I am now in my eighth month in office at the Edinburgh College Students’ Association! It has been a wild ride so far and an amazing experience getting to represent and interact with some of the incredible 25,000 students we have across our four campuses. During my campaign last year, I made a few promises, and I would like to show you how I have met and expanded on them.
Making Sustainability more accessible
I have organised a range of events centred around sustainability throughout the academic year so far, and I have many more planned as we approach Earth Day on 22nd April (it will be Earth Week at ECSA). The first and largest series of events I organised was for Sustainable Education Week back in October in which ECSA delivered a Dr Bike Workshop by the Bike Station at our Sighthill Campus, we had a mending session delivered by Edinburgh Street Stitchers, arranged a sustainability-focused zine display by AB-Z collection in the Granton Library, had film screenings of Blue Planet on every campus, collaborated with a class of film students to conduct VoxPop interviews to learn about what students wanted from sustainable initiatives on campus. I've also been working with the Sustainable Education Forum to develop an EC Marketplace in which students from different campuses can share materials for projects. As well as this, I have launched the Green Beans Society, where we've done a beach clean-up and worked in the Milton Road college garden. I've also worked with students to open a conversation with the food providers on campus to provide more vegan options on campus. I am thrilled by the way students have supported these events and I am really looking forward to sharing the exciting range of events we've got planned across all four campuses for Earth Week, which we will be promoting in early April.
Activities that nourish the mind and body
A lot of my work this year has been working to support the new clubs and societies that students have wanted to set up. A few particularly successful societies have been the Knitting and Crochet Society, started by one of our creative industry students Romana, who have consistently organised many events to boost mental wellbeing such as their regular stitch and chat sessions, their colour theory workshops, and their virtual wellbeing hours.
Another society that I really want to celebrate is GameSoc who are also organising frequent events with fun prizes for tournament winners!
A newer society that has been established by one of our ECSA Presidential candidates, Thai, is the Radicals Society for students to come together as a left-wing activist community who attend protests, read radical literature, and challenge the rise of fascism together.
Having said that, there are loads of other clubs, societies, and equalities groups who are doing amazing things too. These are some of the wonderful groups that I've been supporting over the past eight months:
- Arts and Crafts Club
- Autism Society
- Book Club
- Deep Meaningful Conversation (DMC) Club
- GameSoc
- Green Beans
- Knitting and Crochet Society
- Music and Sound: Women and Gender Queer Students
- Pokemon Society
- Radicals Society
- Tabletop Games
- Warhammer Society
- Disabled Students' Forum
- LGBTQ+ Society
- Women's Group
I would encourage all students to take a look at the range of clubs and societies we have on offer and consider starting one yourself if you have an interest that you would like to build a community around! These groups are very clearly playing a huge role in giving EC students a sense of belonging and community at College and I massively commend the students who lead these societies for their hard work to create a community of like-minded people!
As we all know, our mental health struggles are deeply connected to the unique challenges we are facing today: increased anxiety and depression in an uncertain world, violence against women and gender-queer people, stigma around sexual health, climate anxiety, and much more. So in the next section I will share what I've been doing to tackle these issues at College.
Tackling issues specific to today's world
Last November, we had the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence and I worked with my colleagues in the Wellbeing Team, the EDI lead, and Library staff to create a series of activities to raise awareness of this issue. More recently, with the help of the ECSA team, I organised Sexual Health Awareness and Guidance (S.H.A.G.) Week which many of you will have heard about. S.H.A.G. week was a great opportunity to work with LDTs to get external sexual health educators into classrooms to deliver educational sessions, as well as being a chance to bring local sexual health and wellbeing charities into the college to chat to students at the S.H.A.G. fairs. Sometimes we struggle to successfully make students aware of our events however, it seemed the name 'S.H.A.G. Week' piqued a lot of people's interest and ensured students knew that something was going on at College that week!
16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence:
- Pride origami pop-up stall with Queer GBV case studies, stats, and origami making on all four campuses
- Self-defense class
- Introducing the GBV e-learning Module for students and staff
- Introducing the Let's Talk programme
- Library display of books about GBV on all four campuses
- Zine workshop about GBV - on two campuses
- Yoga for women and gender queer students
- Fit for Girls classes
- "CAPture" publication on the theme of GBV
- Wellbeing drop in activities: crochet, badge-making, conversations around GBV
- Souls of Our Shoes Installation at Granton Campus
Sexual Health Awareness and Guidance Week
- Sex and the Media sessions in LDT Classes
- S.H.A.G. Fair - Granton
- S.H.A.G.Fair - Midlothian
- S.H.A.G.Fair - Milton Road
- S.H.A.G.Fair - Sighthill
- Zine-making workshop about sexual health and wellbeing
As well as these two big event series' this year, you will also have seen our Welcome Season activities, which lasted two weeks and spread across all four campuses at the start of the year! These involved a lot of external partners coming along to encourage students to join gyms and clubs in Edinburgh, as well as letting students know about services and opportunities available to students, such as getting involved in the National Union of Students, and charities like LGBT Youth Scotland.
Other aspects of my role that have been intersecting with these targets:
- Attending ECSA Trustee board meetings and subcommittees
- Attending EC board of management meetings and subcommittees
- Attending NUS events to connect with other student officers and institutions
- Working closely with the Wellbeing Team to coordinate activities for students
- Working closely with our Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Lead to improve campus life
- Working closely with LDT staff to engage directly with classes
- Supporting students with complaints, academic and personal issues
- Working with the other ECSA student officers to support their events and campaigns
- Working on the Sustainable Education Forum
- Sitting on the Access and Inclusion Strategy Group
As you can see, it's been a busy eight months, and I'm really looking forward to the things we've got coming up over the next few months too, particularly all the clubs and society activities and the Earth Week events we've got planned!
If you'd like to know more about anything I've written here, or if you just want to chat about your student experience, feel free to email or Teams me!
My email is mary.odriscoll@edinburghcollege.ac.uk
