This week HCX had the pleasure of talking to the Guild President, Laura Tiley. She managed to take time out of her extremely hectic schedule to answer a few questions about working life at Exeter Uni and being the voice of the students!
Campaign week must have been extremely hectic, how did you go about choosing your campaign strategy?
Campaign week was probably the craziest week of my life; but I absolutely loved every second of it! I started planning my campaign with my campaign manager at the beginning of December, wrote my manifesto over Christmas, started getting my campaign team together in January and finalised the branding around the same time. We decided to go simple but effective; we used my initials ‘LJT’ and put them in speech bubbles all over campus. We also made the slightly risky decision of choosing black and white for the t-shirts. This actually worked really well though as it stood out amongst all the colour. One of my main campaign tactics was giving away free tea outside the Forum to entice students to speak to me. I’ll let you in to a little secret here, we didn’t come up with that idea until a week before campaign week – which is in February! I (still) owe my campaign team a lot – they worked all hours of the day and night during that week and were a huge support for me.
Could you give us an idea of what goes into the average day as Guild President?
There is no average day and certainly no average week for the Guild President! I start each day by asking myself: how am going to best represent the students of Exeter today? With that in mind, my focus is always on fighting for changes that the students want. For example, this Monday looked a bit like this: weekly Sabb catch up with the other officers in The Grove Diner over breakfast (great pancakes!), then onto a Guild staff meeting to discuss what we are doing during the week, then a bit of campaign and project planning particularly focusing on my manifesto pledges (LJ Tea Time was a product of that for example). I spent my lunchtime marking University Challenge trial papers. Then, I spent my afternoon preparing for a Widening Participation meeting I had with the University at 3pm. I get invited to a lot of University meetings to provide the student voice; it’s a real privilege and testament to the constructive relationship we have between the Guild and the University. For that reason, it’s so important to make sure I’m as prepared as possible – I spend a lot of my time reading papers and constructing comments.
What has been the most exciting project under your new role?
I had my first L J Tea Time a few weeks ago where, with the help of student staff, I gave out 400 cups of free tea and coffee to students who stopped to chat with me. I spoke to loads of students and got some really good feedback, particularly about food prices on campus. As a result of this, I’ve set up a meeting with the University to explore its prices and work out how we can make campus as cheap as possible for students. Sometimes it’s difficult to know exactly what students want, so I get really excited when you tell me.
All hard working people must have some time off, what do you like to do to relax?
Recently, I’ve spent my time off either catching up on Gogglebox and Made in Chelsea or hitting up the Lemmy on campus. Did you know it’s been awarded the best student venue in Exeter? The Lemmy is definitely where you can find me on a Saturday night.
If any of our readers are thinking about running for Guild President what would be the three top tips you would give them?
Go for it! You won’t regret it. Running for Guild President was one of the most rewarding and challenging experiences of my life; and I wouldn’t change a thing. There is only one criteria for running: you have to be a student at Exeter. And if you fulfil that then my three top tips are:
1. Get planning early (December if possible).
2. Tell all your friends and coursemates (get the word out early!)
3. Come and talk to me – I can give you advice and answer any questions you may have.
Thank you for talking to us, I hope it has inspired some of our readers to consider running for President!