This feature was written before seeing any of the 2023 candidates’ manifestos.
We dug up the three key manifesto points from each of this year’s Sabbatical Officers’ election campaigns, to see how many of their campaign points they have kept now they are two thirds of the way through their tenure…
Pierrick Roger
| Manifesto Point | Achieved? |
| Cut the rent: demand the University end rent hikes and pester them until they do! | Wisely, he didn’t promise to end the rent hikes, but Pierrick may be pestering them with minimal effect for a long, long, long time… |
| Cut barriers: lobby the University to end FirstBus contracts and to pressure Unity Health into improving. | An actual win to get improvement commitments from Unity Health, and then Pierrick stood in front of York Minster with a bus sign asking you to sign a petition. So 50% success, a 2:2, hope he did some good extracurriculars. |
| Cut the BS: student representation at York is broken. I want to restructure how students input into University decisions. | ‘Being completely ignored by the University on some issues, rather than just being mostly ignored’ is definitely SOME kind of restructuring… |
York Vision‘s Verdict: Despite reasonable manifesto points, Pierrick still promised a bit too much, and had all of his failed manifesto points exacerbated by a historically bad year for student representation and living costs.
Franki Riley
| Manifesto Point | Achieved? |
| Conduct a facilities audit, with the aim to give college teams access to facilities at peak training times. | Franki recently said she was “making progress..but there is still a long way to go,” which may as well be written in Latin and made the mantra of YUSU at this point, half points for effort but you can’t assess an incomplete piece of work. One to come back to in the future. |
| Increase opportunities for all sporting students, improving access for postgraduate and medical students. | In the early process of drafting an “‘Accessibility and Inclusion in Sport’ policy, which will cover lots of aspects of gender inclusion, LGBTQ+ inclusion, inclusion, and accessibility of sport for disabled students’”, and launched the Women and Non-Binary gym hours in April 2022. A brilliant start, however steps still need to be made to ensure that sport is accessible to those of all backgrounds and continues to keep up with changes to inclusion networks at the Uni (gender liberation, anyone?) |
| Launch a consultation on the integration of gendered sports into central non-gendered clubs. | In 2023, James College merged their men’s and women’s football teams in a move to improve gender equality in the game. This was the only recent mention that we could find of merging clubs into non-gendered teams, however this has been an ongoing goal for Franki. A partial slay. |
York Vision‘s Verdict: Second term and second manifesto, however Franki still had trouble setting fully achievable goals. With Roses around the corner, these partial wins may be the most we get from her – an “okay” output from the SABB who had one of the largest vote mandates this year.
Deb Dey
| Manifesto Point | Achieved? |
| Academic as our priority with access to global online platforms without fee. | Deb has not launched this or mentioned anything about this. |
| Internship Opportunities from first year onwards so every student gets an exposure to their preferred industry. | Deb has not launched this or mentioned anything about this. |
| Launch a campaign “Disable the Label ” and “Open Door” policy to enhance the quality of Educational and Living experience of students. | Deb has not launched this or mentioned anything about this. |
York Vision‘s Verdict: Deb has not achieved any of his 3 main manifesto points or shown any evidence that he is actively working towards them. A strong 4 months is needed for him to turn around this extremely disappointing tenure in office.
Hannah Nimmo
| Manifesto Point | Achieved? |
| Increase wellbeing training for all committees and wellbeing officers. | An actual manifesto win! Bystander support training! Wellbeing in Sport Training! Freshers Leaders Training! Should this have already been provided? Maybe! But actual tangible achievements! |
| Work with student groups to develop a more representative standpoint of YUSU on community & wellbeing issues. | It is hard to grade a relatively vague manifesto point, but apart from a line about “launching a consultation with commuting students” not a lot of Hannah’s achievements can be interpreted as making a “more representative standpoint”. |
| Work with YUSU, its partners, and University and York communities to improve student safety both on and off campus in York. | Some actual success. Students who need priority seats can now travel safer on FirstBuses, bringing in some new safety training options, admittedly just giving York Parties “more wellbeing focused resources” sounds wishy-washy, but this is one of the most successful manifesto points from last year’s Sabbatical cohort. |
York Vision‘s Verdict: Mostly realistic manifesto points with a level of success in achieving them. Well done Hannah, it is just a shame that the national situation has torpedoed student’s wellbeing across the country to somewhat undercut your good work.
Rohan Ashar
| Manifesto Point | Achieved? |
| Develop fresh strategies to further advertise student group events and charity projects. | Some headway has been made in creating new events, such as the BAME Creative Showcase which are genuine successes, but the “fresh strategies” have boiled down to a reskin of Sophie Kelly’s URY Power Hour and a “Finding Your York” initiative so obscure that even YUSU’S socials team have seemingly never heard of it. |
| Ensure that activities are available to all and encourage societies to provide accessibility information. | Getting more funding for the Activities Access Grant (win!), launching a Societies Rewards Scheme (then watching it crash with zero fanfare or acknowledgement from anyone), and leading the Volunteering/RAG fair and BAME Creative Showcase (big win!) – more could be done, but this is okay progress on some fronts. |
| Work alongside events companies to facilitate fun nightlife on and off campus with transparent and functional safety procedures in place. | …Did we all enjoy the Thursday Activities Night at D-Bar? We did, although on at least one night we were the only group there. Off campus, the York Parties contract situation has once again been kicked down the road via the ‘tender process’ just in time for the next Activities Officer to deal with, and transparency of safety hasn’t particularly improved. |
York Vision‘s Verdict: Rohan, you have been an adequate advocate of Student Media, but your achievements have been mixed, in part to how all-encompassing your job description seems to be. A selection box of hits and misses, not for a lack of trying, just for a slight lack of final product.
So, what have we learned today?
This year’s Sabbatical Officers have had a hard time achieving the three main manifesto points of their campaign, but from the ones that were reached, we can learn a few things about what to look for when voting.
Firstly, the more specific and small-scale the target, the more realistic the chance is that it can be achieved.
Secondly, the manifesto points that promise to introduce more of things that are already in place (such as training) do better than points that promise to stop stuff that are already in action (FirstBus, York Parties, rent increases).
We are not suggesting that Sabbatical Officers should not be ambitious in their manifestos, but all of the five above were ambitious when running – when voting, look for how candidates plan to actually achieve this ambition. If they’re not telling you, the chances are that they don’t actually know how they will achieve it.