About

Hi everyone!

I’m Farah, your Union Councillor for APS. That means that I represent you in issues that are taken to Council. We made a lot of decisions last term and I wanted to fill you in! Firstly, a bit about me. I'm in my fourth year doing Biology, I love penguins, and I'm hopeless at math. Think that covers the important stuff..

For any questions or advice or complaints, please contact me! If you’ve not added my Councillor profile on Facebook, do it- Aps Councillor. You can also email me at apscouncillor@shef.ac.uk, or tweet away @FarahAlShorbaji . x

Latest Updates

We renewed a few policies the Union already had, like the Nestle policy (we don’t sell Nestle products in Union outlets) and others, you can check them out on the website if you want more details, and we’ll be discussing other policies up for renewal in the next meeting.

Council is also a chance for officer scrutiny, which means we can talk to the Union Officers about their objectives and how they’re accomplishing them. Some notable policies in my opinion are the Zero Tolerance to Sexual Harassment policy and the new Taxi Scheme. Zero Tolerance was introduced by our Women’s Officer, and it means that if you are on a night out and someone is harassing you, you don’t need to put up with it. Just report it to one of the bouncers and they will remove that person from the event. You can file a report and follow up if you want to. The Taxi Scheme is something that our Welfare Officer has just introduced, and it means that if you are short on money after a night out and don’t want to walk home alone, you don’t have to. All you need to do is call a City Taxi and when it comes time to pay them, you simple give the driver your Ucard. You can pay your taxi money the next day at the box office, in return for your Ucard (and you can’t get a new Ucard until you pay!). Hopefully this will help everyone get home safe.

We also had a few Councillors make proposals. After Council elections, some people were concerned that dual degree students could only vote in one of their degree subjects. So now dual degree students are able to vote in both of their departments, as we think that will be fairer to them. Also, we discussed a Living Wage proposal that would require that anyone employed by the Union be paid the living wage. A sub-committee has been set up to discuss this further, I will let you know how it’s going.

Some proposals not passed in Council include one to ban the Pole Fitness Society, one that would give councillors an allowance to organize departmental events, and one that would stop selling The Sun newspaper in the Union shop. If anyone wants more details on why these proposals were not passed, please feel free to contact me and I will answer any questions!

We also held an Ideas Forum, which was open to everyone for feedback about your course, your community, or your Union. We had some great feedback from the people that came and have relayed that information on to the relevant people.

Just to remind you guys, you can bring any issue you want to Union Council if you feel that it is important. You can either contact me and I’ll raise it, or you can submit it as Members’ Business. For that, you need a petition of at least 50 signatures.

Finally, a reminder that we’re holding an APS Module Advice Session on February 9th (12.30 to 2.30) in Gallery Room 2 in the Union, so you can get advice about which modules you should take! We can hopefully get a few PhD students to come too so if you’re considering a PhD come ask what it’s really like!

Thanks for reading this :)