What does your role involve?
“I work with all of the academic reps and the department reps. I chair the Academic Leadership Teaming (ALT) meeting every other week, and that’s where department reps can bring me any of the issues that are going on and general updates on what they’re doing in their department so I can help if needed. I represent students on the University Teaching Committee, Senate and standing committee on assessments. It involves general campaigns and ensuring students’ voices are heard at these academic meetings.”
What inspired you to run for the role of Academic Officer at York SU?
“I was the chair of the Graduate Student Association, which doesn’t exist now, but I worked closely with the GSA Academic Officer, Welfare Officer and President. Seeing them do that encouraged me. I was also the Athena SWAN equality Officer in Sociology and I liked looking at decolonising the curriculum from an academic point of voice. When the elections came up I thought ‘Why not try?’ and I was the only one running, so it worked well for me.”
What are your top 3 goals for this academic year?
“I am working on an academic misconduct campaign, not directly linked to my manifesto but [it] is something I am passionate about that has come up repeatedly. I feel like there’s a lot of miscommunication around it…I am looking at a transition day for postgraduate students (PGS). We have Step Ahead for undergraduates, but I think there’s a big need for PGSs to get that attention, and to fix assessment bunching.”
Assessment bunching occurs when multiple exams and assignments are scheduled close together.
“With academic misconduct, I’m personally motivated because I got it twice in my undergrad degree and, the second time, I was told that it wasn’t academic misconduct but poor practice, yet it was going to be recorded centrally as academic misconduct, and my marks were capped, which was confusing messaging. I took that [concern] to the advice service here when I started and we’ve looked at the email templates and they will use the same messaging. They’ve removed the poor practice cap, so marks shouldn’t be capped for it. But the communications around it and template letters that I have seen we are sending students [are] still are very aggressive and don’t signpost students to the correct support services well enough. Most of the time, if students are cheating using AI, they are unlikely to get caught. It’s the students who are accidentally doing things or in a rush who get picked out for it.”
What do you think about AI and how it fits in with university studies?
“There are loads of working groups at the University about AI. My opinion is that AI is not going to go anywhere and it is just going to be more embedded into everything we do going forward. I feel like the University, to some extent, needs to get on board. We need to look at what other universities and other businesses do and see what policies we can make. You shouldn’t ChatGPT [for] your whole essay but there are ways you can use it to help generate ideas or use it like Grammarly. If we don’t come up with a policy soon, people will be unfairly punished and some will get away with it and that is not fair either.”
What is your view on semesterisation and assessment bunching?
“There has been no student consultation on semesterisation and it doesn’t seem that there has been student consultation or feedback since implementation. I know semesterisation has caused a lot of issues in departments, even something as small as mixed messaging around consolidation week, where no one knows what it is. Are you supposed to go home, go on holiday, be at University? The introduction of the exam block period at the start of January has meant that some students are doing assessments over Christmas and then have a period of two or three weeks where there is just nothing while other subjects are still doing their assessments. Also, you might have three module assessments on the same day, which was not such an issue before the shift to semesterisation.
“I am not a fan of semesterisation. I think it’s quite unfair to international students.
York SU Academic Officer
The break we have means that a lot of international students can’t get home because you finish on, say, 16th December, and then you’re expected to be back early in January. The positive is that it has put every department on the same timetable so everyone has a consolidation week: before, some subjects had reading weeks, but some didn’t. I feel like the teaching weeks may be longer but people don’t feel like they have enough time for assessments. From what I have heard back from department reps, there is still a lot of confusion about it.
“Semesterisation was pushed through quite quickly and maybe the ideas were to implement it and fix the problems that arise from it later, when we should have pre-emptively thought of the problems and had solutions so that the transition was more seamless. But I know other universities have had successful implementations of it, and then some universities like us haven’t done so well. One of the things I’m looking to do is get some feedback using the department reps.”
Should students have been consulted on the removal of double-blind marking?
“I’m a big advocate that if we’re removing something, you have to have feedback from students on it to know if that was the right decision or if changes must be made. I feel like some decisions made over the past few years have gone under the radar and been pushed through without much consultation. You might have us in the meetings and we represent the student voice, but we don’t speak for every student. Sometimes people come to us and think that means they have spoken to students but they haven’t really spoken to them.”
What have you enjoyed most about working at the York SU so far?
“I enjoyed Welcome Week and all of the activities there. I think it’s a nice environment to work in because we can join in with student events when we want to. It’s good to have that freedom to be where I want to be and not just sit behind a computer. We’ve done the academic rep training a bit differently this year, where we’ve put on nearly 30 sessions so hopefully by the end of it, I will have personally met all of the academic reps who are coming in this year. I think it will be nice to have that personal contact with them instead of them knowing who I am but never actually meeting me.”
What is the most challenging part of working about working at York SU?
“I think coming here and then being told that this is your manifesto, your job, you do what you want with it, and then being kind of left with that has been difficult. I didn’t realise that I work well with timelines and deadlines. No one’s sitting here going, this is a really good idea, I’ll help you facilitate it and then you go and bring it back to them. I’ve got all these ideas but it’s been hard to know who to go to. Now I’m getting into it, having met all these people. Also remembering everybody’s names at the Uni.”
How do you think the University has handled the financial situation and consulted staff and students during this difficult period?
“Being in meetings with Charlie Jeffrey and being in the Senate, where they spoke quite a lot about this, they have as much as possible done this in a voluntary way, which I do think was the correct way to go about it, and not just to be like, ‘you’re all sacked’. I think the situation is hard, and when you face issues with finance, it’s not just a financial problem it’s a personal problem because they’re all staff and you create such a big community here and then suddenly you have to say goodbye to a load of people and that affects students too. I think there were [concerns]…that it’s going to affect some student groups more than others.
“Initial worries [were] about postgraduate research students and what if their supervisor leaves because that will potentially upheave their entire PhD. That was a big concern. It’s not going to be evenly spread across the University. Some students will notice it, and some might not notice anything at all. I think it’s just not a nice situation for anyone. I guess we will start seeing how much of an impact it has had now that it’s all coming to an end, but I think making sure that we’re monitoring the impact and, if there are parts where things are not going as smoothly, that we’re picking that up quickly and making changes so that if students notice it once, they’re not noticing it continuously throughout their degree.”
Recent Check-In feedback found that 40% of students are ‘very dissatisfied’ or ‘dissatisfied’ with Check-In. What’s your reaction to this?
“Before I came in, my handover from Meely (previous YUSU Academic Officer) specifically stated that we as a Union oppose Check-In unless things change. The changes are being made already. We’ve been in meetings, Freddie (current York SU Community and Wellbeing Officer) and I, about Check-In looking at what has and hasn’t worked. We’ve changed the template and communications going out. We’ve looked at the student feedback and said ‘Fix this, please’. So hopefully, going forward into this year, things are improving. I think it’s ensuring people know it’s not a Big Brother check-in. It’s meant to be from a wellbeing perspective. I think it’s pushing that even more and ensuring the communications going out are better. I’m not surprised the feedback was bad, but hopefully, students will see an improvement.”