Current Sports Participation and Engagement Officer Tash Miller is running for re-election in the position, with optimistic eyes on a return to sport for all Stirling students.
The Criminology and Social Policy student, who is in her third year at Stirling, hopes that in next semester’s return to play, sport can be 100 per cent accessible for all. This will be done partly through the restarting of the successful Social Club.
Miller said: “After chatting a lot to the Disability Officer and Sonny Bailey, who is Postgraduate Officer, the feedback that I’ve gotten is that a lot of the sports clubs on campus have accessibility issues.
“I really want to make the Social Club and every Social Club event 100 per cent accessible for all members.
“I want to make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to participate in casual sport, participate in general fitness, and not be excluded.
“We’re ready to implement some of the feedback from the first year of the Social Club this coming year.”
The hosting of the Stirling Olympics is a key part of Miller’s manifesto, and she hopes that the games can finally go ahead at some point in the next year. The event will be a mix of typical Olympics events, as well as more fun and light-hearted games.
“I think it’s going to look a little bit different to how we had initially planned it. It was originally meant to line up with the Tokyo Olympics, but that was before the pandemic hit.
“We have very basic plan to have four or five events on a day, running over a couple days, with races like the 100-metre forward dash, and the 100-metre backwards dash.
“There would also be hurdles events, a space hopper race and a couple of other fun events like a shootout.
“Not a gun shootout, but a basketball one – I’ve had to clarify that one few times for a few people!”
Miller has also been hard at work with current Sports President Edd Keeler in supporting and promoting the ‘healthy body, healthy mind’ campaign, to better understand the fitness habits of Stirling students.
“This year myself and Edd have been working on trying to form a baseline for ‘healthy body, healthy mind’ so we can start determining how active our community is, how active our members are, and what’s stopping them from being active.
“We’re hoping to have a survey sent out at the start of next semester, so that we can get a report back to find out what we need to do.
“We’re hoping to hear back from students who are involved in activities which aren’t offered on campus, so that we can look at offering an even more diverse programme of activities.
“Then we can start encouraging people to get involved in activities, through the information that we’ve been provided.”
When asked why she was the best candidate for the role, Miller said:
“I absolutely love sport, and being active, and I think that in this position, your core value has to be that love of sport, as well as participation and engagement.
“I care about accessibility to sport, and it is so important to tackle these accessibility issues when they arise.”
You can read Miller’s manifesto here.
Voting opens on the March 8 at 9am and closes on March 9 at 6.15pm.
Featured Image Credit: Tash Miller
4th Year Journalism Studies and Politics Student at Stirling University. Sports Editor. Bylines in Brig Newspaper and The Oban Times
