What a busy term it’s been! From running multiple campaigns, to Varsity and the Leadership elections, we’ve barely had a moment to look back at it all. So, here are our highlights and what we achieved in Term Two.
What a busy term it’s been! From running multiple campaigns, to Varsity and the Leadership elections, we’ve barely had a moment to look back at it all. So, here are our highlights and what we achieved in Term Two.
This year’s Leadership elections were a success! After weeks of online and in-person campaigning and three exciting days of voting, we had an overall voter turnout of 19.5% which is exactly 2700 students in total!
You guys elected your four full-time Sabbatical Officers, as well as six School Reps and five Community Officers.
Your four full-time officers are Sharanya Sivarajah for President, Madelaine Gray for VP Education, Olivia Davies as VP Wellbeing & Diversity and Bana Asqalan for VP Socs & Sport. We’re looking forward to working with this new team and helping implement all their ideas in the next academic year!
We want to thank all the candidates who stood in this year’s elections, you all made it an exciting and memorable time, and without you, there would be no election.
Find the full list of winners here.
The Sabbs have organised and helped run multiple campaigns throughout Term Two, these ranged from month-long awareness months to shorter campaigns.
Combatting the COL and helping students through the crisis has been an ongoing campaign throughout the year! We’ve already achieved so many goals that we aimed to, and the momentum didn’t slow down during Term Two. From launching RHSU Rewards, having the Advice Centre distribute vouchers for the Runnymede Food Bank, the Sabbs meeting with our local MP and much more, we continue to work to help students through the Cost of Living Crisis.
Check out the full Term Two update here, and the campaign page to see how we are continuing our work to combat the Cost of Living Crisis for students.
For this year’s LGBT History Month, VP Education Sharanya Sivarajah, led the campaign where we echoed the national theme of the month – Medicine #UndertheScope which recognised the work and life of LGBT+ people who have made significant contributions to the field. Working with the LGBT+ Society and the LGBTQ+ Community Officer, we worked on delivering a range of events to celebrate the achievements of LGBT+ people and also to spread awareness about the inequalities the community faces in the past and present.
Through events such as the LGBT+ HM Book Club, the Queer Creativity Showcase, Rainbow Rave, LGBT+ Speed Dating and many more, it was a successful, fun and insightful month and campaign overall!
Check out the campaign page to see what events we held and the blogs we had to raise awareness throughout the campaign.
For this year’s Women’s History Month campaign, VP Wellbeing & Diversity Nisha alongside our Women Students Community Officer Olivia aimed to reflect on, celebrate, and honour the remarkable achievements and contributions of women throughout history. They created a theme for each week of the awareness month, to make sure to cover as many of women’s main issues and achievements as possible. The themes were:
- Women who Advocate for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, which aimed to shine a spotlight on women who spent their lives advocating. From student volunteers to staff members, we celebrated their efforts in creating a more inclusive world for all.
- Women’s Health and Mental Wellbeing, where we aimed to raise awareness about women’s issues relating to healthcare and mental health provisions, and what inequalities persist in those areas.
- Women’s rights, this week we aimed to honour the courageous women who have fought – and continue to fight – for gender equality, reproductive rights, and social justice.
- Celebrating Women in our Community, for the final week of WHM we turned our focus to the incredible women within our community to celebrate the achievements and contributions that enrich our lives and inspire us every day.
It’s been a fun-filled campaign and a great way to celebrate and honour women in our community and beyond. Check out the campaign page to see all the details of what we got up to.
After a successful Speak Week in term one where we got almost 300 responses to the question ‘What’s one thing you would change to improve your first few weeks of term?’ we looked through every single one to make sure we know what is important to you.
In this term’s Speak Week, we ran two SU on Tour events and our staff spoke to as many of you in person as possible to ask the question; ‘What one change would you like to see at Royal Holloway?’
We got over 300 responses, and we’d like to thank all of you who took part in our in-person and online events. Here are the results and what we found out throughout the week.
We’ve already started implementing your top ideas and issues into University and SU decision-making meetings and future events and campaigns.
We are looking forward to our next Speak Week in Term Three!
SU President, Hannah Hockin, launched the NeverOk campaign with the goal of helping create a culture of support belief around survivors of sexual harassment or misconduct as well as help in empowering survivors of sexual harassment or violence within our community to feel confident about reporting incidents.
This is an ongoing campaign and overall goal that will be implemented through policies and events at the SU. Check out the campaign page to see how we’re progressing in our aims for the campaign as well as all the support services available in and out of University.
Hannah Hockin and Nisha Bundhun ran the Drug & Alcohol Awareness campaign to raise awareness about alcohol and drug usage through events and educational blogs and social media posts. The main aim of this campaign was to create a healthy, inclusive culture and give students strategies to help reduce the harmful impact of drugs and alcohol.
Check out the campaign page to see the details of all the events and check out the blogs. You can also find support services listed if you or anyone you know is struggling with alcohol and drug use.
The Healthy Relationships Campaign, run by VP Wellbeing & Diversity Nisha Bundhun, was launched to raise awareness of toxic/abusive relationships and to promote healthy ones. Through writing informative blogs about the warning signs of abusive relationships and helping equip students with the knowledge and tools they will need to identify, address, and prevent toxic behaviour in their relationships through workshops and resources.
Check out the number of blogs in this campaign and all the support resources available for you or anyone you know who may be going through a toxic or abusive relationship.
Colours Ball
For this year’s Colours Ball, we alongside all your sports clubs and members dressed in their fanciest attire, went to the Hilton Hotel for a glitzy, glamourous awards night. We had a great time celebrating all the great achievements of all our Bears and enjoying an evening of drinks, food, and dancing!
Varsity
We hosted the Surrey Stags here at home this year! We had a fantastic day with lovely weather where all our sports teams showcased their skills with over 39 fixtures taking place! The vibes were great around campus as you all came down to support and cheer our sports teams, enjoying the sun, food, and drinks. The atmosphere was absolutely electric at the Sports Centre with the sea of green and purple. Although we weren’t successful in getting the trophy back to Egham, all our teams fought so hard, and we were able to close out the day with a big win in Netball and Women’s Volleyball and a well-deserved Varsity Afterparty.
We’re already looking forward to Varsity 2025!
