Vote before 5pm on friday may 10th at vote.cusu.cam.ac.uk!
positions & candidates up for election:
Women’s Rep – Cecily Bateman
LGBT+ Rep – Anna W & Celestya Riva (joint)
Trans Rep – Aberdeen Powell
BME Rep – Lisa J & Celestya Riva (joint)
Graduate Rep – Lisa Bernhardt & Emma Carey (joint)
International Rep – Maja Lezo
Class Act Rep – Rensa Gaunt
Intermitting Students’ Rep – Ellie Payne & Emily Winson-Bushby (joint)
Carers’ Rep – Emma Carey
Open Portfolio Campaigns (two positions) – Chay Graham, Rowenna Patten
RON (re-open nominations) is also a candidate in each election.
manifestos:
Women’s Rep – Cecily Bateman
Cecily (she/they) is running to be Women’s Rep on the DSC. She has worked in feminist organising in King’s femsoc as treasurer, and ran an event last term on Trans allyship and combating terfs. She has also helped with uni wide organisation through Cambridge Zero Carbon and during the UCU strikes.
The one thing she would most like to achieve in her role is for everyone, especially women, to know what accommodations are available and how to ask for them, and to have a guide and support network of how to force this hellscape university to give those adjustments to them. Her favourite animal as a giant squid, and her favourite colour is purple.
LGBT+ Rep – Anna Ward & Celestya Riva (joint)
Anna (she/her) and Celestya (she/her) are running jointly to be LGBT+ Rep on the DSC. Anna was the LGBT+ officer on the year before last, and have also been the DSO for Emmanuel College, campaigning to successfully open the college’s first wheelchair accessible social space. Celestya co-ran her sixth form’s first LGBT+ society, and is specialising in identity issues faced by mixed race Japanese people for her dissertation. Anna likes cats and the colour pink, and Celestya likes magpies and lilac.
Anna’s one thing she would like to achieve in the position is to continue the work to encourage Vinyl to fulfil its legal obligation to have wheelchair access available, with the goal being that we manage to get access in place by the end of next academic year! Celestya hopes for more open discussion and acknowledgement of the intersections between ethnicity, gender, cultural identity, sexuality and disability; especially taking into account how cultures can impact both internal and external conceptions of identities. She also wants to raise awareness of ADHD and challenge the public imagination of what it means to have ADHD, particularly as it relates to underdiagnosis in women.
Trans Rep – Aberdeen Powell
Aberdeen (they/them) is rerunning to be Trans Rep on the DSC, the same position they’ve held for the past year. Their favourite animal is hedgehog, and their favourite colour is also hedgehog. If they could achieve one thing in their next year in the position, it would be a full rework of elections across CUSU and its campaigns to make them accessible for disabled students.
BME Rep – Lisa Jin & Celestya Riva (joint)
Lisa (she/her) and Celestya (she/her) are running jointly to be BME Rep on the DSC. Lisa’s favourite animals are cats, and Celestya’s are magpies; Lisa’s favourite colour is red, and Celestya’s is lilac. Lisa regularly attends DSC events and forums, as well as participating in BME campaign events. With a level 2 certificate in counselling skills working towards a PBS degree, she can combine personal and academic knowledge of mental health challenges. Celestya co-ran her sixth form’s first LGBT+ society, and is specialising in identity issues faced by mixed race Japanese people for her dissertation.
Their priority for the year would be to collaborate with other liberation campaigns in creating an inclusivity pledge to help societies and spaces become more inclusive of all sorts of diversity. Celestya hopes for more open discussion and acknowledgement of the intersections between ethnicity, gender, cultural identity, sexuality and disability; especially taking into account how cultures can impact both internal and external conceptions of identities. She also wants to raise awareness of ADHD and challenge the public imagination of what it means to have ADHD, particularly as it relates to underdiagnosis in women.
Graduate Rep – Lisa Bernhardt & Emma Carey (joint)
Lisa (she/they) and Emma (she/they) are running jointly to be Graduate Students’ Rep on the DSC. Lisa and Emma’s priority in the position is creating a specific, comprehensive resource for every department/faculty on how to practically support their disabled graduate students, particularly in regard to the research aspect of certain postgrad degrees (applicable to some masters courses as well as pretty much all PhDs) – they also want to work with the Intermission Officer and Intermitting Students’ Rep to create guidance on postgraduate intermission.
Lisa was Women’s Officer for the Worcester College MCR (Oxford) in 2014/15 and Women’s Rep in Trinity (Easter) Term 2015 for the Oxford Union. Emma has been Graduate Rep on the DSC for the past year. Lisa’s favourite animal is cats, and her favourite colours are blue and purple; Emma likes bright colours and doggos.
International Rep – Maja Lezo
Maja (she/her) is running to be the DSC International Students’ Rep. Her favourite animals are mountain goats, and her favourite colour is blue. She was PR officer on the iCUSU committee last year, during which she increased the campaign’s engagement ten-fold and made it more LGBTQ+ inclusive. She is also VP for the Fitzwilliam Museum Society so she’s used to co-hosting events with other societies. If she could achieve one thing in her position in the coming year, it would be to secure free skype therapy sessions for international students who cannot access therapy at home.
Class Act Rep – Rensa Gaunt
Rensa (she or they) is running to be Class Act Rep on the DSC. She’s worked with DSC for a year as Exec for Part Time students, and is heavily involved in Class Act too. Her priority for the year is to make sure that disability and class intersections are properly dealt with during the DSC’s and DSO’s work, e.g. financial and housing implications for students. Baby pandas are her favourite animal, and her favourite colour is “anything from red to maroon”!
Intermitting Students’ Rep – Ellie Payne & Emily Winson-Bushby (joint)
Ellie (she/her) and Emily (she/her) are running jointly to be Intermitting Students’ Rep on the DSC. Ellie has been running intermission socials for the last year, and also has experience in working with other campaigns, including through her role as Computing Officer for the LGBT+ campaign. Emily has intermitted twice herself, and has been attending DSC intermission socials for the last few years. Sky blue is both their favourite colours; Ellie loves cats, and Emily loves hedgehogs!
Ellie’s priority for the year is to get some concrete cross-college policy and guidelines in place so that intermitting students aren’t treated purely on a “case by case” basis: “Creating standard practices would create accountability where students have been treated poorly, and allow colleges to share best practice! It would also help to make the whole process more transparent.”
Emily’s priority is continuing and raising awareness of intermission socials and the Intermission Solidarity & Support facebook group: “Currently attendance is fairly low and I think too few people are even aware there is a facebook group. I want to help the DSC continue to provide these supportive forums for students who have intermitted/are intermitting/are considering intermission to voice their thoughts and feel understood, and to extend the range of people who use and benefit from them.”
Carers’ Rep – Emma Carey
Emma (she/they) is running to be the first ever Carers’ Rep on the DSC. Emma has been grad rep on this year’s DSC committee, and is a student parent with a lot of lived experience of how being a disabled student with caring responsibilities can be challenging and isolating. Her favourite animal is a doggo and her favourite colour is “anything bright!”
The one thing she would most like to achieve in the position is to raise awareness of the unique challenges faced by students with caring responsibilities, including student parents, and how this can intersect with disability: “For disabled students, the convenience of college accommodation can often be very helpful, but when colleges fail to provide for carers and student parents, we are forced to live out of college and therefore e.g. travel further on a daily basis, which can be a challenge for disabled students. I hope to raise awareness to colleges that disabled carers and student parents are at the university and that e.g. accessible family accommodation should be made available wherever possible.”
Open Portfolio Campaigns (two positions) – Chay Graham
Chay is running to fill one of the DSC’s two Open Portfolio positions. They’re a past member of the DSC committee 2018/19, and a past volunteer for a disability charity in their hometown (ADHD Aware) where they were head of web project. Their favourite colour is periwinkle and their favourite animals are guppy fish (poecilia reticulata). Their priority for the year is to have facilitated most if not all JCRs to have advertised “what counts as a disability” to their college’s students, and to have pointed them in the direction of DSC’s online communities.
Their campaign title is “Encouraging a disability-positive community,” and its aim is to grow the number of students and staff engaged with the DSC so we can begin to bring about collective change. “Many students remain naive of their rights relating to disability, and need to be helped to find the disability community. Additionally, the two core processes impacting on disabled students – intermission and implementation of academic adjustments – are highly ineffective at meeting students’ needs, meaning we must work together to push the uni for systematic change.”
They plan to achieve this through teach-outs and resource creation for J/MCRs to point their students towards the DSC; journalism to de-stigmatise intermission; a survey on common workarounds for when academic adjustments aren’t implemented, with a mind to collectivising; a guide to adult autism diagnosis for students; and collaborating with the Intermission Officer + Rep to campaign for intermission reform, potentially starting with a report on the experiences + needs of intermitting students.
Open Portfolio Campaigns (two positions) – Rowenna Patten
Rowenna (she/her) is running to fill one of the DSC’s two Open Portfolio positions. She has two dogs, and she’s the current DSO at Newnham and has really enjoyed the role; “plus, being autistic plus having a tonne of mental health problems means I have lots of experience r.e living with disability and the annoyingness of it.” She wants to build on Emrys’ work highlighting the failures of the current system of reasonable adjustments by taking action to standardise their implementation.
Her campaign aim is to help disabled students know that it’s okay to ask for things and to criticise the way they are being treated. “A lot of disability awareness work is revolved around the idea that ‘it’s okay not to be okay’ etc which can be helpful, but we also need to know that sometimes it’s not okay! It’s not okay for the university to consistently fail to meet your needs and it’s not okay if you feel as though you don’t know who to talk to. It is okay to ask for things to help you!” Rowenna wants to make sure students know what adjustments they’re entitled to and how to get them, and to reduce the stigma and awkwardness many students feel about asking for adjustments.