Daniel Whitmore is YUSU’s Academic Officer. A York graduate in Maths, he is a passionate Vanbrite and a member of popular campus band, Dandy and DeLions. He has been on Vanbrugh JCRC as Ordinary Member, Tech Rep and Treasurer, and is Secretary for UYBB. He introduced himself to Vision and York students: “Hello! I’m Dan Whitmore and I’m responsible for making sure that your academic needs are looked after. As the Academic Officer I am your voice to the University whenever you have a problem involving your course, your department or anything else academic (such as the library and IT provision).”
He believes the University is failing students in key areas and needs to do more, insisting the University can be a barrier to learning due to poor provision in some areas. His key policies are to get better value for money: more key texts, electric submission of essays, subsidising of print costs, one to one dissertation feedback, more study and IT space on Hes East and making seminar rooms bookable for student group work when not in use. He explained: “In the coming year I have some exciting ideas for changes which need making at the university. I’m aiming to dramatically increase the number of books available in the library, get you more (useful!) feedback on your work and work with the university to implement a new booking system so that you can access a working space whenever you need it. Another aim for the year is to slash printing costs (which we are already making great headway on!).”
Dan is keen to get students involved in his work in the coming year: “Getting involved with the uni is already very easy to do; you can run to be a course rep so that you can represent your fellow students to your department and even if you aren’t a course rep you can talk to either myself or the other sabbs about any issues you may have.
“My favourite thing about Uni was the freedom to do anything I wanted (like joining societies, the academic flexibility and getting involved in my college). I guess the worst part is that the freedom is very much a double-edged sword in that it’s very easy to get distracted from what you initially came here to do!”