I’m writing this blog in the office right before the first NEC meeting. I say the first NEC meeting. Its actually the second, the first meeting took place during our NEC residential. We all took the time to hear each other out, listen to each other’s diverse opinions and views and generally had a nice time. Lets hope the next one is as constructive.

Meanwhile, life as been busy as Disabled Students’ Officer. This blog will give you a bit of an update on my work in July.

After NEC residential, I headed back to Manchester to begin work properly. In my first week, I attended a Greater Manchester disability travel day whereby, under the Disability Equality Duty, public consultation was taking place. Given the fact that there are so many students in Manchester (exciting fact: Manchester has the busiest bus corridor in Europe – the area most populated by students, Oxford Road) using public transport, and the systems are so outdated and inaccessible, I’ve agreed to work with them this year on this issue.

I also attended the Further Education zone campaign planning meeting, which was productive and useful. The FE campaign faces new challenges this year – adult education cuts, privatisation of canteens and travel all being high up on the agenda. I’m looking forward to working with my colleagues in this zone on these issues over the next year.

I was back off to London for a weekend meeting with the Disability Rights Commission and our ‘queen of steering’ Kathy Wilde to discuss Disabled Students conference and the logistics for this year.

We arranged our first committee meeting of the NUS year in Coventry, the night before Liberation 2006. The meeting was well attended and productive – look out for our new briefings and ‘a day in the life of….’ appearing on the website before freshers!

I’m going to blog in more detail on each of our priority campaigns, internationalism and disability and targeted grants in the next few weeks. Suffice to say for now that these issues are central to the work of the Disabled Students’ campaign this year.

Liberation 2006 was a fantastic event and I must thank the team behind the organisation of this event. My liberation colleagues on the NEC did a fantastic job of defending their campaigns (not that we should have to!) and I’m looking forward to working on cross-liberation issues with them this year.

The weekend after, I attended the LGBT committee training event and ran a session on accessibility for the LGBT committee. We have a strong history of working with the LGBT campaign on disability issues and I was pleased to see that Scott and Claire, the LGBT officers, had included disabled students in the priority campaigns this year. I’m sure they’ll work hard on these issues and I wish them all the best.

Another Virgin train later, I found myself in Bristol talking to the Higher Education Funding Council for England. HEFCHE have introduced a series of equality sessions for their staff (not just widening participation staff!) and I welcome their commitment to equality of opportunity for minority groups.

Whilst on that side of the country, I popped over the Cardiff to meet the new NUS Wales Students with Disabilities committee. I was impressed with their passion for disability issues and I wish them all the best for their work in the coming year – bring on Disability Pride Wales!

I managed to get home for half a day, before heading over to the airport to attending the NUS-USI training in Northern Ireland. I met with Kevin, Kolm and, of course, Colleen – all members of the NUS-USI executive this year. Under Colleen’s leadership, I have no doubt NUS-USI will have a challenging and productive year. I’m looking forward to welcoming Kevin, the NUS-USI disability officer, to our mental health day in September.

I managed to a few admin days in on my return from Northern Ireland and began arranging the logistics of our events over the next year and working on some of our campaign materials. We have seven events this year, all with their own guest speakers, all in different locations and all very exciting! Look out for details in the next few weeks and book your places early!

Back down to London this week, I met with the Disability Rights Commission again and began exploring how disability might look under the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights. I also met with Endsleigh insurance to discuss insurance for the equipment of disabled students – watch out for exciting news.

I headed over to London Met to meet with their new diversity officer and have a chat about access. London Met have had significant challenges over the last year and one of our committee members will be working closely with them to ensure that disability does not fall off the agenda.

Aside from all of this, I’ve taken phone calls from student officers around the country, arranged visits, continued to plan and begin to implement the priority campaigns, began looking at legal advice for disabled students and met with a number of relevant organisations.

As I write, I’m literally packing off my stuff to attend the NEC meeting. Wish me luck!

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