21st November during Anti-bullying week myself and Louise Sweeney held a ‘Beat Bullying’ day in Leicester which went really well. All the people who attended gave it amazing feedback which was great.

The day started off with a talk from Roger Kline head of Equality and employment rights at UCU who talked about what bullying is and what UCU have been working on. This was a very good resource to tap into as trade unions are leap years ahead in terms of the dignity at work that they do. The workshops that we ran on the day were looking at different sections and were people may face bullying. Women, Black studets, Disabled students, LGBT, Postgraduates, BMA(British Medical Association), UCU(University and College Union), Unipol and postgraduates.

At the end of the day we launched our national survey which is the first time in fe and he that statistics on bullying have been collected.

So far the survey has had 1200 responses which is amazing! Thank you to everyone who has responded to the survey to date. A submission has also been made to the governments select committee who are currently looking at bullying and the effects it has in education. The submission has asked the government to really focus on this issue in further and higher education.

On 24th Nov I met with Emma Thompson part of the crime protection unit at west midlands police. While I was VP Education and Welfare in Coventry I worked will with west midlands police and used their buying consortium of regional negotiated prices for various products. During the meeting myself and Veronica got a good idea of the type of suppliers that we should be looking at that have been tried and tested.

6th Dec I attended a breakfast meeting in HSBC. Agr (Association of Graduate recruiters) brought out some research into what happens to the graduates that do not apply or are successful in gaining a permanent graduate level job at the end of their university career. Agr represent the some of the assumed top graduate employers in the country. I approached this research with much caution as it didn’t seem to want to recognize that there are some students out there that just frankly do not want to move on to a graduate job. It didn’t take into account what courses students study as a student who wants to be a nurse on a nursing degree really doesn’t want to go and work for JP Morgan!

I made a comment about banks and credit cards that didn’t seem to go down well with the HSBC and Barclays reps in the room. I said that some students go for the one of the first jobs that they can find if they are unsuccessful in their quest to find a graduate job because of the huge student debt accrued at University not helped by banks coming onto our campuses and selling students credit cards.

We also have a changing demographic of student on our campus we are now seeing students who attend University so they go back to their families and say that they have achieved a degree.

It has to be said that there is an element of elitism from graduate employers. There are many so called ‘top’ graduate employers who would never step foot on my campus at Coventry University and instead would have preferred Warwick University down the road.

On 12th Dec we had our last Welfare and students rights zone meeting for 2006 which we mainly focused on planning the free prescription campaign which we have just kicked off.

As ever get in touch if you need any help with any campaigns!

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