You can’t spell success without The SU! Another academic year is coming to a close, and with it The SU can proudly look back on a series of big wins which couldn’t have been achieved without our incredible students, groups, volunteers, Officers and staff! Here are some of the highlights from the past semester:
Your Activities
We couldn’t be prouder of our groups who worked hard to put on a series of exceptional events throughout the semester. Whether you were raising money, getting creative, building a community, or dancing your socks off – there were just too many brilliant ideas to list them all. A special mention goes to Sailing, who won The SU’s Event of the Year award for their Bath Robe event.
Making a comeback to the stage, our Arts groups were able to put on 24 shows this semester alone for a combined audience of over 2,600. Another shoutout goes to BUST, who won Most Inclusive Group, and BUSMS, who won Best Overall Group at the SU Awards 2022. The Arts team has also been working together with Student Services on an art scholarship programme which proved to be a huge success.
Our fabulous Volunteering groups held several successful events at Dartmouth Avenue, including a repair café and a sports kit resale event which raised funds for RAG. Speaking of which, RAG selected their big 4 charities for 2022-23: Food cycle, off the record BANES, teenage helpline and 1st impressions. Thank you for all your hard work!
Our Sports groups didn’t shy away from getting involved and we were delighted to see that membership numbers bounced back to pre-Covid numbers. We’ve also got an exciting new kit supplier lined up for the coming year with Surridge Sport. One of the highlights was Varsity, which returned at long last and was attended by over 5,000 of you, showing your support as we celebrated our fifth victory. The wins just wouldn’t stop coming, culminating in a night of in-person celebrations at this year’s Blues Awards. Huge congratulations to all of you!
We are thrilled to announce that 10 new societies will be joining us over the coming months, and we can’t wait to welcome you to The SU!
Your Events
This semester saw the return of our ever-popular events and many a joyful happy hour at The Plug and Tub! If you were on campus, you may have attended our fabulously festive Christmas Market or one of the many beloved Street Food Markets we organised. The Plug and Tub also launched their Bubbles and Beer night, which will be awaiting you in the new semester. The petting zoo provided an opportunity to cosy up to some goats, goslings and guinea pigs as a way to wind down from the stress of exams in May. If you haven’t had your fill of events yet then fear not, as our amazing Summer Ball will be back in full swing on 3 June with acts including Rudimental.
Your Voice
Many of you came together and showed your support during the Vigil for Peace in support of Ukraine and the victims of warfare. Despite the tragic circumstances surrounding the event, it was a fantastic show of community support that provided an opportunity for members of our community to share their thoughts and feelings.
You also had your say in referendums, surveys and during the elections for your new Officer team, which saw the return of in-person campaigning to our campus! We’ll be welcoming the new team in late June. If you haven’t already met the new Officer Team you can do so through our meet the Officers article.
You supported your peers and smashed the Peer Assisted Learning attendance record, with over 2,000 attendances recorded. The language PALs also proved to be hugely popular and will be back in the new year.
Mental Health Matters
Mental Health was also on the agenda this year. We've supported 461 undergrads & 121 postgrads with independent, confidential advice on everything from how to appeal results to going through a personal disciplinary. In a recent survey, 79% of you felt confident finding solutions to problems after speaking to an SU Advisor. If you're looking for advice & support, we're here when you need us. Just email suadvice@bath.ac.uk.
We couldn’t talk about mental health support without giving a shout-out to Nightline and Student Minds, both of which won an award at The SU Awards (Best Collaboration: LGBT+Nightline, Change Makers Award: Student Minds and Committee of the Year: Nightline). Thanks for all that you’ve done and continue to do for our community!
Officer Wins
We can’t believe our current Officer team have been here for nearly a whole year! It’s that time again where we have to say farewell to another fantastic team and welcome in an exciting new one. Mixed emotions always! We thought we should take a moment to highlight all the hard work they’ve put in over the past year with just a few of their big wins. If you’d like to hear more, watch our video at top of this blog.
- Your SU President, Annie Willingham, dealt with and overcame the challenges of post-Covid recovery, was involved in the recruitment of the majority of the new senior management team, launched Ideas to Action along with SUmmit and introduced standpoints as a way for you to shape the work and political stance the Officers take.
- Your Community Officer, Meg Crossman, improved menstrual product provision, including free menstrual products in Advice and Support, lobbied to set up a male mental health peer support group which starts in the new academic year, implemented a Drug Harm Reduction service where you can obtain a drugs testing kit and advice, and set up and coordinated the Safe Taxi Scheme.
- Your Education Officer, Jacob Withington, got the new School of Management building study space open to all, introduced a new election period, lobbied for Reading Weeks, and initiated projects to improve how academic student feedback is collected.
- Your Postgraduate Officer, Sid Singh, has revived the SU Postgraduate Instagram account, posting about PG-specific events, set up the International Accent Project, and lobbied for a PGT Peer Mentoring Scheme which is due to be piloted over the summer.
- Your Activities Officer, Zoë Paumelle, launched the first ever arts and creativity festival, Artsity, brought back Green Week after two years, and made Ecosia the default search engine on all library computers.
- Your Sport Officer, Elizabeth Stacey, has lobbied the university on the use of the Sulis Club, launched a successful Sports Stash Sale which supported charities and sustainability targets, and brought back Varsity with a win against Cardiff Met.
These are just a few of our Officers’ achievements and we couldn’t be prouder!
Behind the Scenes
There was plenty going on behind the scenes this year, and we’d like to take the opportunity to highlight some of our staff achievements. We launched our new TikTok channel and hit the 14k follower mark on our Instagram, which had over 50 takeovers from student groups. We promoted over 200 part-time jobs to you through our jobs page and newsletter and recruited around 80 captains for the upcoming Freshers’ Week. Working with our website provider, we managed to get our system to automatically pull through preferred names from SAMIS in a big step towards inclusivity. We organised multiple sell-out events such as the Thorpe Park trip and Summer Ball and submitted our Green Impact Award. Don’t mind us while we give ourselves a bit of a pat on the back.
We’re immensely proud and grateful for our fantastic community here at Bath. It’s been fantastic to see so many of you back on campus and around The SU. A massive well done to all of you for all your commitment and hard work throughout the year, it’s safe to say we smashed it.
See you in the new academic year!
Your SU x