GUSA Hustings Brings New People and New Plans for Improvements in Sports.
GUSA Hustings took place on Monday night and candidates gave exciting speeches about what they wanted to do for the future of sports at the University of Glasgow. Read below to find out more about the candidates, voting is open now and will end on Thursday at 5 pm.
Club Sport Convenor – Contested
Pablo Merino
Merino was captain of the men’s water polo club for two years and knows in great lengths how a sports club works. His two main goals are communication and growth. This includes having more contacts outside your own club to create a family and network, as well as having an idea for GUSA TV, a mix of highlights and video footage of games. This will get students to look at the games they are interested in or for clubs to improve themselves by watching. He wants to record and publish competitions to show what it’s like to participate in their sport.
Faraj Monnapillai
Faraj’s past experience includes being the social secretary for Frisbee. He wants to build relationships between clubs, especially with social events. He plans to work alongside the publicity and welfare convenor to encourage students to try new sports and help students use sports to find a balance with their studies. He wants to host events to draw attention to eating disorders, mental health, black history, pride month, and more. He also wants to do social media takeovers by sports clubs. Another plan of his is to try and see if it’s possible to have students only pay club payments instead of also paying for a gym membership.
Events Convenor – Uncontested
Karl Kilpatrick
One of Kilpatrick’s plans is for a GUSA ceilidh to bring clubs together. He also wants intramural and recreational leagues and to be more involved in freshers week. He would also like to have meetings every once in a while with clubs to see what works for them.
Finance Convenor – Uncontested
Phoebe Verstralan
Phoebe’s past experience includes being part of Netball and Muai Thai, as well as being a freshers helper. They want everyone to be able to play sports regardless of financial background and make bank account handovers easier for clubs. She also wants to see whether people can pay the gym/sports membership monthly instead of in one chunk. She also wants to better promote the hardship fund and other funds available to benefit students and have people promoting these funds through different clubs. She aims to be transparent and available to clubs for help.
Fundraising & Outreach convenor – Contested
Cidalia Lewis-Lettington
Cidalia wants to streamline the donation database to show ongoing and past initiatives and show sharing of ideas. Some of her goals are representation, relationships and support. When it comes to representation she wants to make it more of an inclusive and collaborative process. When it comes to relationships, she wants to engage with the public and open up opportunities for people. She wants to collaborate with other clubs and sports and create events such as an auction.
Mia Waters
Mia wants to work with disadvantaged youths in local schools to help them with sports and use GUSA resources to impact local communities. She will help clubs with resources and support to do this. She wants to emphasize inclusivity and include sport disability training for GUSA. She wants to have more fundraising opportunities such as continuing the annual GUSA quiz and also having a bingo night. She also wants to establish joint events to reach more students.
Publicity Convenor – Uncontested
Lewis O’Connor
Lewis has been with multiple societies since 2nd year, and been a rep for different clubs before and the SRC so has lots of experience with meetings. He wants to build a guide for publicity for the committees. Lewis also wants to establish a GUSA TikTok to show a more fun side to the committee and make a fun way to get students involved. Finally, he hopes to film big competitions and not produce content for sake of content but plan for using different social medias for promotion.
Travel & Sustainability Convenor – Uncontested
Mario Killman
Mario was part of the Muai Thai club. He wants travel to be smooth, which includes travel for freshers and training sessions for the clubs. He wants to talk to the university about funding and make sure everyone knows about alternative transportation options.He also wants clubs to post their travel issues so he can look at them and bring them up. When it comes to sustainability he wants clubs to have a position on their committees dedicated to this.
Welfare Convenor – Contested
Adam Paton
Adam believes that sport helps people escape stress and that welfare should underpin everything they do. He wants to establish a GUSA gym buddy scheme, and have events welcome to everyone all the time as well as inclusive recreational sessions.
Evan Edwards
Evan was previously trampoline competition secretary. Evan wants to implement training for club captains to create healthy and safe sporting environments. She knows that there are always Mental and physical health conditions within sport, with both competitive and recreational sport all needing support. She also wants students to work on creating an identity outside of sport to not just be an athlete but also a student. She also wants to have a disability league and contact with people to figure out how to do this and spread it around the clubs.
Secretary – Uncontested
Eirini Karavasili
She wants to be the point of contact for all of the clubs and be available for all convenors for help. She will push people to do their job and make the council aware of expectations. She also wants to work with people in the committees to help with awards and help with freshers week. Also she would like for everyone to get to know the council and make them open for everyone for help.
Vice President – Contested
Liam Clarke
Liam was previously social sec for the weightlifting club and feels he was able to make an impact on that club. His goals are inclusion, support, and wellness. He wants to see if capacity and pricing can be changed and to look at finding additional avenues. He recognizes that increasing capacity would need a major sponsorship and gradually expanding the funding pool is something he wants to work on more. He wants to expand club sport and recreational sport. One of his goals is to construct a pathway for trans and non-binary people in sport, giving them the ability to do sports outside of the Men’s/Women’s league. He wants to make sure we are using all of our facilities and give options outside of club sport, like intramural leagues. He wants to expand mentor/mentee programs and make sure people are all working together. When it comes to sustainability he wants to appeal to large scale action with the university and collaborate with the student body.
Ewan Galbrath
Ewan has been part of the committee before and claims welfare, recreational support, and event management experience for the past two years. He wants to give back to the association and promote accessibility and sustainability. This includes implementing a long term sponsor and 5 year funding plan and also making sure the GUSA ball is advertised all around, as well as having sponsors so students don’t have to pay as much and provisions are out in place like subtitles for the videos. He wants more comprehensive rec sport programs
And free gym memberships for all first year students. He wants more drop-in sports, and a cross campus sports day. He wants to get involved with other areas such as the dumfries campus and garscube. He as the VP wants to be taking on administrative duties and using student volunteers to get things done. When it comes to sustainability he wants to have climate conscious seminars and work with the sustainability convenor to let people know their options.
President – Uncontested
Vivek Pandya
Vivek was previously the Squash president and treasurer. He wants to push sustainability and incentivize clubs to do so and set up a regular and efficient way to replace equipment. When it comes to welfare he wants to have a service to help meet people through sport. When it comes to inclusivity and accessibility he wants facility space to be increased and work with connections like the hillhead school/kelvin hall academy, etc. He will constantly battle trying to get changes done for the university and commits to transparency and trust and an openness from the University to GUSA. He wants to speak to other societies and captains and to see why people aren’t getting involved with sport and include more people and be more accessible with outreach. He wants to make a good working environment where people want to spend more time with GUSA and make sure people can find the right resources and support they need.
To learn more about the candidates you can read their manifestos on the GUSA website here: https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/sport/gusa/council/elections/.
