A good representative has ability to effectively portray the views, feelings and thoughts of the group of individuals they are representing. For class reps these are the views of their class, for school officers these are the views of their department and for me it is about representing the views of all students at Heriot-Watt. It all sounds so simple in practise however it’s a lot more complicated and fraught with great inconsistencies and difficulties. So how do we know that representation is any good and how do we know that it is improving?
In order to make good representation possible in a university environment there are three things that are essential. The first of these is an excellent representative structure. Without a good structure it is very difficult to represent with any consistency across the university. Good structure ensures that class reps are recruited and trained in an effective and timely manner. An excellent structure also helps to ensure that the views of each student are heard. For academic representation this is fed from class reps to school officers up to, myself as President although not everything a class rep or a school officer deals with will have to come to the most senior representative level. It is important that a structure allows all information to be as accessible as possible.
The second thing you need is excellent engagement from students and staff. It’s all very well have a good structure for representing but without anyone engaging it’s pretty useless. Excellent engagement without any structure makes it very difficult to represent in a timely manner. It would be like me trying to talk to all of the students of Heriot-Watt in order to work out how students across all departments felt about a particular issue. This just isn’t realistic and is not a good use of time. It is important that both staff and students engage with representation as it helps to create an environment in which students are co-creators in their learning experience.
Finally, engagement and good structure have to get brought together. In order to do this you have to have a great working partnership between students, the students’ union and the university. This partnership must happen at all levels within an institution. At Heriot-Watt this partnership ensures that students have the ability to be equal partners in their learning experience. In bringing together excellent engagement, good structure and a great working partnership a representative utopia seems attainable however their are a huge number of obstacles that exist that need to be overcome to get anywhere near this ideal.
