News

February!

February has been non-stop with Student engagement. From Molly’s fruit walkarounds as part of her ‘Don’t Burn Out’ campaign to the plans for the revived Student Newspaper (name pending), we have been busy interacting with you all! Our community organiser, Flic, held an MP letter writing session where students could write to their local MPs on old cardboard. This allowed students to reach out to the people in charge whilst being sustainable.

The LGBTQIA+ society held a pronoun badge making session in the SU in honour of LGBT+ History month. Thank you to all that helped organised this and attended, we loved all of the bracelets and fun designs. We also held a litter pick where we worked with a group of students to clean up campus! Litter picks are surprisingly fun (and lowkey competitive) so make sure to get involved with our next one.

Emma started the month working with the Medway leads from both Kent and Greenwich. Based on student feedback, we took the most commonly used route from Gillingham Train Station to the Medway campus, finding areas with poor lighting or potential safety issues. We have collected this data and shared it with the local authorities. Emma isn’t sure what the current status of this project is, but she will hopefully have an update this month. She helped with the University ‘Get Ready for Grad’ event, where students could come and chat to all the necessary departments about their next steps. We know it isn't quite what everyone imagined, so Emma is passing this feedback on to hopefully make some improvements for next time. Finally, Emma has hosted the Library Learning Skills Team in the SU. This gave students the opportunity to speak to the Librarians and get some academic support.

In case you missed it, we had our SU building grand opening… even though we have been open for a couple of years. Your SU is named ‘Mary Seacole’ after the inspirational nurse. We had Elizabeth Pearson from the Mary Seacole Trust officially open the space. We hope that your Mary Seacole building continues to be the safe, vibrant and community enhancing space that you have all loved since 2023.

Molly’s annual Sports Federation awards sold out within minutes! She has been working to plan this event alongside Varsity. February has been full of preparations and behind the scenes work for what will be a VERY busy April. Watch this space as Molly has a lot of cool things in the works.

We also watched Wuthering Heights. Joe fell asleep. 6/10. 

March!

March felt like 11 years, but we managed to fit a lot in!

In honour of Women’s History Month, our community organiser Kaitlyn held a “She Shoots, She Scores” event where students could showcase their ping pong skills whilst learning about influential women. This was a fun and important event - thank you Kaitlyn and to everyone who came! Molly & Emma continued the empowerment theme by interviewing female students and staff from CCCU who are in positions of leadership. The final video is on our Instagram if you want to hear how women feel empowered at CCCU and the amazing work they have done.

Let’s quickly run through the other events we held in March:
Molly hosted a Harry Styles listening party - sorry to anyone who has been startled by the Harry Styles cardboard cut out.
Flic, another one of our Community Organisers, hosted a book swap event! This swap shop is still on one of the shelves in the SU.
Flic also chaired our Annual Members Meeting (thanks Flic) where students could come and hear about what CCSU has achieved in the last year. 
For University Mental Health day, we had puppies in Medway.
Finally, we climbed a mountain (we completed the Brit challenge without crying).

Joe started this month with a trip to Reading for the Southern SUs conference. This is a time to network with other SU officers and staff members, exchanging ideas and discussing what is working well. Joe’s main focus at the moment is his upcoming summer fete!! Like the bonfire night, this takes a lot of planning and fighting various rules around where bouncy castles can go. If Joe isn't reading governing body papers, he is googling ‘hook a duck’ rentals. More information about this event will be coming in April.

Emma collected the Bronze Kent Wildlife award (alongside Imogen our Student Voice Coordinator) on behalf of CCSU. This will lead towards the wider GISU accreditation which closes at the end of April.

Alongside USEC, we have finalised the planning for Society Awards. We are so excited to have this back and cannot wait to see all the hard work pay off!

Speaking of awards, Sports Fed is just around the corner. Molly has been working non-stop to get everything prepared. Emma and Molly’s joint volunteering campaign for Sport is now complete! The certificates are ready and the number of students that have committed to logging their hours is astonishing! Thank you to all that came to the final log your hours party! Molly is excited to reward you all at Sports Fed!

But, before we can reward our sports students, they have to complete Varsity. Coming up in April, all our sports teams will go head to head with UKC in the annual Varsity fixtures. It is always a great week so we are super excited to see you all! Molly’s ‘Think Before You Speak’ campaign is now live and it will run nicely alongside Varsity as we focus on the importance of appropriate sideline behaviour and locker room talk. Molly has worked behind the scenes on this campaign all month and it will be revealed throughout April!

Finally, Joe and Emma got re-elected. After a long week of campaigning, we can officially say that we will be your Union President and President of Academic Life for another year!!! That means Emma can write plenty more blog posts for you all!