The Students Association’s EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) and Belonging Team is delighted to share some good news about our new Support Group Committees, after a successful round of recruitment for all three Support Groups.
Back in 2023, a steering group of students from all Committees and beyond worked with staff on a Groups Review, which discussed all things Groups and suggested a number of recommended changes to the Student Leadership Team. Due to the nature of the Committee Terms, many of those recommendations around recruitment and induction of the Committees had to wait until autumn 2024.
Some of the changes we made included working much closer with our Communications team to maximise advertisement of the roles, as well as opening recruitment earlier to capitalise on other high-engagement events such as Welcome Week and Black History Month. By far the biggest change was the move from small internal Group elections to running an appointment panel similar to how we recruit Student Representative volunteers. This recommendation was suggested because of low engagement in the elections themselves (both in terms of voters and candidates) with feedback from our survey responses stating that election processes can be off-putting.
The proof is in the numbers where we saw a whopping FOURTY-FOUR Group members (across all three Groups) putting themselves forward to join the Committees. This is an increase of 100% from Elections from the previous rounds, which can be broken down as follows:
| Group |
Last Election Figures |
Appointment Figures |
| Disabled Students Group |
12 candidates |
21 applicants |
| OU Pride |
5 candidates |
12 applicants |
| Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Group |
4 candidates |
11 applicants |
It’s been amazing to see so many students putting themselves forward in the appointments process, so thank you to everyone who did so! It’s not an easy thing to do and these roles can be a big commitment, so thank you, thank you, thank you!
The applications themselves were anonymised and considered by an appointment panel made up of three Student Leadership Team members. Panel members reviewed all the applications, giving them careful consideration, and the applicants didn’t make it easy for them with the huge number of well-written applications we received.
I hope you will join me in welcoming our new Committee volunteers who are giving up their time to support their communities! Our Team are very excited to work with you and see the things our volunteers can continue to achieve!
Keep an eye on the Groups' webpages over the coming weeks to see biographies of the new Committee members, and please do join the Groups if you haven’t already! Also, don’t forget that at Conference last year, the motion to have between three and five Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Representative positions on the elected team (to provide better representation for the active groups of the Association) was passed – meaning that these roles will be available this spring in our by-election.