Societies & Employability Officer

Rhys Wallis

I’m Rhys. I’m a third year, well, final year -crikey it feels real now- doing PPE. I say “doing PPE”, I’m mainly in the societies and I also sometimes attend PPE courses. I’m quite heavily involved in XPression FM, but I also like my football and do a bit of refereeing on the side. And every now and then I play quite badly at netball.

WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO BE societies & employability officer?

I think at university you have the two sides of the university experience: You’re there for your course but you’re also there to get involved in things that take your interest. My aim is to be on the side of society committees and to ask and implement change where needed, especially with some of the issues we’ve seen in recent years. On my candidate statement, I said that I wanted to address the room booking system, which was very annoying and frustrating to use. So being able to be that intermediary between what needs to be done and the people who need to be doing it was an opportunity I couldn’t say no to.

how will you make sure societies can rely on the guild to support them effectively?

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

It’s all about ascertaining where student society priorities are. I think that’s why I’m a little bit concerned about how far away the election is from the start of next term. With the physical election campaign being from February 20th to February 23rd and the voting taking place over those last two days, it’s going to be quite difficult to maintain the same set of student priorities going into when the elected officers term starts on June 26th, when the actual academic term starts in September. It’s all about being a position to use that time in-between February and the start of taking on a role, if i were to be elected, to go around and make sure that those people who are in the best position to tell us where we can help get that comment across, so we can really hit the ground running. A lot of the work has to be done in the university “off” season. There’s only so much that elected officers, and anyone, can do during the university term. Often, a lot of it is fighting fires that appear, and then you’re so busy fighting one that you don’t have time to look at the long-term goals. So, that’s why it’s so important to hit the ground running and make sure you use that lead-in time really effectively.

Probably being able to balance the needs of all 300 societies at the University such as ensuring that all societies have equal access to facilities around campus. This role will have to be a listening exercise, learning in the role but I’m hoping to draw on my experience working on XPression FM to be able to balance where we need to focus the attention and resources at the Guild’s disposal to make sure we can call ourselves a properly inclusive and accessible area.

What is your BIGGEST WEAKNESS?

If I’m not doing something, then I’m probably just sitting around waiting for something to happen. I need to get a little bit better at the proactivity side of things. If I’m on a roll, then I’ll keep going and going - good luck getting something on a to-do list! But if there’s a bit of a lull between points, then it can be quite hard to think “oh yeah, no, that’s the next thing I need to be doing. Let’s drag that one in here”. I think, hopefully, that can be masked by never really having any down-time as Societies and Employability Officer. There’s always going to be something going on, so I’ll be able to keep jumping from task to task.

What is your MOST MEMORABLE NIGHT OUT IN EXETER?

It’s a bit of a contradiction because my most memorable night out was probably the one I least remember. It was the most recent XMedia Christmas Ball and it was a good excuse to let loose after what was a taxing term. When you’re in Fever with people who had their shoes off, you know you’re in for a good night.