Aidan Fairbairn for Sports President: “Just because it’s a small club doesn’t mean it’s any less valuable”

Brig interviews Sports President Candidate Aidan Fairbairn amid the Student Union elections. He is a fourth year Sports and Exercise student and president of the judo club.

Fairbairn’s sole opponent is Laura Shaw.

His experience

“I feel like I’d be good at it,” he said of the position. “I’ve done a lot of sports in general and I’ve been involved in the sports union for the last three or four years.

“I am good at leading things and feel like I’d be a good replacement for Murray [Bushell] and a lot of people tell me they reckon I’d be good at it.”

When asked how he differs from his fellow candidate, he said: “I’d say quite different because one, Laura’s got the perspective of a woman in sport. I sadly don’t have that as I’m a man.

“She’s also from a big sport. She’s from swimming so her clubs multiple times bigger than my one as I’m judo and run a small club as most martial art ones are.”

He spoke further on the difference between the two clubs: “I’ve got it from quite a different perspective to see a lot of the time they are turning members away from their club as they physically don’t have the space whereas at judo we take absolutely anyone and we’ll take anyone that would like to try the sport because we need the members.”

When asked if he’s better for the job, he said: “No, I wouldn’t put it that way.

“She [Shaw] has different challenges than I do as I’ll take anyone that I can get whereas she has to make the choice of ‘who do we take?’ and ‘why do we take them and not other people?’ so different challenges compared to what I have.”

Previous Sports Presidents have come from the big clubs recently but Fairbairn thinks it’s time for a change:

“Murray also came from football and then Sophie who was before Murray was hockey as well, so the last of at least three years have been big sports. I think it’d be good to have someone from a smaller sport that you know has to work a lot on getting members in.”

A focus on small clubs

Coming from judo, it’s clear to see Fairbairn’s passion for smaller sports.

“So a lot of my manifesto has been developed from what the clubs have told me so I went round and asked ‘what would you like from your sports president?'” he said.

“A lot of the stuff, especially all the small clubs was more promotion because a lot of them get lost and it’s hard to be a club especially when you’ve got small members, like small number members, it’s hard to continue the club if nobody knows your club.

“Just because it’s a small club doesn’t mean it’s any less valuable in the union than a big club and they need the promotion more than the big clubs as the more outreach and promotion they can get the more likely they are going to get people that might go ‘I’ll try that sport.’

“Everyone knows the Union’s got football, hockey, rugby and netball. We all know those sports exist but smaller sports like Gaelic football and the slightly more obscure ones that aren’t on television, folk don’t know that they exist basically.”

He particularly wants to focus on giving them more promotion: “The more promotion will then lead to more people knowing about the clubs which will then lead to more members.”

However he made it clear that this won’t be at the detriment to bigger clubs: “t’s not that they won’t get a promotion at all, it’s just the smaller clubs will get more than they do already.”

Inclusion

Fairbairn’s manifesto also focuses on diversity and inclusion.

“The other part of my manifesto is about inclusion and including minority groups within the Sports Union as well as LGBT and international students,” he explained.

“International students are I think about a third of our uni, about 30 per cent of our student base and the Sports Union is massively underrepresented in just about every sport.

“Everyone can benefit from more diverse groups as there are more points of view and it breeds a very rich culture within sports clubs.”

Feasibility

When asked how achievable his goals are, Fairbairn said: “I think they are very feasible. I’ve looked at them and a lot of the stuff I got from the clubs when I asked, I thought ‘can I realistically do this?’ because I didn’t want to get in on false claims because I don’t want to be voted in on some big wild claim that ‘I can do this’ that I know is not feasible.

“So the promotion of smaller clubs, going and speaking to them, making sure that [they’re] promoted on the social media channels that’s not an overly difficult process to do that.

“That’s not something that requires any extra funding, nothing like that, just making a conscious effort to go this club doing something great, we should now push them and show off to the uni that they are doing something great and again with the inclusion stuff like speaking to minority groups and LGBT clubs.”

His main strategy is to go out and speak to these underrepresented groups.

“I’m not able to know the opinions of diverse groups because I’m not a part of them, he explained. “I’m not a member of the LGBT community, I’m not an international student.

“So going to speak to them about why they are not going sport, what they would like to see in sport, what would make you more comfortable in the sports union, it’s a lot of networking and closely working with the clubs. That’s the only way that I can find out what people would like to know.”

LGBT+ inclusion also featured in Bushell’s manifesto last year. When asked why some things haven’t been implemented before, Fairbairn said:

“I think a lot of previous presidents get lost on a lot of things. They always end up in meetings and busy doing other things. They forget to do basic things like going to speak to other people.

“Murray does a lot of meetings but it’s making sure that along with those meetings you are going to speak to the actual students themselves. You’ll do all these meetings with all the folks within the university and the Sports Union but if you don’t go and speak with the actual students that you are representing it’s very hard to know what they would like.

“Otherwise, you’re just going off what you think and that’s not very helpful if there are two thousand students in the Sports Union. You don’t know until you speak to people.”

Communication

Communication is also a top priority for Fairbairn.

“There are two parts to this: one is the general communication between the sports union and the clubs,” he explained.

“I know multiple people who right this second have sent an email to the Sports Union and haven’t got a reply. A week goes by, no reply, two weeks go by, no reply. Three weeks, don’t have a reply.

“It then gets to the point where if there is an issue, they don’t fix it, it just gets pushed back and doesn’t really matter and they don’t sort it or bigger problems arise and the fact that the Sports Union hasn’t replied and people don’t know what’s going on.

“Just increasing the communication by having better response times is one thing. It’s just making sure emails are replied to and regularly checking inboxes and making sure clubs are being replied to.

“A lot of the issues are that they cannot buy membership on the website and if you send an email about that and don’t get a reply you eventually just go ‘I’m not going to join’ and that’s a member lost just because someone did not open an inbox and reply.”

Fairbairn also believes communication on the weekends is an issue at the Sports Union:

“The Sports Union communication is from 9 till 5, Monday till Friday. A lot of the clubs do play on the weekends so I know multiple different ones that do. When they turn up to a club and there’s an issue, they’ve got no one to call.

“There’s no set number that they can call that could help sort out their problem or offer advice. It’s finding a solution to a club turning up to a fixture and if the facilities or pitch is wrong they can find out what they can do to solve this issue.”

Fairbairn’s slogan

Finally, Brig asked Fairbairn about his slogan: “Stirling AF”.

“It works in two ways,” he said. “The ‘AF’ means ‘as f*ck’, but it’s also my initials, that’s why it’s capitalised. It has a double meaning… That’s why it works.”

You can find more information about the elections, including Fairbairn’s full manifesto here.

Voting Opens Tuesday, February 27 at 10am.

Feature image credit: Jonathan Boomer