Welcome to the lovely Full Time Officer coverage edition of SCAN, the issue that we here at the SCAN hub have been strategising for, planning, and panicking about since the beginning of Lent term.
The SCAN journalists have been hard at work chasing down candidates with dictaphones in hand, and you can see the fruits of our collective labour in this edition, with lengthy candidate interviews, stunning photographs and small biographies of what college they call home and what they’ve studied/are studying.
If you flick through to the latter end of SCAN, you’ll find Answers from Alex Square, and this week we’ve been asking people what they think of the FTO elections and whether they’ll vote. One passerby commented that LUSU is a clique, and elections are a popularity contest. During my time producing and running SCAN, I’ve been accused a couple of times of being part of LUSU and therefore not representing students – I tend to laugh at these comments, because as you may notice, I am not running for a LUSU position. Mostly because I personally don’t see myself at all as a part of, or an instrument of, LUSU; no matter what my technical position in the Union is. I ran for this position because I wanted to produce a beautiful paper, edit articles, and do something amazing in my final year at Lancaster, rather than being too shy and letting the opportunity pass me by.
Therefore, I guess I don’t know enough about the inner workings of LUSU to comment on whether I think it is a clique, but I can say that there are other people like me that run for a position because they are passionate about the job at hand and they believe they will be the best person for the role – not necessarily because they are part of a LUSU clique. Just a thought for those of you that may be indifferent to voting: take your time, leaf through our interviews, and believe me when I say that if enough of you cast your vote for the person that you think is best suited for the job, your vote WILL count – it is mass indifference and not voting that won’t change things.
Anyway, best of luck to all the candidates, and if reading SCAN helped you to make an informed decision, then I am very happy indeed.
In more upsetting news, we’ve reached the final edition of SCAN for Lent term – which means you’ll have to endure the final few weeks of term (including the strange summer bonus week) without us. As I said at the end of Michaelmas though, we’ll still be publishing articles on our website throughout the Easter break, so be sure to check regularly.
In the spirit of reaching our ninth issue of the year and completing our second term, I’ve included a bonus cute animal picture: Cat of the Week. The closer we get to the end of the year, the more excited I get about moving out of student accommodation and into a place that will let me start my own mini zoo.
During the production of this issue, I sent out a desperate plea via Facebook for people to send kittens in order to remain calm as the deadline loomed, so my cute animal(s) of the week are courtesy of my old boss, Kate Healing, who sent me this lovely photo of three of her kittens.
Hopefully this triple dose of cute will be of comfort to those of you, like me, who have dissertations to finish off and essays to write. Have a lovely Easter break, see you for Roses in May!
