YUSU election candidates revealed
The full list of candidates standing in this year’s YUSU elections has been released.
Both Lydia Blundell, former Halifax Chair, and Tim Ellis, last year’s chair of Goodricke, are confirmed to be running for President, alongside the more unpredicted candidate Aaron Rolph, who also boasts JCRC experience for James College.
Charlie Rowley, current Union Council Chair, has also been added to the list of confirmed Presidential candidates, having been omitted from the original list due to a technical error when submitting his nomination form.
The list also verifies rumours that Laura Borisovaite plans to re-run for her position as Welfare Officer for a second year, against Robert Hughes. Academic Affairs will now also be a two horse race, between Alistair Logan and Graeme Osborn.
As expected by many, both Sam Asfahani and Ben McGladdery will be the only contestants in the race for York Sport President. Nonetheless, the election campaigns for Student Activities looks to be as contentious as President this year, with James Croydon, James Anderson and Arthur Pitt all adding their names to the fray.
In a similar trend to last year, many of the part-time Officer candidates are standing uncontested, with campaigns, disability, Ents and racial equality among others all with only one candidate, or pair, running for the position.
The candidates were all informed of the strict election rules last night at the candidate briefing led by the Returning Officer. The stringent regulations prevent the candidates from spending more than £35 on their campaign, put outright ban on mass emails as well as enforcing close restrictions on twitter and facebook as campaigning platforms. Candidates who break any rules can be punished either through a campaign ban, or in more extreme cases, through a monetary fine.
Hustings for the sabbatical and part time positions will be this Thursday, with campaigning officially opening on Friday for just under two weeks.
The election results will be announced at a ceremony on the evening of Thursday 3rd March in L/N/028.
Full list of candidates
President:
Lydia Blundell
Tim Ellis
Aaron Rolph
Charlie Rowley
Student Activities Officer:
James Anderson
James Croydon
Arthur Pitt
Academic Officer:
Alastair Logan
Graeme Osborn
Welfare Officer:
Laura Borisovaite
Robert Hughes
York Sport President:
Sam Asfahani
Ben McGladdery
Campaigns Officer:
Andreas Gabrielsen
Disability Officer:
Liam Haakon Smith
Ents Officer:
Chris Edwards and Özge Bektasoglu
LGBT Officer:
Emma Brownbill
Henna Ishaq & Liam O’shaughnessy
Racial Equality Officer:
Basim Al-Ahmadi and Lawrence Binitie
RAG Officer:
Rebecca Irwin & Baxter Willis
Women’s Officer:
Cat Wayland and Nell Beecham
Emma Gardiner
Volunteering Officer:
Hannah Brearley
Zhao Yin
International Officer:
Leslie Tay
Council Chair:
Luke Sandford
Pav Dhande
YUM Chair:
Jake Farrell
Jaime Riley
Senate Representatives:
Tom Rigby
Torris Rasmussen
NUS Delegation:
Alexandra Peck
Ben Humphrys
Luke Sandford
Raoul Lundberg
Sophie Shaw
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Aaron Rolph*
As IF you spelt your own proof-readers name wrong…
Interesting to see that both Lydia and Aaron list Centre Parks as a previous employer, something Tim should be worried about, especially if any questions about budget holiday villages comes up.
Well done Nouse… Spelling your own Chief Subeditors name wrong…
I bet Vision would have spelt it right
I expect Rolph will be on a unicycle for most of his campaigning efforts.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cumbria/videonation/archive/r/simon_rolph/unicyclists/index.shtml
“Simon and his 15 year-old son Aaron can’t understand why some people sing circus tunes at them and think that unicycling is just for circus ring.”
*As IF you spelt your own proof-reader’s name wrong
*Well done Nouse… Spelling your own Chief Subeditor’s name wrong…
Mistakes happen, clearly.
Quite a few less candidates this year! Oh well, fewer to humorously terrorise. Blobby blobby blobby.
Aslong as the ‘fun sponge’ doesnt win president it’ll be fine!
I seem to remember that Chris Etheridge was ranked as a dead cert by Nouse to be running…what happened there eh?
I fed up with people running again for a the same or a different position. Go and find a real job rather than doing whatever you can to stop entering the real world and facing real competition.
There are people on that list who have held two seperate positions before and are now intent on running for a third at a ‘lower’ and ‘external’ level…stop leeching off of the university…and ultimately us and get yourself a real job. AHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
No blame should be attached to Nouse for that; I changed my mind based on my workload. They were right for quite a long time.
do people get paid for these positions? and how much?
I say this knowing that my name will appear on this website…but you have you to feel sorry for Hannah and Milana and Dan…(Nouse and YorkVision editors all included)…that they have this lot of hopeless unimaginative boring rather dull “also runs” to report on for the next few weeks.
Seriously, the only one I can get up any enthusiasm for is Asfahani. At least he has a sense of humour and an idea of long-term planning.
Would someone like to explain why the york university freshers group the largest facebook mailing list YUSU have at their disposal wasn’t used to remin the student body of closing deadlines for nominations of elections but was used to promote Viking RAG raid and RAG week. I love a good pissup like any othe student but I find participation and democracy an equally important part of our union.
@ Mr Blobby
“Quite a few less candidates this year! Oh well, fewer to humorously terrorise. Blobby blobby blobby.”
Its people like you who discourage good candidates who may not quite be so thick skinned as others from standing. Your a menace to democracy. Abusing the word ‘scrutiny’ in order to indulge in online bullying.
@ Jack Knight
“hopeless unimaginative boring rather dull”…
Rather than sitting at your computer criticising, why don’t you get out there and get involved and meet these candidates??
It’s people like you that discourage people from running.
Well, it’s nice to see that Nouse proof-readers are still unable to spell my name correctly.
@DW
“do people get paid for these positions? and how much?”
Only the Sabbatical officers get a salary, I think it’s something like £15,000 per year for a 9 to 5 day, though I know many of the officers work MUCH longer hours than that.
@”Chairs and Cheese” – I am a scary comedy character; I will humorously terrorise people regardless of whether they are YUSU candidates or unsuspecting members of the public on Noel Edmonds-hosted TV shows. Away from my gelatinous persona I am a big supporter of the democratic process.
thank you Anon!
is it just me, as a second year student with an average level of interaction with uni politics, or are things not clear enough? i know that 4 of my housemates had no idea that nominations were occurring, a lot of the positions i have a vague grasp of but am not 100% there.
it’d be nice if YUSU produced an infographic or something to put on their website so we could get up to speed really quickly, especially for first years. because we all see people’s cardboard mountains around campus & cheesy campaign posters but you don’t really understand the connotations of this.
comment has been moderated
‘Only the Sabbatical officers get a salary, I think it’s something like £15,000 per year for a 9 to 5 day, though I know many of the officers work MUCH longer hours than that.’
they work for a student union so its hardly that difficult and I KNOW FAIR WELL a lot of them are the most useless pieces of humanity I’ve had to deal with and very lazy in dealing with problems. I could list many times and incidents of how what a bunch of fools they truly are!
Nouse just in… Rowley is back in the game.
Glad to see freedom of speech has not yet been compromised by YUSU. Hope comments remain open for ever!
Not been as much hype as in previous years and starting to get a bit tired with the elections.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll listen to the debates and watch the broadcasts but, as always, winning a sabb position will depend entirely on ludicrously unrealistic promises which will either 1) not be allowed to happen (more cash points etc) or 2) used solely to get into the position in the first place and abandoned later (fruit and veg stand anyone).
Being a sabb is a pretty demanding job – especially with the campus media being only too quick to highlight your flaws – however, this isn’t a secret. If you can’t do something, don’t say that you’re going to.
Would be refreshing to see a candidate be perfectly honest and claim that they will do a competent job to the best of their abilities within the restrictions put upon them by the University. Pledges are great but annoy the hell out of people when they don’t come to fruition.
Good luck to everyone running, hopefully there’ll be a bit more excitement in the coming weeks.
To be fair, in all the dealings I’ve had with sabbs they’ve put in a decent shift. You can’t tar them all with the same brush from a couple of sour experiences. Can remember countless times contacting the office after 5 and getting a response. It’s fair enough saying that the job is part of the university but £15,000 isn’t a massive wage – not too dissimilar to what I earn pro-rata working in a shop at the weekends.
I’m not saying that all sabb’s are fantastic, but most job’s wouldn’t require doing the weekends and evenings as well as the days in the week for 433 times less than John Terry gets per year. Just a thought.
All comments on the website have been temporarily suspended
YUSU have shut down all comments on the Nouse website. Please direct all comments and complaints to YUSU President Tim Ngwena at t.ngwena@yusu.
We apologise for any inconvenience and are working to rectify this as soon as possible.
As if they did that?