thewaterfront the official student newspaper of swansea university
Free Issue 240 7 April 2014 waterfrontonline.co.uk
INSIDE
Your new full-time officer team
AND 7 BECOME 5 From left, JERRY Isokariari (societies and services), Ilana Cohen (education), Ceinwen Cloney (president), Charlotte Peters (sports), Joel Gascoyne (welfare).
by Gemma Parry
waterfrontnews@swansea-union.co.uk
FIVE candidates have been elected as full-time officers for the next academic year in a closely fought contest. They will take up their new roles in July. The number of full-time officer roles has been reduced this year from seven to five to save money. International and female students will no longer have representation after 185 students (1% of the student body) voted to axe them, following a botched consultation process. Lewys Arôn, former Welsh affairs officer, said: “Given the circumstances that followed a botched and frankly unprofessional report from NUS, I feel that the union had to “make do” with the responses provided online.” Some international responsibilities have been transferred into the president role, but there will be no representative taking over women’s campaigns. A further consultation on fulltime officer roles and wider issues is expected to take place later this year. Ceinwen Cloney was elected as the first female president in the students’ union for over a decade. She beat Aron McGill with 55% of the vote. A third presidential candidate, Harry Noden, withdrew his nomination
after students complained about offensive tweets he had made. Ilana Cohen won the post of education officer with 918 votes, beating runner up Oliver Bell who took 518. Whilst she will start in July for the 2014-15 academic year, there is still no current education officer after Swaran Singh resigned just before term started in September 2013. Jerry Isokariari won the role of societies and services officer in a very close race. Exit polls put him only 2% above the next most popular candidate, Jazmin Kopotsha, but eventually managed to fend off the competition with 39% of the vote, compared to Jazmin’s 36%. Charlotte Peters was re-elected for another year as sports officer. She faced a challenge from two female candidates, but regained her title with 903 votes, with runner up Chante Lee taking 822 votes in the third round. Joel Gascoyne was elected in the most contested role this year, welfare. He won 30% of the vote with runner up Chuks Nwabugwu taking 28%. Voter turnout was an all-time low, with only 2,181 votes cast, just 14.6% of those eligible, in comparison to 3,508 cast last year. Students’ union manager Stuart Rice has outlined in the strategic plan for an increase in participation in the elections to over 5,000 voters.
Ceinwen is president elect by Will Brealey
waterfrontnews@swansea-union.co.uk CEINWEN Cloney has been elected as President of Swansea University’s Students’ Union for the next academic year. Her chocolate-themed campaign ensured her sweet success for the second year running. She is the first female president of Swansea University Students’ Union for a decade. Beating the only other candidate Aron McGill with 55% of the vote compared to his 22%, Ceinwen told The Waterfront: “It’s been a really long week! I’m going to go for coffee with Aron, and with his permission I’d like to implement some of his ideas into my
manifesto.” Exit polls throughout the week showed Ceinwen to be the favourite, with a 52% majority. Ceinwen’s campaign promises to “Review, Revive, and Restore” Swansea’s Students’ Union. Her manifesto also aims to move the union to a more central building on campus, ensure all union volunteers (including in societies) gain HEAR accreditation, and to increase union funding. She believes her experience as Societies and Services Officer this year has prepared her for the role. Aron McGill said: “I want to say good luck to Ceinwen, she’s got a lot of work ahead of her.”
Our eight page pull-out preview of all the action page 17
Lad culture backlash
page 12
Fabulous student fashion show page 30 page 29