How to Raise Issues
- Scheduled Meetings – these are your Staff-Student Liaison Committee meetings, which should be held at least once per semester. Find out from the School admin team when these are held and put them in your diary. Preparation for these meetings is covered in the Introductory Class Rep Training sessions.
- Ad hoc meetings – sometimes an issue can’t wait until the next scheduled meeting so you might want to ask the Head of School or Course Convenor for a meeting specially to discuss your issue. Try and work out who is best to meet with to have your issue resolved. Seek help from or build alliances with sympathetic staff members first if you can – your ideas are likely to carry even more weight if you can show they have staff as well as student support.
- Email/letter – if diaries are full and you can’t arrange to meet and discuss an issue, writing an email or letter setting out the issue could be a good option. As above, think about who has the decision-making power to help you with this. If you need help with phrasing or constructing a formal letter or email, then the SRC Advice Centre may be able to give you some pointers.
- Group of reps – taking joint action can add weight to your case for change, so make sure you speak to other reps on your course or from similar courses to get their backing.
- Students Representative Council – you should be meeting with your School Rep once a semester, and able to contact them in between times if you need to. School Reps can support you to raise matters at a School-wide level and can put you in touch with other reps in your School. The School rep regularly meets with other SRC reps such as your College Convenor and the SRC VP-Education, and can pass your feedback up the line as well as letting you know about SRC campaigns and initiatives. Contact details for all SRC academic reps.
- Formal proceedings – hopefully you should never need to do this, but if a formal complaint needs to be made about a University issue, then the best place to reach out to is the SRC Advice Centre who can talk you through the process, read over and help edit any draft complaints, and potentially accompany you to any meetings.
- Non Learning-and-Teaching issues – as class rep, your role is to deal with issues relating to the student Learning Experience (refer back to your class rep training for what this means), so you don’t have to try and solve every problem that you might be faced with. For anything not related to learning and teaching, you can refer students to the SRC Advice Centre who will do their best to help.