Mission Statement

 
"The University of Bath Students' Union (BUSU) exists to represent its members and provide them with high quality services, support and opportunities for development to enable them to maximise the benefits of their overall student experience." 

The Board of Trustees has ultimate responsibility and liability for the ensuring that the Students' Union complies with all legal and regulatory requirements but BUSU is a membership-led organisation and BUSU is committed to ensuring that its members are able to make decisions which affect them in their lives as students at the University of Bath.  There are two student forums a year at which the Board of Trustees present a report to students.

There are many ways in which students can become involved in the decision making within the Students' Union and there are a variety of elections associated with this.

Early in October there are elections for course reps followed by elections for Faculty reps.  The course reps are elected from and by the members of individual courses and the Faculty reps are elected from the course reps.  There are also cross campus elections for other Union reps as well as representatives to University committees.  The Union reps are Gender Equality rep, Placement rep and Race Equality rep.  The two University committees for which cross campus elections are held are Equalities & Diversity committee and Council, Senate, Students' Union. The latter is chaired by the Vice Chancellor and is an opportunity for the Students' Union to speak directly with the University's senior management team.  The Students' Union's 4 representatives to NUS Conference are also elected in these cross campus elections.  

In March there are cross campus elections for the 6 Sabbatical Officers who are the principle representatives of the student body and also members of the Board of Trustees, of which the SU President is the Chair.  These are full time positions which start in June, after the summer exams, and last 12 months. The sabbs do not study but live and work on campus.

Any student can run to be a sabb, from freshers to final years. People run to be a sabb for all kinds of reasons, but are united by just one – to make a difference.

For some officers a sabb year becomes their placement, for others it is a break from their course and for many it is their first job after graduating.

The cross campus elections, held in March, work slightly differently to those held in October.  In each, everyone writes a piece about why you should vote for them and the voting is online, however, all the people standing for election in March are allowed to actively campaign to win the votes of students. As a result campus becomes awash with posters, badges, t-shirts and crazy activities, in a bid to make you more aware of each person. Some contenders dress in fancy dress and some run activities on the Parade, like trampolining in front of the Library! But remember the purpose of the elections is not to vote for who entertains you most, but who you feel will best represent you in the role they are running for.

Each sabb has set responsibilities and they meet regularly with the Students' Union senior management team to make operational decisions.

There are many other ways to be involved in the running of the Union, mainly through different representative groups like the Executives for Societies, Sports or Volunteering.
More information on getting involved with the SU>>