An Open letter to the Student Union

Dear SU,

When we joined this university we were told that the Student Union was an inclusive space there to represent us and our needs as students.

If this is true, why do we have to beg to have our access needs met?

We believe in the democratic process. All students should be able to submit ideas to the student body and if they get enough support those ideas should go to council. However this system is failing us. When we raise an accessibility issue, instead of just working together to fix it we have to create a petition and hope we can convince 50 people to agree with us. This doesn't work for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the accessibility issues we raise are preventing us from interacting on an even footing with other students. If we cannot interact with democracy in the first place, how can we use democracy to change it? Secondly we are a minority group whose issues are often felt by us. How can we convince enough people to believe what we say and care enough to vote for our petition?

Three petitions come to mind: the Sunflower lanyards campaign, Access to Events, and Access to Elections. Each time we rallied on these issues, we organised, made posters, wrote campaigns. These ideas were and are important, but they were also exhausting. These are ideas which promote access to the most basic parts of being a student. We as disabled people should be able to safely attend classes, events, and participate in elections the same as our peers.

Can you understand why having to campaign every time, with very little support from the Elected Officers who pledged to help us, would weaken our faith in the Student Union?

While some brilliant work has been done on behalf of disabled students as a whole by the SU, work by Steph Lomas and Nikkita Holmes to name a few, others have not shown up for us. We are relying on individuals going above and beyond their remit rather than officers doing what they were voted in for. Talk of accessibility and inclusion is popular when there is an election, but vanishes once the campaign flyers come down.

We need to rework the system so that basic access needs can be brought to the SU without having to go through a months long process just to try and get the issue on the table, let alone passed by Council. We need accountability for the pledges made to us that were broken and we want to be able to join in the democratic process with the same opportunities as any other students.

Support the Disabled Students at UCLan!

D.S.S