What does the Students’ Union do to support societies?

In the aftermath of the Brighton Students’ Union Awards, how much has the Student Union done enough to support societies?

Every March, the Brighton Students’ Union runs elections to allow students to vote as to who leads societies and the Students’ Union themselves. This year, according to data provided by the Students’ Union themselves, “2157 students cast 8601 votes across all of the elections, the highest election turnout since 2017/18.” The Students’ Union is dedicated to supporting students and by extension societies, but have they been providing enough support to the societies that they are so proud of?

One way that the student’s union theoretically provides support to societies is financially, with grants and previously, memberships. However, money has become even harder to come by since memberships were made free to students. The grant system is hard to navigate and rarely advertised to societies that may want to access them. Ember Haskings, President of the Brighton Students’ Union LGBTQ+ Society, said in an interview about accessing the grants:

“No, we haven't. We've had one or two things we wanted to apply for it, but there's no guidance available on how to apply, so we don't really know what the process is. We've never gone through it. It's kind of just been open for us. We haven't done it.” So why is it so hard for societies to get financial support? The changes to the system for this year have not been popular, and yet they are continuing for next year.

The Students’ Union is also supposed to provide training and a handover process. As of this academic year, they have failed to provide any training for the outgoing committee (a training day was meant to be provided, as well as a website called the SU Hub) as well as minimal handover guidance. However, this year, this process seems to be changing. Ilia Mirsky Katz, the current president of the Students’ Union said this about the handover process in an interview:

“So, the handover process is very interesting. We try our best to let students do the handover by themselves. I personally think that there is quite a lot of systems you can put in place in order to, you know, simplify the handover process to give a bit of a guidance to how the students could produce a handover for the following committee but we do like to give the freedom for the students to do handover as best as they can the way they want.” It was recently announced to current and incoming committee members that there will be a handover day featuring team building and talks from teams within the Students’ Union. There is also meant to be training provided, but we’ll see how that turns out.

More of both of the interviews above is available on YouTube and on Soundcloud.

So, does the Students’ Union provide enough support to their societies? Every society will have a different experience working with them, but there are certainly moments where they fall short for all.