Throughout our election coverage, York Vision will speak to as many involved people as we can, trying to bring you more insight into what goes on behind the scenes.
This week, we interviewed Jacob, the Accountability and Scrutiny Chair (despite the slightly misleading label by YSTV), who is important within the York SU structure. Whilst he is not directly involved in running the elections, he organised Yor Question Time, taking place a couple of weeks ago, as our Co-Editor Charlotte, and Deputy Editor of Nouse questioned the current Sabbatical Officers (Sabbs).
This is where we first met Jacob, but now let him introduce himself and speak about the importance of his role.
Firstly, please introduce yourself!
“My name is Jacob Hartmann, I’m an Undergrad Politics and International Relations student in my 4th/final year (I took a placement year, and worked in Public Affairs in Brussels for 2023-24).”
How is the process of getting your role different from the Sabbatical Officer roles being vote on in March?
“My role has undergone some big changes as a result of the merger of the two unions, and through an approach which aims at truly bringing more accountability and scrutiny onto the Sabbs’ jobs and roles.
“My understanding is that there used to be an ‘accountability’ role in YUSU beforehand; however, it was a voluntary position, with little guidance and unpaid. As a result, there hadn’t been much work done or systems put in place by previous ‘accountability’ students.
“As part of the GSA/YUSU merger, it was decided (again as per my understanding, this may not be 100% correct) that more emphasis should be put on holding Sabbs to account and having a position that can not only scrutinise the Sabbs themselves but also enable students to do the same. Therefore, the role I currently hold is a paid position, where I had to apply and undergo interviews, before being chosen and hired for the job.
“This is, obviously, unlike the Sabbs – which are elected positions.
“I am therefore technically hired by the union to hold the Sabbs to account, though I would add that there is little to no impact of this in terms of restrictions on what I can and cannot ask, intervene, or question the Sabbs about in terms of accountability, policies etc. Apart from my own limitations of I don’t want the Sabbs to hate and fear me, in my personal view my role is to help encourage the Sabbs to actually deliver on their policies, through keeping them accountable and scrutinising what they do and don’t do.
“I will expand briefly on what the job entails – in the fact that because there were no concrete processes or accountability chairs in place before my arrival, I was hired, essentially, to use my experience and build said processes up from scratch with the union, specifically the student voice team. So there are a lot of internal processes that I am developing, and hope to hand over to my successor who will then have proper guidance and structures to keep Sabbs to account.”
What motivated you to apply for the role?
“A key motivation for me was to help students feel like they have more of a voice in what the Sabbs do, and to be able to keep them to account and feel connected to the SU. In my time as a student I have historically seen quite a lot of political apathy when it comes to the SU / Sabbs, which I do find is a shame.
“Hopefully, the idea is, that by increasing the accountability and opportunities for students to scrutinise the Sabbs more, we will have more and better policy delivered and a reduction in student voter apathy.”
What are the best and worse things about your role?
“The best thing, but this is specific to my case, is that I am able to connect with various other industry experts to build up and create some new frameworks to help students keep Sabbs accountable. I’ve been able to have some great conversations, for example, with accountability and SU advisors, people at Wonkhe and in the educational sector.
“Additionally, I like the idea of being able to then implement those changes to ensure students that follow me will be more engaged and active in SU politics. The idea of having an impact in that way for the university where I studied (and often sometimes felt apathetic myself) is very appealing to me.
“I struggle to see the worst things about it; I would love to have more time and resources to implement change, or be able to implement proper structure and process (but that’s more of a personal thing, I quite like process). But to be fair, I do generally feel super well supported and the student voice team often are very open to what I have to say.”
What is your involvement in the York SU Elections?
“As it happens, I actually have no involvement in the York SU election process. Where I may have some involvement is when the elections conclude, to onboard the new Sabbs into whichever accountability frameworks I establish.”
Is there anything you would like to change about the SU?
“I personally would like to see more publication / transparency on what the Sabbs are working on, whether their proposals have been successful or not, and why etc.
“There is the ‘traffic light’ system that is on the Sabb pages online, but I am working or lobbying on improving that and how much it gets updated as well as access that students have to see and understand the work Sabbs are doing.”
Finally, do you think the elections are becoming too much about personality rather than ideas?
“I think that’s probably a factor for all politics at the moment, at a national and SU level. Especially when voter turnout is so low at University, it is probably easier for individuals with larger social networks to gain votes than it is for those who have the most thought-out policy. But, and I stress this again, this isn’t unique to this SU, or universities in general, I think it’s something we see across the world of politics today.
“My job or my goal is to remedy some of that by, for example, scrutinising and holding to account the policies and Sabbs that do get elected, but also by hopefully increasing voter turnout and engagement – though the latter is a very difficult task.”