Ben Evans is running for the role of Vice-President of Activities for the Lancaster University Student’s Union. He spoke about his perspective as part of the rugby team and his various roles for on campus and college sporting, as well as his love for the sport, which he intends to pursue post-university, as a major motivation for his candidacy. Having worked on the activities team for the Student Union this year, he used his “close perspective” to praise the teamwork in operation at the students union, while offering grounds for improvement on the clarity of communications with the student body.
One of the major aspects of the VP activities role is the coordination of Roses, the annual sporting competition held against the University of York. Ben pointed to his union experience in organising parts of the last Roses, held at Lancaster, and the experience gained working alongside the current VP Activities, as proof that he would be up to the task.
He emphasised his approachability and made clear that he would be approachable by both sporting and non-sporting societies, the brief that VP Activities spans across. He would take a proactive approach, to help the societies secure what they needed, and intended to visit societies to be “a face rather than a title”. On society funding, he wanted to see more discussion, and an analysis taking place before the academic to determine which societies can be prioritised for funding allocation.
In response to the trivia question sprung on him, he gave a rough but generally accurate description of the process by which societies apply for Union funding, involving planning and the need to hit the Student Union’s funding criteria. He acknowledged the difficulties of his manifesto pledge to give students priority access to space in places like the Sports Centre but was confident that liaising with the managers would allow him to improve the student experience.
He intends to introduce welfare provisions on the level of clubs and societies. When asked if the smaller societies would be able to manage that burden, Ben suggested that they would be able to offer different levels of support to the larger clubs, as it was unrealistic to demand the same from societies with 100 and 15 members.
