During the seminar in Pisa in April, we discussed mainly three topics: How can we enhance our external communication? Which practices can be implemented to best represent the students’ interests in the governing bodies of the alliance? And finally the principles that will guide our work during the next phase in the development of Circle U.
Easy access
Along with periodic updates on our activities, we have also prepared a pathway to improve our section on the Circle U. website: we are willing to make it a platform from which people, especially students, can have easy access to up-to-date information and contact details of our student representatives and their local student democracies, but also to all our most important papers.
Expanding CUSU
Since our goal is to be a link between Circle U. and the student bodies of our universities, we want to extend the range of our democratic processes of student involvement. As a first step, we are going to hold virtual meetings directly with the heads of the local student democracies. Moreover, we decided to include other categories of students (i.e. Ph.D. students, Student Fellows, and Student Ambassadors) who are not CUSU members in our meetings and in the Work Packages; details are yet to be discussed.
To achieve this goal, we also reviewed our Terms of References. We clarified the process of election of the student representatives’ substitutes, and opened to external participation in our meetings, without the right to vote. The amendments will need a second vote in one of our next meetings.
Fruitful discussions
At this very moment, we have two seats in the General Assembly and none in the Management Board (MB), but we have had fruitful discussions with the MB in joint workshops. We believe that active involvement in the MB is beneficial to the development of the alliance, in particular having at least one joint workshop per year with the MB and direct representation of CUSU in the body.
CUSU Vision Paper
Finally, during the seminar, we completed another important document, which is our Vision Paper. The Vision Paper states our key values, and it will serve as our roadmap for the future of Circle U. and the way it could impact students in our universities.
