Candidate Comment: Phillipe Chiarella

Phillipe Giovanni Chiarella stood as candidate for the role of Student Council member, for which he was ultimately successful. Here he shares his thoughts on the elections.

So, I am elected. I am not sure quite how to take the results however.

I obviously feel happy, and am looking forward to getting students views heard at London Met over the next year. I am looking forward to working with a group of people, most of which I don’t know.

I am not however using the short space to talk about that. I am using this to talk about what I think HAS to happen over the next year and what we need to do as a Union.

The first thing is that we need to do is engage with students, meaningfully! We need to be doing campaigns students want, helping societies in partnership with the Student Office, offering advice and have a real presence on campus. We need to restore the faith that you, the students, have lost in us.

The second thing is we need to start holding engaging elections. First of all, we need elections that get more than 1.5% of students voting. Secondly, we need a cross campus ballot for NUS elections – the NUS can run it so why not let them! Thirdly we need to change when elections happen – May is way too late and it is when we all have coursework and exams. I want to see February/March elections.

The final thing that needs to happen is that the University and Union needs to start working together. At the end of the day we both need to have students interests at heart!