LCO 22/23 Hustings: Meet your Women+ Officer candidate

Elections for the Women+ and Racial and Ethnic Minorities Liberation-Campaign Officers are currently open. On Monday, October 20th, LUSU held Hustings for the candidates. It was chaired by LUSU VP Union Development Callum Slater (he/him) and VP Societies and Media Danny Goodwin (he/him).

The Hustings lasted approximately 35 minutes, in which time the candidates introduced themselves and their manifestos, and were asked questions by Callum Slater and the audience. LA1TV also live-streamed the event on its Facebook for those who could not attend.

The Lancaster Tab has also reported on the candidates for the Racial and Ethnic Minorities Officer role.

The hustings also included the candidates for the role of RAEM officer, their hustings can be found here. The vote for RAEM Officer closes at 10pm tonight.

“Gender-based violence happens everywhere”

Hana Dodsworth (she/her), a second-year law student and current vice-chair of the Women+ forum said that her main motivation for running was that the forum had “kind of collapsed last year”.

She said that her other main policy was a “hub for Women+ and other forums as well which I think would be really beneficial. Gender-based violence happens everywhere and if someone makes a comment in the library it gets really uncomfortable and you might not feel comfortable going there”. Hana also said that she would eventually “like to extend this to sport, get a women-only area in the gym, women-only day type thing.”

She finished her opening statement by saying that she would propose “investigating more into gender-based violence in lectures in order for people to feel more comfortable and it becomes more of a general thing that it’s easier to report people, lecturers.”

“We are kind of ready to take it on”

When asked by Callum how she would balance her role as LCO with her role as chair of the Women+ forum, Hana said that for the last six months she had been “stepping in and out of the role as kind of an acting position since we don’t have an LCO currently, I think we’ve set ourselves up, the forum, to be set for the year and we are kind of ready to take it on. We have the attention, we have the resources, we have the exec who are willing to work on now… so I think it’ll be a lot easier to do the LCO responsibilities because I’ve already set that up.”

To build community in the Women’s forum, she said “I think it’s about making everything accessible for everyone, not enough people know about forums… and that’s a quite big issue at the moment and I think especially this hub I’m wanting to create it brings everyone together. Within the forum as well we’re trying to do events with women across sectors kind of thing to try and kind of appeal to all audiences… we’re trying to get everyone included.”

“it’s just about finding that space for that thing”

Hana said that her main aims in the role which she would work with the SU to make possible were “building more engagement within the women+ forum, we’ve been working with the other forums, we’ve been working with Vic, VP Welfare, she’s been amazing, and it’s just that case of spreading the word about forums, she has been a great help like getting us into colleges, getting us to places so people know more about us.

With the hub, we were working with Vic as well for like a safe space for all the forums which I think will be very beneficial for us all… I think  Hannah Bayliss was also working with us a bit, she was a great help, so it’s just about finding that space for that thing I think is that main thing, but it is my main priority because I think it is something that is very necessary.

And then investigating more into gender-based violence in lectures by lecturers and stuff, probably with VP Education to try and just make it a bit more accessible. There’s a lot of, it seems quite hard and daunting to report lecturers at the moment, like you have to have, I think it should just be more accessible for people, easier to kind of investigate into it, I know you can go through some lecture recordings and stuff but I mean if you’re trying to go through about 50 lecture recordings for the year it’s a bit tough as just one person.”

LUSU has requested that students voting in these elections vote under the group which they self-identify with. RON (Re-open nominations) is also available in all elections.

Voting is open from 8am on 18th October until 10pm on Thursday 20th October. The link to vote can be found here.

Images courtesy of LA1TV.

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