Current Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences College Officer Rosie Aljohmani wants students in UCD to be more informed about campus services, to improve the services available in the library, the food variety on campus and increasing internships for student if she is elected SU President.
A key component of her drive to inform students more is to increase the online presence of the Union and to publish more student information on social media. Expanding on the information in the UCDSU “Wingin It” book, Aljohmani wants to run a series of vlogs, campaigns and infographics explaining topics ranging form tenant rights to how to join societies all under the title “How 2 UCD”. The second part of her plan to get more information to students is to have lecturers display PowerPoint slides at the start of classes in the first number of weeks of class with basic information about the SU and student advisors. This program was already trialled successfully this year in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
Food, Library and Renting
Aljohmani believes that a campus population as diverse as UCD’s requires more diverse food options on campus. She aims to work with the Hospitality Services Manager to show that the demand for a greater variety of food exists on campus. She believes that as the provision of food on campus is a business for UCD, they should want to expand their customer base.
Aljohmani also aims to tackle the issue of short library hours, by opening the library 24 hours a day during exams and expanding hours at other times of the years. She also wants to work with UCD to make more study spaces available by using lecture theatres or classrooms around exams times. She claims that from her conversations with library managers that these goals are achievable if the SU was to push for them, perhaps with direct actions such as protests.
Recognising that housing is a major issue for many students, Aljohmani wishes to capitalise on the fact that she claims landlords are regularly emailing in to UCD seeking to promote their properties to students. She would do this by creating a UCDSU version of the popular property website Daft.ie. This platform would make it easier for landlord and tenants to connect as a key part of the system would be the fact that all users are easily identifiable. This would be coupled with an effort to link students together to rent together and lobby the Government for more affordable housing.
Internships
By far the most unique aspect of Aljohmani’s manifesto is her “Internships for all” proposal. In an effort to increase the career prospects of students she aims to create “interchangeable part time internship posts” in various organisations. This would be implemented by identifying in what areas students wish to work and in conjunction the Career Centres to draft a proposal to these various organisations.
To offset the administrative difficulties of having numerous interns in and out of organisations, she would help the Career Centre and organisations run training on campus for large numbers of students to facilitate a smooth transition. This will she believes will be welcomed by employers as it will reduce the stress on their recruitment teams, while giving students valuable experience.
