Her Campus had the pleasure of meeting with Welfare candidate Katie Leach this week: psycho soc VP, caterer to the Lenton masses and Friday night diva, this Nottingham gal seems all set to win the hearts of the student body in the coming elections. Hello Katie! What would you say the best bits of your manifesto are?
One of my main aims is to bring everyone together. I’d like everyone to do with welfare – the networks and the services – to know each other to make organising events for example, a lot easier. We’re being presented with a brilliant opportunity to make connections and increase communication between a whole range of different people.
You’ve picked up on a few things that you feel could be improved in the SU: what do you reckon will be the biggest challenge that you will face as Equal Opportunities and Welfare officer?
There is a lot of talk and tinkering related to SU website reconstruction and getting services online at the moment, all of which are such brilliant ideas [Katie inserts cheeky plug for her manifesto]. I do think it is going to be a challenge to make sure it is user friendly and easy to manoeuvre. I want to make sure it caters for every type of student by including different sections for different groups such as medics and for Sutton Bonington for example.
So you’ve been on travels…
I have! I have chatted with people from far and wide. It’s really stressed that each subject or group has different needs and interests. Meeting with the medic rep, for example, completely bought home to me the intensity of being a medic. Basically everything needs centralising to improve communication and transparency – we need to get the word out there! We have a lot of the services there, they just need to be made more accessible.
More specifically what?
I want to provide more extensive training to week one mentors, I want students to feel they are genuinely ready to deal with any situation that they may be confronted with during a really quite intensive week. I don’t want them to be shocked or caught off guard on the job, because they are so important to the SU and the integration of new students to make them feel at home from day one. Also I recognise the importance of tutors knowing where to signpost students and so would love to bring in compulsory sessions to increase tutors awareness of how they can help students.
Finally for the heavy questions, what can we expect from next week and your campaigning strategy?
You can probably expect a few peaches to be hanging around. There’s hopefully going to be peaches everywhere, on all campuses. [Katie introduces the concept of the Peach Patrol] My campaign team have been so kind and willing to help- it’s been a lot of fun. I’ve got some amazing people around me and that’s what it’s all about really isn’t it.
As a preamble to the quickfire round Her Campus starts to throw random words at the lovely candidate and asks her to shout out the first thing that comes to mind…
“Ocean… Dance”
“Trent building…tower”
“Portland… Boots”
“Lemonade… (long pause, candidate avoids saying Vodka)… lemons?”
“Onion… spaghetti bolognaise”
“London… Red Box (candidate is showing her midlands roots)”
“Welfare…Sarah Pickup”
Nicely done Katie. Now, onto the quickfire round…
If you were on Mastermind what would be your specialist subject?
S Club 7.
We didn’t see that one coming. Where could one find you on a Friday night?
Either singing my heart out to S Club 7 in Ocean or dancing in the moonlight at Bopp.
What was the last text you received?
[HC witnesses candidate shamelessly scrolling for a while] Okay, my grandma. Organising going for my lunch with her on Tuesday.
If we were playing a big game of hide and seek, where would you hide on campus?
It has to be somewhere in Highfields doesn’t it, amongst the trees. I almost said the student advice centre. I’d bring more people to the student advice centre, that would be my aim of playing hide and seek.
So, to finish with, we’re going to ask for a quick haiku about next week.
[Lots of finger counting follows] How many syllables in a line?
We can’t tell you that.
Okay, I don’t know if this is going to be too long…
My name’s Katie Leach, which rhymes with peach,
And I want to be welfare because I really care.
Very nice! Have you got any final comments?
I think I’m the best candidate to be Equal Opps and Welfare because I genuinely care about people and I want to make people’s university’s experience better. I know there is still so much to learn, and that excites me no end.
Thanks Leachy!
Edited by Naomi Upton