Undergraduate Education – Samar Ahmad

Vote smart, Vótáil Samar #1 for Undergrads!!!

So introduce yourself, tell me a bit about yourself.

Hi everyone, my name is Samar, I’m 21 and I am a third year History and International Relations student at Queen’s and I’m running to be your Undergraduate Education Officer. [About your campaign] So it’s been it’s been a wild ride. I’ve learned a lot and I’m really really enjoying it. It’s great getting to talk to random people because like the more people you meet the more you learn about different people’s experiences. Like I have my own experience and based on my experience and my friends experiences and all of the people I’ve spoken to I’ve sort of gained a bigger picture of what needs to be done at Queen’s to make the university experience better for an undergrad. Coming in I had so so so many problems and I’m even like finding problems now like even still so I’m so motivated to sort of get things done.

Do you have any experience then that can relate to your passion for your campaign? What experience maybe do you have representing students? Why are you so passionate about representing students?

I think I’m a pretty confident and driven person so I’m not afraid to stand up for what’s wrong. In school I was prefect for Diversity and Inclusivity so I would attend meetings and address like problems faced by the students that the teachers wouldn’t really see and we sort of worked towards that and and we actually genuinely like reduced the amount of racism and sexism faced within my school because of like the meetings I attended and the feedback that was given to me and it was it was really really rewarding so I was like that’s something that I definitely want to do in the future yeah. I do History and IR, so politics is an option, but I don’t think, well, I’m going to try and see, the campaign’s been really fun, so it might be, I might want to go down in the future, potentially.

Tell us about then the kind of main things you’re hoping to achieve then. in your campaign or what are your main policies?

So my main policies are having coherent Canvas pages. I don’t know about you, but like every single module that I have is laid out differently. And especially when it comes to like finding assignment requirements and like you miss something, it’d be so much better if everything was standardised and everything was laid out in the same way just to make it easier for us to navigate. It’s a realistic goal and I don’t make promises which I can’t keep.

Moving on to my next goal is having consistent mark schemes because I feel like especially on the undergraduate level, you get so much different feedback and you feel like somebody can be like oh that’s wrong but they don’t tell you how it’s wrong, they don’t justify. Like I do an essay subject, I know for engineering or medicine it might be slightly different, but like having those mark teams there and you know what to turn to when you want to improve your work. Yeah, and this is actually a really, really big problem because I just experienced it last week. Assignment budgeting, I had two assignments due within two days of each other, both like over a thousand words. Like why? Why? I think it’s a problem which stresses everyone out and there is definitely a more manageable way to deal with that and I think I want to work with the university to make our lives easier because being a student is actually really hard because you’re thrown into a world of independence and you have your uni work, you have your social life, you have living by yourself, maybe just gaining a new sense of independence and sort of finding yourself outside the school system. You have so many things going on at once and having all your assignments due at the same time is not ideal.

As History Society Vice President, I found that as an academic society, it’s quite hard to get in touch with our actual courses. So within this role, I want to sort of merge, or rather sort of have societies and faculties working together because as having faculties and societies working better together because as an academic society, we pay like a five, ten pound membership and we’re not getting much out of that. So working with like our university courses, lecturers who actually might want to help us and putting on things and events would be really fun.

This is a really, really big one because it’s been in the making for a couple of years now, but just AI policies. I don’t know about you guys, but for me, there’s been a massive crackdown on AI and it’s just actually really quite unfair because last year, so many people were told, oh… you can experiment with AI, you can use it, see, and then report, like, I know I had to do a 500 word reflection, and a lot of people that I’ve spoken to have too, and this year, complete crackdown, there is very limited teaching, so people are just using things like chat, and they’re getting penalised because they don’t know how to be properly using it in their work; it’s something which is never going to go away… So having that education telling us how we can potentially use it to enhance our work because it’s a great tool: why shouldn’t we be using it? There’s a right way and a wrong way to use it and I think the university should establish correct ways in which we can and can’t use it so it makes it more manageable and so we kind of know what we’re doing, because there are so many people being accused left, right, and center, and it’s just not fair… for some people for people who put their blood sweat and tears into this one piece of work to be told and accused of using it is just quite frankly really offensive.

A really really big point is having inclusivity of all cultures within the curriculum, decolonising the curriculum, inclusivity of the Irish language and just welcoming cultures of all sorts to the university because Belfast is a beautiful place, and I think all culture should be celebrated no matter where you’re from.

Is there any specific areas with diversity and inclusion that you would like to target? Is there any challenges you can see ahead in regards to that and how would you deal with them?

So the current Undergraduate Education Officer, Eli, has been working on bringing Irish language inclusivity on campus and the Irish community have done so much work to sort of progress their and giving Irish language equality. So I sort of want to continue that legacy because there’s so much work which has been put into that. Even though I’m not Irish, I really believe that if you have your language, you should be able to speak it, especially on the island.

So what are three areas that you would most like to succeed in or what are three things that would make your campaign a success if you were to become the undergraduate officer?

One thing I would, the three key points that I would like to target, like my priorities are the AI policies, the mark schemes and the assignment bunching.

If you can, in five words or less, describe your campaign.

Confident, energetic and welcoming.

Do you have a favourite pub or cafe in Belfast?

Oh, can I do both? Oh, you have to do both. Okay. So, Brew and Bake. Really good. Love me a cinnamon bun. And pub. I don’t drink, but I do love a pub. But, the Dirty Onion. Really good. Ulster Sports. Also very good.

You can read Samar’s manifesto here.