So here I am once again in a train travelling – hey what a shocka. It’s been busy day in NUS HQ as we had the first ever new swd committee meeting with our newly elected committee. I just hope the committee find the meeting useful. Luckily there were some old hands on board and also some new blood so it was all a bit exciting. I mean in 4 hours how do you ever try and start to explain the wonderful confusing world that is NUS. Hell I’ve been involved now for 4 years and I still get confused!!!

I really enjoy swd committee meetings but to be honest hey can be a bit of a nightmare to arrange and some people seem to be under the impression that we have Pas on the NEC, but no such luck. Nope we have to arrange the meetings totally ourselves- which can be a very hard task when your 8 members of committee are scattered throughout the country. I think this year committee members live in Manchester, Newcastle, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Bournemouth, Derby, London and Cardiff-not too many different places then!!! You also have to remember that for many of my committee they can not travel on trains, or just sleep on floors like non disabled students so arranging a meeting can be all good fun but luckily we were able to get one in London.

At the meeting we passed the emergency motion that was submitted to swd conference but referred to committee because the guillotine was going to fall. The motion was about post graduate students with disabilities because they do not get the same support and resources that under graduates do. We also talked about the priority campaigns for the nus swd campaign 2005/06. We have decided as a committee to bring together ideas and propels at the next meeting in 7 weeks time so hopefully by then you will have same idea what the priority campaigns will be, it is an exciting time for the nus swd campaign as the final bit of the dda is coming in and there is not a positive public duty. Hopefully this will really start to get rid of disablism.

So things are off and running for the new committee. I hoped that they all really enjoyed the first meeting and I would like to welcome them all to being part of the campaign. Minutes of the committee meeting will be available online in the next couple of weeks. If you have any questions just drop me an email.

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