice Service) remain in the work plan of the organisation.
If anyone would like to discuss this further, please don’t hesitate to contact me at su.president@hud.ac.uk.
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