Wednesday 8th March- Along with Julian and Derfel, was a Essex, campaigning for people to vote YES in the anonymous marking referendum. Sadly the following day the vote was lost, which seems to me an absolute travisty.

Thursday 9th & Friday 10th March- Portsmouth Affiliation Referendum. I personally always quite enjoy affiliation referendums, in the sense that they give us a chance to boast and show off about all that NUS has achieved- though in Portsmouth there was no active NO campaign (not that I’m complaining!), so I had to tone it down a bit. Sabbatical elections were going on for the 2 days myself and Derfel spent down there, so there was all manner of candidates parading round in weird and wonderful costumes! After 8 months on the NEC I’m still not very au fait with the South, and Portsmouth felt like the furthest south I’ve been yet- I was quite ashamed of myself when I had to go and buy a pair of gloves- to think I used to be such a hardened Northerner! Anyway, the important news is that we won the referendum 10:1 in favour, yippee!

Then on Friday night it was off to Wales for NUS Wales conference, in Llandrindod Wells. We were there till Saturday afternoon. It was good to be there, catch up with the officers in Wales and answer their queries, not to mention witness the elections, congratulations to all who were successful. I then enjoyed some more presidential hustings!

Sunday 12th March- Compositing. Getting up at 7am on a Sunday morning in itself is bad enough, but made even worse when the reason behind it is a day of compositing. I composting last year, in a comparatively amicable and trouble-free welfare composite and I was glad I had that experience under my belt. I was also really proud to see lots of officers there who had written policy on issues affecting their students, not only submitted it, but come to defend it. Last year I was the only ‘random’ n a room full of faction members, and the change this year was brilliant. I just hope no one was too put off from returning, as things got quite ugly with a fair bit of shouting. I’m not going to go into the reasons for this or my opinions here but I will just say one thing- conference floor should be where we debate policy and decide if it has a place in our national union- not at compositing- that’s not democracy. Sunday night, and up to Women’s conference.

Monday 13th & Tuesday 14th March- My first NUS women’s conference- an experience which I loved.

Wednesday 15th March- Co-Chaired conference on Preventing Crime Against International Students in London with GOL. Many thanks to Stephen for coming along to facilitate workshops!

Thursday 16h March- Leeds University. I joined the demonstration and rally against racist lecturer Richard Ellis at Leeds University. Following that I went over the finding of the fist ever student specific sexual health research that has been carried out in Leeds, which the students unions have had an intrinsic role in.

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