The role of Athletic Union President is unique because it is the only Sabbatical Officer (Sabb) role that sits outside of the formal Students Association structure, as the head of the students’ representation in Saints Sport. Nonetheless, it plays a crucial part in the Sabb team and their role is key in shaping how students interact with organised and competitive sports, gym facilities, and with the wide range of resources managed by the Athletic Union (AU) and Saints Sport.

Jess Smith, Sam Winton, and Dylan Clunie, the candidates, are all actively involved with their respective sports clubs. Polis Media scrutinised their manifestos in the week leading up to the campaign; our goal was to individuate the candidates’ key goals and promises and which points set them apart from each other, as well as to evaluate whether the tools and means they propose match their ambitions.

Jess Smith

Smith is the Captain of the Badminton Team, which she proudly states is her lifelong passion. She grounds her proposals for the presidency - which revolve around the themes of Sport for All, Excellence & Development, and Transparency - in her experience with the Badminton Club and the AU. She mentions her leadership of the Badminton Club, which has experienced growth and bifurcation during her time within it - between a more casual intramural squad and a development pathway for the sport - as well as her volunteering for the AU. She proposes fighting discrimination through a universal Code of Conduct for all sport clubs as well as more active engagement with key problems of accessibility. She would approach this through revised anti-discrimination workshops and club constitution guidelines on good practices in cases of discrimination. She also mentions ideas like Peer Support and flexible scheduling as initiatives to make gym facilities more welcoming. Her next section features a balance between building on existing programmes and creating new ones in sports development, such as more intersport collaboration on athletic and social activities and community engagement.

Significant parts of her manifesto were somewhat lacking, however. Her Widening Access section mentions better financial accessibility as a goal, but provides no cohesive roadmap to achieve this, as she merely mentions that she would champion new initiatives but does not expand on them or make clear what they could be. Her Transparency section includes promises such as renewed efforts in understanding how clubs are structured and operate to identify gaps in accountability - and fixing them - but most of her pledges in this section are often-promised efforts to be more available and to listen to all clubs, with no concrete steps to deliver on them.

Sam Winton

Winton, a third year, is active in the Rowing Club, and has worked with Saint Sports on its executive committee. He aims to give back to Saints Sport, “strengthening and improving the community so other people can benefit in the future.” His manifesto covers Widening Access and Improving Participation, Rebuilding for the Future and New Opportunities, Evaluating the “Performance Sport” Culture, Good Governance of the AU, and Green Sports. Notably, Winton cites his creation of a sports charity that has led to him working with outside groups and universities on promoting accessibility and diversity within sport. In this vein, he proposes greater work with the Equal Opportunities Committee to develop targeted policies for sport clubs to increase accessibility and representation, something he has already done with the ‘LGBTQ+ Charter’. We were pleased to read about his plans to implement these tailored policies aimed at delivering representation and accessibility. Winton’s manifesto covers a few more action points, such as re-establishing the Wellbeing Network in the AU building once it opens. We found his call for a Sport-specific Peer Support system - which was also present in other manifestos - to be an achievable goal and welcome his commitment to making Sport more friendly and open to new students. Additionally, his focus on the ‘international’ in his plan for Global Club Partnerships is intriguing; it would, he suggests, allow clubs to develop relationships with a club of their choosing from around the world and share both athletic and social experiences and lessons learned.

However, many of his points are vague; for example, the Performance Sport evaluation is simply a call to publish the findings of a review and to give both performance and non-performance aiming clubs support, with little elaboration on what that would look like or how it would be tailored to different clubs’ aspirations. Winton also promised to make the AU more transparent and accessible, but his plans made only passing mentions of financial barriers and did not explain how the membership restructuring could be used to lower them.

Dylan Clunie

Clunie, a five-year veteran of the Football Club, is running to make Saint Sport a “more inclusive place for students of all experiences and abilities” and to facilitate a speedy return to sport post-COVID. Their manifesto revolves around Membership restructure, Developing disability sport, Additional intramural and recreational sport, Growing community links, and Club relations and development. The membership restructuring, a recurrent theme in each manifesto, was front and centre in Clunie’s, who was involved with the development of the project and aims to continue working on it as President. Clunie’s role as AU Treasurer undoubtedly puts them in pole position to do so. Clunie also proposed the development of a disability sport programme in partnership with Scottish Disability Sport and the Disabled Students Network (Students’ Association), which is a clear and concrete goal that would be instrumental to their mission of making the AU more accessible. We were very impressed with this proposal and felt like it was perhaps the most concrete, pressing, and achievable plan in any manifesto. They mention a few ideas for more casual participation, such as intramural and Hall Sport competition, which despite its ambiguity exactly what they would organise, remains a promising idea. Clunie also suggests the development of a stronger bond with the local sport community, another unique aspect of their manifesto which fits into their broader goals for the AU.

Their manifesto was also lacking in places, namely on plans for implementation of some of their ideas, but was also more cautiously worded and practical in nature. Clunie focused on more specific ideas rather than sweeping promises of reform, which gave their manifesto a slightly less eye-catching but perhaps more clear-cut manifesto, which had a coherent vision and was dotted with exciting proposals. We are incredibly keen to hear more about their ideas throughout the week.

Reflections

Making the AU more accessible was without a doubt the most prominent of the manifestos’ common themes, and each candidate proposed a few standout ideas but generally left us with many questions. The candidates failed to deliver clear roadmaps for achieving most of their promises, especially on accessibility. All three documents relied significantly on calls for a more accessible and open AU without presenting sufficient ideas for why or how each candidate could deliver on something that has been promised time and time again.

The issue of membership restructuring, though prominent, was missing a concrete and serious discussion on impact and implementation, notably how this was related to making the AU more financially accessible - to our understanding, the current reform makes payments more specific to each sport but does not alter the high cost or frequency of payments. The manifestos would have benefitted from an explanation of how each candidate would harness the restructure to lower the steep barrier to entry for students, especially those more interested in casual and low-commitment engagement with the AU, and how the program would impact students. Smith only mentioned financial accessibility in passing, as a promise to work on the restructure and on financial barriers as a whole, while Winton mentioned more focus on bursaries and scholarships, but failing to expand on that idea. Clunie’s familiarity with the restructure is notable, but they failed to harness that knowledge, which should have been used to explain how the process is working and how it would change students’ financial relationship with the AU and with individual clubs. Winton, too, relied on this reform package to claim that he would make finances a less important concern in students’ participation, without clarifying how.

We were also struck by the lack of clear planning for a return to in-person activities in a much-awaited post-lockdown/COVID scenario, with only cursory mentions of ‘returning to sport as quickly as possible’ and no clear plan for addressing some of the issues that the AU has faced this year due to restrictions and how to address them. This is especially pressing given that a world with some regulations is likely to be our reality for some time yet.

Comprehensively, each candidate presented a manifesto which we felt was lacking in key places. While enumerating the issues facing students’ engagement with the Athletic Union is worthwhile in identifying the task at hand for the next AU President, we suggest that the candidates should have dedicated more space in their campaign manifestos to clear strategies for creating the changes they call for. We hope that the candidates may be able to fill these gaps during their respective campaign outreach this week. This is not to discount, however, some of the incredibly creative and refreshing ideas found in parts of each document, especially in Winton and Clunie’s manifestos, and which we hope are used by the eventual winning candidate as a model for how to create actionable change within the Athletic Union.