On 24rd February 2015, Room One heated up as the second of the Exec Election Bubble Debates took place. The evening was once again hosted by Nina Blissett on stage and Dave Thompson in the crowd, talking to the panel and sharing social media interactions. Nina brought us an introduction to the evening, saying that “we want candidates to clash” and that this would be the “hardest job interview of their lives”. We were also introduced to the panel; Sarah Haar- Ex- VP Action, Axelle Savary- Butler Court Hall Chair, George Hones- former Rigg Rut Hall Chair and Hamza Modi- involved in Action,Welfare and chair of Bakewell Hall. For anyone who was there, I’m sure you’ll agree that the evening was a lot more intense than the first debate as the panel asked intrusive questions alongside audience and social media participation.
Current VP Action, Phil Jenkins was brought on stage to question Rosie Harvey, this years Action candidate.
Rosie Harvey received a strong reception from the audience as she came on stage. Her 30 second introduction presented us with her experience as a Hall Rep, Action Project Leader and her work in the community. She is passionate and enthusiastic and “wants to make a difference in peoples’ lives”.
Phil: How will you maintain the expansion of the section and the good experience?
Rosie: I want to look for oportunities outside of Loughborough. Making people aware of what opportunities are available is important and we can help hall reps to translate the skills into projects and to volunteers.
George Hones: What skills based volunteering would you like to implement next year?
Rosie: Use the skills you have and apply them and increase more one off opprtunities. I want people to have opportunity to highlight skills based projects. Engineering and sports projects are things that people can get involved in and we can expand this to other courses.
Twitter question: How can you make action more appealing so drop outs don’t occur?
Rosie: Targeting the people who do drop out to ask why they didn’t end up taking part. This way you can target those poeple to create new opportunites and alter projects accordingly.
Phil: If budget was no major constraint- explain what your perfect project for enjoyment and involvement would be.
Rosie: Animal based projects- on a much larger scale. We could go somewhere far away- a zoo would be the ultimate place to go: amazing!!!
Sarah Haar: Where do you think Action projects lack variety?
Rosie: There are many opportunities. We need to increase sports action as this is obviously a big part of Loughborough. We could invite different schools in the area to allow students to try new sports and therefore utilise all teams.
Twitter question: How can we increase fairness in halls (distribution of projects)?
Rosie: This is my current job as hall reps coordinator. We work a system of random number generating which we can’t argue with. If people drop out then it’s all reallocated randomly.
Axelle: The college are already represented as a section- they are represented as a hall on HSM. How can we include them more?
Rosie: Our college reps represent the whole of the college- keep the gables as a hall as it needs to be there as a hall- don’t treat them as something different.
Sarah Haar: How can we get students to turn up to pick a project from the college? They’re under 18 and generally go home straight away.
Rosie: This year we held a mini college bazaar- the students don’t want to stay that late (7pm). We can allow them to come in earlier to our Action Bazaar by utilising committees to talk about projects.
Rosie has a lot of experience in Action and is very passionate about her section. She answered swiftly and with confidence throughout.
