Ellie Hammond, a fourth-year English Literature and Film and Media student, is running for Vice President for Communities. The head of Stirling’s True Crime Society sat down with Brig and discussed manifestos and what she could bring to the Vice President for Communities role.
Union Experience
Ellie has been a member of the Communities Zone Executive Committee since the beginning of this year. “We do society and constitutions, and constitution amendments, and new society starter packs, and also the grants as well” she explained. “I’ve loved every minute of it, and I love being involved in the societies, I love the community that all comes together”.
Manifesto
Ellie’s manifesto has five main aims: “I want to focus on equality, sustainability, the cost of living crisis, transport, and gender-based violence.”
“I want to really continue work on the Erase The Grey campaign. I think there’s a lot of rebranding and reviewing that needs to be done of it, just to improve visibility of it, to make it more successful. Also, there are officers in The Union called Sexual Violence and Misconduct Liason Officers, and they are incredible.”
Ellie hopes to improve the visibility of Sexual Violence and Misconduct Liason Officers “I saw the work that they were doing and it’s just not branded anywhere, it’s not really advertised anywhere, they don’t have a lot of funding, and I think that the work that they do already with what they have is incredible. I think that they’re an amazing organisation that could be really worked upon.
On the cost of living crisis, Ellie explained: “I’d like to advocate alongside the existing work that’s already being done on rent caps.” She also praised the current work of the student union in regard to food, adding: “I’d also like to continue to support the success of community food initiatives, like the Community Fridge and The Pantry as well.”
Regarding equality, Ellie has two focuses: making campus more accessible, and providing more support for LGBTQI+ students. On accessibility, Ellie aims to introduce tactile paving to campus central. Ellie said this “would help people who are visually impaired to navigate campus central, which can be really daunting if you are disabled in any way”.
Regarding LGBTQI+ communities, Ellie added: “I want to highlight LGBTQI+ issues. I will try to run drop-in sessions fortnightly, for queer people and the community to come and have a safe space to talk about attitudes towards queer people on campus. In my own experience, I feel like this is something that’s been lacking since my first year. I came to uni back in first year and came out when I was at uni, and realised that there wasn’t really many avenues for support that were very targeted towards people coming out and people being at university and exploring identities. That’s something I’d really like to work on as well.”
On transport, “It’s the issue that everyone highlights around campus, everyone isn’t happy about it, we’ve hit a lot of dead ends in the past couple of years. I think a lot of the previous VPs had gone towards going to McGills and trying to come to a resolution, and that’s not really working.”
“I’d like to organise a platform that would help with carsharing for students at the University of Stirling, hopefully to get it launched through the University of Stirling app, and you can organise car sharing to and from campus, especially if people are coming from Glasgow or Edinburgh or Falkirk, getting matched with people who they don’t know who are also coming from the same place could really help reduce congestion on campus and of course emissions as well, going back to sustainability.”
On her idea to introduce an off campus park and ride, Ellie commented: “I’d like to pitch this to the university themselves, with the hope that they would back us in this campaign, and although it would be expensive and it would take a while, I think it’s a really necessary investment for the university’s future”.
Voting for Stirling’s Student Union Elections open on the 25th of February and close on the 27th of February, with results announced on the 28th of February.
Featured Image Credit: Ellie Hammond
4th year Politics and Journalism student.
Secretary for Brig
The Herald Student Press Awards Columnist Of The Year 2024 (which sorry i’m still not over)
