With only five months left in the role as Activities Officer, Vision interviewed Rohan Ashar on the importance of student activities, his fondest memory and what wisdom he hopes to pass on to the next officer.
What does the role of Activities Officer entail?
The Activities Officer oversees and supports all YUSU Societies, Media Groups, Volunteering Projects, fundraising, and nightlife. Basically, you are a representative for 4 or 5 areas of student life and around 250 student groups! This entails creating and running schemes/projects that you believe will benefit students, giving advice to those involved in Activities, and lobbying as well as working with the university on key issues like accessibility. A common misconception seems to be that this role constitutes an Events Officer, which isn’t true!
Also, a perhaps lesser known part of being a Sabbatical Officer is that you sit on the YUSU Trustee Board, meaning that you have oversight of and influence the strategic direction of the organisation. It’s an important position and a unique opportunity to effectively help lead a charity of this size so early in your career!
Is there anything you wish you had more time to work on, and what advice would you give this year’s applicants?
I’ve still got 5 months left, but it feels like time is already ticking (Elections don’t make it easy in that sense)!
The main thing that I wish I had more time to work on, and indeed would concentrate most of my energy on if I had another year after this, is EDI (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion) and particularly BAME participation. I recognise that EDI work can never be complete, but I’m determined to make as much progress as possible. However, it’s far from simple and some of the changes can’t be immediate, for example especially since the BAME community at York have been underrepresented for so long. We’re therefore planning to launch an EDI Research Project before the end of the academic year to audit Student Activities and Sports, ensuring that we fully understand the situation in terms of engagement from different groups and barriers they might be facing. Only then, with the appropriate evidence given through both statistics and experiences, can YUSU and the university take actions. It pains me that I won’t be here for the implementation stage of this project, though my focus is on getting the research phase done.
The biggest piece of advice that I would give to this year’s candidates is bring yourself to the role and Elections process! Finding ways to express and use your experiences and perspectives are very important, because those can’t be taught, whereas you will learn how to understand situations from the perspective of the organisation and students. People can only be a Sabb for a maximum of 2 years, meaning they are positions which inherently encourage a variety of views and constant change over time – your job is to contribute towards evolving and developing YUSU and the university, which needs personality!
What changes/progressions do you still think need to be made at the University in relation to student activities?
We’ve completed some really good work across different areas this year, for example in our efforts to streamline our all-encompassing resources and make them easily usable for students on committees.
I think that accessibility and inclusion is something that still requires a lot of progress. I’m starting to speak with the university about doing some alterations to spaces on campus that are problematic from a physical accessibility perspective, but there’s a fairly long way to go before this university and its buildings become totally accessible. Also, I’m keen to see more student groups implementing good practice for accessibility, because I can observe many of them not yet following our guidance and being fully inclusive in how they operate. I know that this doesn’t happen overnight, so everyone needs to continue looking at how student groups can embed increasingly inclusive and accessible communication and management methods.
A huge pending change is and always will be widening participation. I mean this in the sense that we could have a larger amount of students involved in Activities, engage a higher proportion of students from underrepresented groups, and improve the experience for those already participating. I’ve already touched on the EDI Research Project, but that aims to be a massive step in the right direction and only the start of further progress!
Additionally, the ways in which we recognise and reward student groups and their committees are slowly developing. The Society Rewards scheme is in its pilot year, and while it offers plenty of positives at the moment, the project has potential for more growth next academic year. I think that the university can play a role here and has a lot of room for improvement with how they promote YUSU student groups and adapt academic arrangements to support students giving so much to the community through Activities, and again, conversations have started around what that could look like.
What is your fondest memory of being Activities Officer?
So far, two things come to mind as my fondest memories.
Firstly, Freshers’ Fair was an absolutely outstanding experience! I had always loved the event as a student who was interested in too many Activities for my own good, but being on the other side of it this academic year was incredible and unforgettable. Helping to organise and then interacting with a Fair showcasing almost everything that the YUSU community has to offer in such a fun manner really reinforced to me how vibrant, diverse, and uniquely wide-ranging the amount of Activities we have here at York is. I collected a lot of stickers and badges while visiting most stalls across the day to demonstrate how happy I am to represent it all!
Secondly, one of my proudest moments was at the end of the YuFund disbursement meeting in December, where I battled and argued hard for the university and generous alumni to allocate funding towards YUSU societies who had applied for it, and was quite successful! It’s one of the most challenging meetings I’ve had in the job and it’s great to see the student group events/projects that I fought for now happening.
How would you describe your overall experience in the role?
Enjoyable is the word I always use to describe my experience in the role! This job is very dynamic – I struggle to outline what I do on a daily basis when people ask, because there are many different things that I dedicate attention to each week! I really like the responsibility that I’m trusted with and the sense of freedom to dictate my own priorities most of the time. YUSU is a productive and supportive environment to work in; the staff are brilliant and I love my fellow Sabbs.
The role of Activities Officer provides me with the chance to do loads of exciting stuff, such as a radio show and influencing the university at the highest level. This experience is honestly invaluable and I’ll be sad to leave it behind!