Guild President

I’m Emma and I’m a history graduate. I’m the current VP for Liberation and Equality and I came into the role and the student activist team as a climate justice activist — that’s my background! My hobbies? I’m a runner, and I just love nature.

WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO BE GUILD PRESIDENT?

WHAT IS THE NUMBER ONE THING YOU’D LIKE TO DO IF ELECTED?

The student activist movement has so much to give in terms of making society and the world a better place. And I’ve had a year to help some students so I’ve realised the power that they have through various campaigns and on a daily basis, making changes to their lives. I campaign for sustainability all the time, and I think it’s important that there is sustainability throughout the Guild and throughout the Sabbatical officer team. I really want to make some sustainable changes at the University: The £2 campaign was just a very decent example of how much of an influence a decent officer and leader can have when they work with students.

I’d completely change how the Guild works internally. I think the main source of a lot of problems that societies and students have comes from a failure of the Guild to be student led. The successful campaigns that I’ve launched this year have been about cutting through the red tape at both the Guild and the University level, and I think to have a successful campaign it needs to be completely empowered by the Students’ Guild rather than the Students’ Guild putting obstacles in the way. But apart from that, it’s wellbeing: I think the Wellbeing Services at the University are shocking and as President, that would be my next big campaign focus.

What is the biggest challenge you will face in the ROLE?

To be brutally honest, it’s going to be balancing my role as an activist and what I believe in versus having to fulfil other compulsory duties like keeping the University running. I think this is both a challenge and an opportunity because I very much see that the social climate and economic crises that we are in require fundamental shifts in business as usual and this trickles down to university level. So, I think as President I’m just going to have to be consistently challenging the status quo in the way in which the university runs, which is a broad reflection on currently how society runs. We do need people speaking up and saying business as usual doesn’t work.

What is your BIGGEST WEAKNESS?

HOW WILL YOU make sure that you represent all students’ views?

What is your MOST MEMORABLE NIGHT OUT IN EXETER?

It’s probably learning to say no as I take on and care about everything because I want to help everyone in so many ways. Sometimes, this is a failure because obviously you spread yourself so thin. It’s being able to direct people and know that you can’t solve everyone’s problems. Not to get too deep into it, but I think it’s about unlearning a lot of things as well. You can’t always help with everything and even thinking you can is like a supremacy mindset that you need to get over. Learning to care about certain things and learning to be able to say no is a balance I want to have. Being with students and talking to them, getting out of the echo chamber, which I think I’ve been able to do this year. This has been really important for me as an activist as well as a human being. If I wasn’t doing this, I would have gone into climate campaigning and been a bit more secluded from the broad spectrum of lovely politics that are out there. And I think it’s about learning how to stick to your principles, but also knowing that not everyone is going to care about the climate and all that jazz. Again, like the £2 meal campaign, that was a way for me to demonstrate that I’m not just interested in changing what I personally care about. I actually just want to do things that help everyone.

I would say it was the Lemmy in Freshers’ Week because I met and had a good chat with Rat Boy. He had rugby punch bags and he gave me one which was quite memorable. But then second to that would be camping in Dartmoor because that was great and who knows, when I leave, that might not be legal anymore because of the new laws!