Wednesday 16-04-2025 - 14:07

No one works harder than our Officers.

From trips to the Houses of Parliament to dressing up in big yellow costumes, let’s have a look back at all we’ve been up to these last few months.

 

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As a refresher, the Student Officer team is dedicated to four key priorities to better your experience at Manchester Met:

• Money

• Personal Development

• Community and Belonging

• Visibility

 

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Money

We know that money is one of the biggest issues students face and the Student Officer Team is committed to fighting for a fairer situation for all of you.

This year we’ve continued our work on the Money Matters campaign, gathering valuable information (with 311 of you submitting responses to our survey) about additional costs. This work is hugely important in the fight for fairer assessments, highlighting what costs students can expect on their course and making sure grades aren’t affected by how much money students spend on resources.

We’ve also been working with regional and national powers on several issues around students’ finances. As part of the Greater Manchester Student Partnership (GMSP) we met with Transport for Greater Manchester to discuss the Bee Network’s new Tap and Go payment method, how this impacts students and what Transport for Greater Manchester can do to support students, in particular commuting students, more.

As part of the GMSP, we want to make transport in Manchester the best in the country for students and regular meetings like these with Transport for Greater Manchester make sure your voice is heard on a regional level.

Plus, after two visits to the Houses of Parliament as part of the NUS delegation, we lobbied local MPs to add two amendments to the Renters Rights Bill to support students in rented accommodation. This bill seeks to support renters in ways such as:

• Making no fault evictions illegal: Making sure students feel secure in their homes.
• Abolishing the need for guarantors: A practice that overwhelmingly disadvantaged international students, students from a lower-income background and those estranged from their parents.
• Making it easier for renters to demand improvements to poor quality homes.

There’s still a long way to go, and we’re committed to continuing to push for more legislation to support students, but this bill is a step in the right direction.

 

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Personal Development

As Officers, a huge part of the role is making sure you’re given all the tools to become the best version of yourself by the time you leave university.

Part of how we’re supporting you thrive after graduating is fighting for a reform on resit caps. Currently, when you need to resit an assessment (either because you submit late or fail the assessment) the highest grade you can achieve is 40%. Regardless of how well you did in the resit. This practice appears to us to be overly harsh and greatly punishes students.

So, after working with the University’s Assessment Management team, they’ve agreed to review a policy that allows the true grade students would’ve got in the assessment had the cap not been 40% to appear on your module transcript. This policy will give students a better idea of how well they are performing throughout their course whilst also giving the opportunity to provide employers with evidence of efficiency.

Another campaign being worked on is Course Rep of the Semester. Course Reps are an essential part of your learning experience, working as a spokesperson for each course, ensuring that your views and feelings about your course are represented to the University. With this role being so important in the improvement of your uni experience, we thought we should celebrate the best of the best, providing the winners with certificates and endorsements for their hard work throughout the semester.

 

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Community and Belonging

If you were on campus during the first week on March you may have seen a giant, inflatable, yellow condom running about and you probably thought “that’ll be Sav”.

SHAG (Sexual Health and Guidance) Week was full of events, freebies and information. With the aim of removing the stigma around talking about sexual health, SHAG week allowed students to open up about taboo subjects in the name of health.

With over 40 individual STD tests carried out on campus, 3,600 condoms given away and a further 200 students getting involved in over activities, the week was a huge success, showing we can all continue to act in safe and informed ways.

Missed out on the SHAG Week events? Don't worry! We’ve put together a page of useful links covering loads of different sexual health topics.

Finally, there's our Union Cupboard. After receiving hundreds of donated items from people all around the university community, our Union Cupboard campaign continues to be a huge success. With the items donated varying from prayer mats to winter coats, books to handbags, stuffed toys to cheese graters, there was so much up for grabs for free during the event.

We’d like to thank everyone who donated to the campaign, no matter how big or small, and we hope that everyone who picked up a pre-loved goodie is putting it to good use!