Hibah Saddal

Hi, my name is Hibah and I am a final year Mathematics student.

I am excited to be running for this role as I love helping others and seeing others succeed. I have been involved in a plethora of endeavours during my time at the university. As a Student Union Experience Rep, I was involved in planning and running many community and games events and we are currently planning a trip to Bletchley Park, this helps foster student inclusivity and engagement. 

As an Education Rep, I was involved in collecting and collating feedback that helped highlight many student issues which were passed to senior staff. I chaired course conversations during this time, which encouraged students to give honest feedback about their course without fear of judgement as their views always stayed anonymous with me.

I would also like to add that currently I am President of the Maths Society, this involves having weekly community hours to meet up and check up with our students and staff. We are progressing to have a maths community room very soon to go alongside the society. 

I am passionate about helping others and this shows in the various amounts of extra-curricular activities I am involved in which are all people focused. 

My 5 Focus Points as an Activities Officer:

Community focused and tackling student loneliness:

If elected I would implement weekly community hours for each course. 

We have already implemented a weekly maths community hour to bring students and staff together, this really helps combat loneliness as well as bridge the gap between students and staff. We are all comfortable with speaking to each other, this really helps with communication between staff and students and makes it easier when we have discussions together such as course conversations. 

Diversity and Inclusion:

Irrespective of any differences, I would help engagement across this sphere by encouraging students to engage positively with each other. I would implement regular talks in which a speaker (this could be a student, society, lecturer or even an external guest) could talk about their own journeys around the D&I space and how they overcame barriers to achieve their goals.  

More recognition for achievements:

I want to implement student union award ceremonies each semester to appreciate the reps who go above and beyond for us and always do an amazing job with collecting feedback. I also want to have awards for societies, sports clubs and student union staff at these events, as they deserve to be appreciated and acknowledged for all their hard work. 

I want to implement rep of the week, month and semester awards within each faculty to recognise the fabulous and engaging work our reps do.

There would also be a faculty award ceremony at the end of each academic year to celebrate students, and staff.

Regular society mixers:

Regular society mixers to help societies get members from different departments and subjects who usually wouldn’t have the opportunity to join.

I want to foster a culture of encouraging students to join and get to know our societies or to socialise at these regular events. 

More advertisement of sports and Varsity:

There are many students unaware of the sports courts and clubs, I think that it is important to advertise them more in each building so that students become aware of the sports activities offered by the university and are more likely to attend, keep active and socialise. 

Students should also be made aware of Varsity and the opportunities they may get to compete there. 

Awards for our incredible and talented sports clubs at student union award ceremonies each semester.