Northumbria university international students rep feed back

Manish Abraham (international student’s rep)
Student’s council feedback – Monday 14 November 2011


The first few weeks in my new role as the international students rep has been really busy but I am enjoying it fully, here are the highlights of what have I done so far in these few weeks :

• After winning initial elections I attended the council training session in the students union. I too am excited that a well structured good team of reps are sitting in the council.
• I attended the celebration party on 14 th October 2011 which was attended by the vice chancellor of our university.
• I attended the first student’s council on 20 October 2011 in which we selected the chair of council. We also passed a few motions.
• I started a blog page for the Northumbria university international students http://northumbriauniversityinternationalrep.blogspot.com/ this was in order to keep them more informed about the happenings in the university.
• I started a group on face book Northumbria International students rep 2011- 2012 which already has 93 members, where basically the problems faced by the international students is discussed.
• On Weds October 26th I attended a meeting along with the pro vice chancellor of our university Lucy Winskell and PRESIDENT NSU Jo Rhodes at Newcastle university where we discussed a lot of topics on how to make new castle a more international city and everyone agreed that the international students played a major role in the economy of the city . This year there has been a decline in the number of international students due to the change in visa rules ,It was discussed how could the NE1 group help the students in the city, we also discussed about keeping bicycles in the university( scrap bikes ).
• We intend to conduct an international night in the coming month which basically will help in joining the different cultures in the university.
• On 28 th October 2011 Friday 1300 hrs I had a meeting with Hannah Horne(VP welfare and equality ) in which we discussed various problems being faced by the international students and we decided that we start an awareness campaign regarding the recent changes in the visa rules and Psw rules since many of them are still confused about the future . We decided that Hannah will try contacting the international office and we will have a meeting with them and plan the campaign. We also decided that me and my counterpart Gaurav will meet up and work together so as to make the campaign a success.

• As part of my project in a module me and my group has planned the launch of a new internet based radio for international students of our university and named it SRFm (Student radio Fm) and hope to launch it in a few weeks , this will further help in the bonding between the international students of our university. I hope that it will be launched in a few weeks , first we planned to go in for a Fm station we even had meetings with spice Fm and Ne1 radio but then we decided to go in for internet based 24 hour radio since it was more economical.
• As discussed with Hannah Horne we will look forward in spreading awareness among the international students that me and Gaurav are there for there the international students and make them feel more free to come and use the Students Union facilities . I would also take your attention that just behind the students union in Lovaine flats ,halls and even Claudd gibb hall there are many international students who haven’t entered the NSU even once they need to be motivated to take part in various activities which is only possible if they know who are there representatives and hence request for focussed advertisement of the international reps explaining how can we help them even in their smallest problems.
• I also met Richard on 29 October 2011and had a discussed that they should make a conversion tool for Chinese students on the black board so that it becomes easy for them to convert the academic topics in to regional language for better understanding , I was told that this was against university rules that we could only produce material in English so i gave up the idea .

Change is inevitable and if plan A fails, I don’t worry bcz there are 25 more letters left
My wishes and prayers for the success of the rag week which is due this month
Manish Abraham
International Students Rep