Welfare and Community Officer – Jack Lydon

My name is Jack, I’m a third year Politics, Philosophy and Economics student and I am running for the Welfare and Community Officer role.

“Hi, I’m Jack (They/Them). I’ve been active in the SU for over 2 years. I will work to improve students’ renting standards; Women’s Safety support; Transport that works for students; Drug and Alcohol harm reduction. Read my manifesto; Vote me for Welfare!”

How do you aim to help students in the midst of a financial hardship that is increasingly common?

Well I want to focus on renters rights for students; currently Belfast City Council has a scheme for student accommodation buildings which is letting in a lot of developers for luxury student accommodation. This increases the rent generally across the board because a lot of luxury flats are being offered and landlords are seeing that as an opportunity to increase their rents. So, basically I just want to lobby Belfast city council to add in a clause to have more affordable student accommodation buildings or just have a part of that scheme have a portion of student accommodation buildings made to be affordable. I also just want to continue the good work the pantry is doing, the work the free breakfasts are doing and I want to oppose any fee increases or any increases on the rent for BT1 and BT2 in general.

What do you think that Welfare and Community isn’t doing enough of and do you have any additional plans to the previous ones?

Well, currently, the consent training that the university does for incoming students just isn’t good enough; it is a 90 second video! That’s not proper consent training! So I want to implement that in the university by working with them. I also want to focus on more harm reduction, there isn’t any testing kits in the students union for the students who are using drugs and they don’t know if what they are getting is safe to use and also there are no drink spiking tests in the bar. This is a big concern for women’s safety at the moment. So I want to push those to get implemented in the SU!

Just coming from the past, have you been active in the SU or student volunteering? In what areas in general? And how do you aim to use that experience?

I was the Communications Officer and then the president of the Pride society over the course of a year and I am currently this year’s LGBT students association chair and overall that has given me fantastic organisational skills. It has required me to basically look for different ways I can work with different organisations. I have worked with Rainbow Project in Belfast and I have also conducted a large survey, with over 200 answers about LGBT students experiences in university. From that I know what areas had to be focused on. Basically I just want to involve students in decision making and I feel like my experience with different student organisations over the past two years has definitely made that a strong suit of mine.

What’s your favourite colour?

I think my favourite colour is brown. I’m wearing like two different shades of it today. I had to stop myself cause I have a brown jacket and brown shoes as well. Sometimes I like come out of the house and I am wearing complete brown and I’m like oh no I’m going to have to go back in.

In five words or less what is your campaign about?

Involving students in decision making.

You can read Jack’s manifesto here.

Click here for more SU election candidates!