Your primary role as a Student Officer will be to represent students’ views and needs. As a Student Leader you will be a member of the Students’ Union Executive Committee; as a Volunteer Officer you will be required to attend All Student Members’ Meetings, which meets once a month and to which all students are invited.

The Executive committee make the day-to-day decisions that direct what the SU does. All Student Members’ Meetings provides an opportunity for all students to hold Student Leader and Volunteer Officers to account and to see what developments, decisions or changes have been made since the previous meeting. It is important that any decisions you make are based on evidence, and you will have to be comfortable communicating these decisions to students, the university and the local community. All Student Leaders and Volunteer Officers create reports once a month, which are published online. This gives all students the chance to find out what they have all been up to, and to vote as to whether they are approved or not.

A manifesto is a (usually written) document that is published before an election, which outlines your intentions for what you would wish you achieve during your term in office.

The key thing to remember when writing a manifesto is to ensure that all of your promises are achievable.

When you tell people during the elections period about what you are aiming to achieve, they may question you on how you would go about achieving the things you have promised – so make sure you have all of the information about how to deliver your aims!

Whilst you may have the best intentions to achieve loads of things whilst you are in office, remember that your time is limited. Perhaps stick to three key points about what you want to achieve (three is the magic number, after all).

A good format to help people understand your aims and to get on board with them in a manifesto is to think what, how, and why: what is your aim, how are you going to achieve it, and why is this important for the student reading your manifesto.

As an SU President candidate, you will need to attend two additional sessions prior to campaigning beginning. One of these will be with the Chief Executive of the Students’ Union and the current Chair of the Board of Trustees to discuss the role that the SU President plays as part of the Board of Trustees. This will be arranged on a one-to-one basis once your nomination has been approved. The second session that you are required to attend in addition to the Candidate Briefing for all candidates is a Charity Commission introduction where the CEO will explain Charity Commissions rules and regulations that govern the Students’ Union and will be a key part of the knowledge baseof the SU President.

Yes.

In fact, one of the Student Leader positions up for election is the VP International. As an International student you can also run for the other Student Leader positions. If you are elected into a Student Leader position, you are still considered a student, and are able to apply for a Tier 2 visa to secure your stay in the UK.

If you are running for a volunteer position, you are still able to be a Volunteer Officer, however there are a number of restrictions on the amount of volunteering you may do.

No. You can be in any year to run as a Student Leader, however typically it is a final year student. Any student not in their final year of study will have to take a year out of their course to undertake the role they have run for. This is called a sabbatical year, which is why Student Leaders have often been known as Sabbatical Officers.

If you have submitted a nomination to be a candidate, but your submission remains 'unapproved' before the election, don't panic – this is normal! Before an election, the Returning Officer must check all candidates to ensure that they are members of the University.

Once this has been done, your nomination will be approved. All nominations are likely to be approved at the same time.

Don't panic! It is likely that most people running in Students' Union Elections will never have campaigned before, and it will be a learning experience for everyone. The Students’ Union recognises this, and have put on a number of Elections Workshops which will teach you how to run effective campaigns.

One of the most important tips for running a successful campaign is to have a strong and willing campaign team. Think about who you can trust to remain engaged with your campaign for the entire elections period.

Make sure you work with your campaign team to create a fun, eye-catching campaign!

To take part in the Students’ Union elections, there is no requirement to make a video, however many candidates consider it to be a useful promotional tool.

Whilst it is very important that your video promotes the points in your manifesto, and demonstrates the things that you stand for, the more fun and more attention grabbing your video is, the more likely it is that people will be interested in what you say.

Here are some examples of Students’ Union election videos that have been incredibly successful:

President Video 1

President Video 2

Activities Video 1

Only student members of the Students’ Union will be eligible to vote. If you are currently enrolled at the University of Lincoln, and have opted out of the Students’ Union, you will need to contact the Student Support Centre, in the Minerva Building on the Brayford Campus to opt back in. You must be a member of the Students’ Union in order to vote in the elections. If you are not, you must opt in at Student Services before 5pm on Tuesday 26th February, otherwise you will miss your chance to vote.

If you have opted in to the Students’ Union, but are still unable to access our services, this could be because you have not given consent for the University to share your data with the Students’ Union. You will need to log in to Blackboard to update your preferences to allow data sharing if you would like to be able to vote.

STV voting stands for Single Transferable Voting. It is a form of Preferential Voting. Voters must rank the candidates standing for each position in order of preference, with ‘1’ being their most favoured candidate.

When counting the votes, if a candidate has secured more than 50% of the votes, they will automatically win. If not, the candidate with the least number of first preference votes will be eliminated from the competition and their votes will be distributed amongst the other candidates based on the second preferences marked on the voters ballot paper for those who voted for the eliminated candidate as their first preference. If this takes a candidate over the 50% threshold, that candidate will automatically win. If not, the process will be repeated until one candidate reaches the 50% threshold.

This means that as a candidate, it is really important to try and get as many second votes as possible, so if a voter has already said they are going to vote for someone else, ask for their second preference vote!

This video explains the STV process if you wish to learn about it further.

STV voting is good because it means that overall, the winning candidate will have been voted for by a much higher proportion of the membership.

It may be that the voter has opted out of being a member of the Students’ Union, or has not given consent for the University to share their data with the Students’ Union. The student will need to contact the Student Support Centre to opt in to the Students’ Union, but can update their preferences on Blackboard to allow the University to share their data with the Students’ Union.

If the voter is still struggling, please email [email protected].

RON stands for Re-Open nominations. RON will be a candidate for all positions, as it allows voters the option to vote to reopen the elections for that position if they are not happy with any of the choices of candidate.

All Student Leader candidates may spend up to £100 of their own money in the Students' Union Elections; however it is up to that candidate as to how much they want to spend. In order to keep things fair, Student Leader candidates who spend over the £100 limit may face disciplinary action. The same rules apply to Volunteer Officers, but their spending limit is instead £50.

Elections don't have to be a popularity contest – if you have a well-researched manifesto, with aims that students want, you are in with a good chance of winning. When in office, it does help however to have a big network behind you, as they can help you to achieve your aims.

No. It is still important to go to your lectures during voting week. Regardless of whether you win the election or not, you will still need to get a good grade in you degree.

Taking part in SU elections will not be grounds for extensions on work.

If you see someone breaking any of the rules, please report what you have seen to the Deputy Returning Officer as soon as possible, delays in submitting complaints can be detrimental to the election and against the spirit of the event. You can do this by emailing the elections email account at [email protected].

All complaints must be submitted by 5pm on Tuesday 26th February. All complaints will need evidence to support them.

You must always be three meters away from someone who is voting.

As a voter, if a candidate is standing too close to you, or you feel coerced into voting, please report this to the Deputy Returning Officer immediately by emailing [email protected].

The Returning Officer of the Elections is the person who oversees the running of the elections. If complaints or disputes arise, they will be responsible for making a decision on what disciplinary action needs to be taken (if any). They are the final decision-maker for the elections, and have the final say on such matters.

At the start of the Elections, the Returning Officer will appoint a Deputy Returning Officer who is on the ground in the Students' Union, and up to four Assistant Returning Officers.

If a candidate or any member of their team is found to have broken the rules, the Returning Officer has the power to act in whatever way they see fit to preserve the fairness of the election.

As a rough guide, considerations will be in two parts, as outlined below:

• Has the candidate deliberately broken the rules? If yes, then they may be disqualified
• Has the candidate unwittingly broken the rules? If yes, then the Returning Officer will decide on whether their actions have affected the election and will take steps to correct it

The Returning Officer is likely to take one of the following decisions:

• Allow the election to continue with no action
• Disqualify the candidate
• Halt the election for that post
• Halt the entire election
• Any other action that is deemed appropriate to uphold the fairness of the election

Should you wish to make a complaint about another candidate ensure that the complaint is made in a timely manner to the Deputy Returning Officer at [email protected]. Delays in submitting complaints are detrimental to the election and against the spirit of the event. All complaints must be submitted to the Deputy Returning Officer by 5pm on Tuesday 26th February. All complaints will need evidence to support them.

As a Student Leader, there is a lot to learn. It is advised that if you are elected, you try to spend a lot of time in the Students' Union between winning the election and starting your term in office. There is also an official one week handover period in June (w/c 10th June) where you will spend time in the office with the predecessor in your role who will be able to teach you the ropes.

During the summer you will receive a lot of training for the role.

As a Volunteer Officer, you will also have a handover period with the outgoing Volunteer Officer to learn more. You will also have Induction Training at the start of September, as well as ongoing support for the SU team.

When you nominate yourself, you will need to upload a photograph of yourself, a poster (with the option of an additional second poster), a flyer and an optional banner for Social Media pages.

Your photo must be uploaded as a gif, jpg (jpeg) or png and must be no bigger than 1 megabyte. It must also be exactly 400 x 400 pixels.

The remaining artwork must also be uploaded as a pdf, jpg (jpeg) or png and be no bigger than 15 megabytes.

If resizing photos/images is alien to you, there are many online tools available via a quick search.

During the February elections, three delegates are chosen to attend the NUS Conference. These delegates will be responsible for voting on the behalf of the 14,500 students at the University of Lincoln, to decide:

• Who the NUS Officers will be for the following year
• Future NUS policies
• What students want NUS to campaign for

You can find out more information about the NUS conference here: conference.nusconnect.org.uk