Fylde College student Chris Bell has served students at both a Union and society level. He is currently a LUSU Councillor and served as Chair of Fylde College JCR Executive, experiences that he feels have given him a “greater understanding of the ways in which LUSU looks to best represent its students.”
As for societies, Bell served as General Secretary of the Gospel Choir and as Treasurer of the Darts society, of which he is a founding member. He was also a College sports captain. All of these roles have developed his “motivational skills” as well as his “general leadership characteristics.”
If elected, Bell wants to evaluate the “big changes” that LUSU has undergone through its Full Time Officer restructuring. “It will be our job as the FTO team to decide which changes have worked, and what we need to adjust to create a better, more stable union for our students.”
He also intends to “constantly scrutinise” actions taken by the university with regards to course fees and rent inflation, believing finance to be “one of the biggest problems facing our students year on year. Bell pledges to ensure that the University provides a student experience “which reflects the personal and financial investment they have made.”
The best policy for dealing with the university on student issues, Bell feels, is to maintain a degree of “realism”, acknowledging that LUSU isn’t “always going to get its own way.”
However, he pointed out that LUSU has often “given something away to get something back in another area.” He cited LUSU’s handling of the Music degree situation as an example of it being “very quiet.”
“We very much went along with the concept that [the closure of music] was for the greater good of the department… We should have been looking to let our students know what was going on.”
Bell explained his belief that the staffing structure of LUSU “needs looking at”, with the aim to work out “how best they are distributed”, and “where best to fit them in within an ever changing Union.”
Bell expressed his desire to improve relations between LUSU and its officers. He acknowledged that LUSU is often seen as “overbearing to its officers”, and an institution which feels it must “put its seal of approval on everything officers do.” He would like to see LUSU perceived as “the place officers come to… make their plans a reality”, and inspire elected officers to be “ambitious in their roles.”
Chris Bell cites his honesty as a ‘unique selling point’, preferring to “give the full picture” so that students “have reasonable expectations of what [LUSU does].
“If you’re honest about your goals and expectations then people will respect you for being so.”
