The role of the Association President is to represent and cater to the needs of the entire student body, both undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as oversee various committees and positions within the student government. The main liaison between the student body and University administration, they ensure that the student voice is heard by the University, while also being responsible for communicating Association activities and decisions to the student body.

Lottie Doherty

Lottie Doherty presents an enthusiastic and ambitious manifesto for Association President, a position which demands passion for the student experience and an awareness of the University community. Lottie divides her manifesto into four statements: accommodation, inclusivity, accessibility, and pertinently - Covid-19. The connecting thread throughout the candidate’s statement is her promotion of the student voice and dedication to equality.

In terms of accommodation, Lottie is persistent in her prioritisation of student democracy. She demands that the University adapt its policies in light of accomodation survey results. Accessibility for students from lower income backgrounds and disabled students is central to her appeal; this is furthered by her collaboration with the Campaign for Affordable Student Housing and the Disabled Students Network. She vows to encompass commuter students in her accommodation policies and work with the local council to achieve affordable housing. Additionally, she suggests sustainability as an area for improvement in student accommodation. Yet, she only provides details on structural developments, such as insulation, rather than focusing on recycling or food waste. Moreover, the candidate’s discussion on private accommodation is extremely limited.

The candidate’s most impressive pursuit falls under her ‘inclusivity’ section. She pledges to ‘diversify and decolonise the curriculum’, and correspondingly, to increase BAME, LGBT+ and disabled representation across all schools. Lottie specifically suggests reviewing reading lists to ensure students are receiving a diverse and rounded education. Secondly, she promises to simplify the process of altering pronouns and names on the University system, to make the experience for individuals less daunting. On a similar note, she expresses the urgency for gender-neutral facilities and the protection of all students, regardless of gender. Once again, Lottie upholds the weight of the student voice, by vowing to involve all students in a political education. Her promise to work with several sexual violence charities is ambitious, but essential, in light of the accounts posted by St Andrews Survivors.

In her accessibility statement, Lottie promises to advocate for the protection of students’ mental health, by promoting funding for Student Services. Again, she draws on what we have learnt during the pandemic, and affirms the need for all essential resources to be made accessible online. She proposes the possibility of sustainable travel, to and from St Andrews. This is an ambitious claim, but Lottie vows to establish a ‘sustainable travel fund’ during her time as Association President. Finally, she comments on the inaccessibility of the University gym membership, and suggests several ways to make the physical activity more inclusive.

The candidate’s stance on the impact of Covid-19 is unambiguous and straightforward. She emphasises the centrality of the student body to all decision making, and is considerate of the immeasurable impact of the pandemic on our education. However, she neglects to mention specific downfalls of the University during the pandemic, except that there was a ‘lack of clarity and transparency’ in the decision making. Nonetheless, she discusses the need for a survey to assess the University’s response, which further confirms the importance of the student body to her campaign. Lottie is perceptive to the few benefits contributed by the pandemic, such as the online submission of coursework and recorded lectures. She maintains that as Association President she will fight to preserve these approaches, and ensure a smooth transition from online to in-person teaching. Lottie concludes this section by considering an affiliation with the National Union of Students, which, she claims, would bolster opportunities for collaboration with other universities.

In sum, Lottie’s manifesto lays out a bold path for post-covid St. Andrews that keeps what has been working well, but isn’t afraid to knock up against what hasn’t. Her ideas are bold, however, they occasionally lack a full explanation of an intended course of implementation.

Lea Weimann

Lea Weimann, a fourth year undergraduate studying Sustainable Development and International Relations, presents a platform that is clear, easy to follow, and ambitious. She has set a high bar for herself by laying out exactly how she plans to execute each of these goals. She cleverly uses the acronym CARES to lay out her goals in five parts—Community, Accomodation, Representation, Environment, and Student Life. Lea’s manifesto is then separated into sections addressing each of her five goals. They begin with a statement of her overarching goals and then she provides a bullet point list of how she plans on executing the goal.

Accommodation, the perennial issue at St. Andrews, addresses concerns about accessibility and affordability, with special attention paid as well to older buildings' lack of sustainable building materials. Lea has lived in university accommodation for the entirety of her St. Andrews’ career and knows how crucial it can be in building community. Based on my research, though, some of her goals and action plans aren’t very different from past Association Presidents, making one question whether or not these goals are very feasible and/or if the approach needs to change in order to meet the needs of the student body. Additionally, she very sparingly addresses the fact that some of her aims are inherited— this can also be seen in her sections on representation, student life, and communication—which again causes concern about the ability and feasibility of getting these overarching goals done.

Though Lea seems to be inheriting a lot of the goals and aims she sets out for herself, her platform is unique (to others that I’ve seen) in that it specifically addresses climate change and the environment more broadly. In the fourth section, she states that her overall goal is to start a critical discourse about climate change in both St. Andrews and the world at-large. Her aims in this particular section have the clearest action plan of her whole manifesto; she plans on increasing communication about sustainability projects and initiatives between students and the university as well as set up a plan on how to achieve net zero carbon by holding both the Students’ Association and the University accountable. Essentially through collaboration, accountability, and discourse Lea hopes to create a space for the St. Andrews’ community to take a stand in the fight against climate change.

In sum, Lea’s platform is very optimistic overall, with its strongest note being its continual emphasis that climate change and sustainability can only be addressed with an intersectional approach. However, it should be noted that four out of five of her goals are reformulations of inherited issues. This isn’t a strike against her persee, as it is not the fault of Lea that they haven’t been successfully addressed, however her solutions to address them are in need of some new and innovative ideas in order to be more convincing.

Spencer Percival

Spencer Percival begins their manifesto with concerns and policies that are common to all three candidates for Association President. In the first sections, Percival addresses several areas of concern to students including safety and wellbeing, inclusivity, affordable accommodation, and communication between the University and students, especially regarding the pandemic.

A novel suggestion from Percival in these areas is the changes to the anonymous reporting system. Mx. Percival wants to add options to name a perpetrator and submit evidence to these systems, which would undoubtedly increase the effectiveness of these cases and thus accountability. What is of some concern is the chain of custody of the evidence presented and the protection of the identity of the reporter. It is in our best interest to remove as many barriers to accountability as possible, and if survivors are at all concerned about their identity being disclosed in an otherwise anonymous report, they may choose to either decline to provide evidence (defeating the purpose of the proposal), or not report altogether if they view their case as somehow “weaker” by not disclosing evidence. For example, if a survivor thinks screenshots of messages are useful, they may be rightly concerned about the potential disclosure of contact information or other personal details. While adding the option to do so should be welcomed, the details may prove difficult.

What sets Percival apart from other candidates is a full section on what they call ‘Good Assessment Practice,’ a clear call back to the ‘Training on Good Academic Practice’ course we all did at the last possible second at the start of our St Andrews journeys. In this section, Percival calls for standard late penalties across all academic schools, workloads proportionate to the credit weighted system, and excluding weekends in extensions, among others. Percival’s call to reduce late feedback is especially welcome (I’m looking at you, School of Economics and Finance), as this issue has persisted since well before the pandemic. Despite identifying several issues with the academic provision in St Andrews, I am unsure how the Association President fits into solving them. Percival seems unsure too, as ‘Good Assessment Practice’ is largely devoid of ‘how’ answers, relative to other parts of the manifesto.

Percival is also the only candidate for Association President willing to address the (absurd) imposition of two-factor-authentication (2FA) on our Microsoft accounts. Percival rightly points out the problems with the current IT Services approach. By adding annoyances like signing us out of our accounts every week, it lowers security as we change our passwords to ‘Aaaaaa1@,’ and leads to ‘the resentment of important cybersecurity technologies,’ like 2FA. While the willingness to address this issue is laudable, I fear it is unlikely that Big Brother IT Services will be responsive to this plea, as evidenced by the utterly ineffective and endlessly irritating ‘Mailscanner has detected definite fraud in [every link sent to our Outlook accounts]. Do NOT trust this website,’ on most emails we receive.

In addition, among the suggestions is ‘Exploring Alternatives to Facebook,’ where Percival explains that Facebook’s ‘lacklustre attitude towards the protection of sensitive user data, and their excessive data collection practices puts users at risk,’ and proposes to ‘explore alternative platforms.’ As Percival’s concerns will largely be unresolved by moving to other big-tech platforms, they calls for ‘University Wordpress blogs for each society.’ This solution, however, will be subject to extreme inertia, especially on the ease-of-use front relative to Facebook and other big-tech platforms. We could easily see a situation where some (my guess, a minority) of societies have opted for the Wordpress blog, while most remain on Zuckernet.

Another unique feature of Mx. Percival’s manifesto is their approach to accommodation. They suggest a total rent strike as a means of collective bargaining - an idea that has often lurked in the shadows of accommodation talks, but currently lacks the backing of official Student Association representatives. It’s an ambitious plan to say the least, but perhaps having the support of the Association President might give it the final push it needs to become effective.

In sum, Percival’s manifesto illustrates an understanding of many valid issues concerning students, but workable solutions to some of these problems are absent. It is also unclear what role the Association President could play to remedy the academic concerns Percival describes, which may be better suited to School Presidents. Percival has offered a manifesto that successfully highlights the key problems facing the St Andrews student community, and for a large part, offers solutions; however, the boldness of the solutions, while exciting, could prove difficult to implement. This is not to write them off, but to suggest that fulfillment of their promises would lead to the most ambitious term in recent Association President history. It's great to identify problems, but that's only half of the battle. As a candidate for the Association, we need to see how the candidate intends to resolve the problems they identify.