What’s that coming over the hill?

Sadly, it’s not a hexbug.

It’s an election.

Election season is upon us once again here at Trevs, as the college community comes together to appoint the Exec for the next year.

As Mackenzie McHale once said in The Newsroom, “there is nothing more important to a democracy than a well-informed electorate”, so in my capacity as News Editor of HEX, combined with my side hustle as JCR Chair, this is your one-stop preview of the candidates for all of the non-presidential positions, following on from the excellent presidential interviews conducted by Elliot Burrin and Luke Taylor (make sure to read those!). The purpose of this article is for you to hear a little bit from the candidates in their own words, accompanied by some context and comments from myself. This is your chance to learn more about the candidates themselves, their experience and their policies!

Vice-President

Bex Smith

About Bex: The sole candidate for VP, Bex, has served as one of the Assistant Welfare Officers over the last year. Bex, in her own words, is “a second-year student majoring in extracurriculars, with a side of Anthropology & Sociology”. She is a beatboxer in Durham Dynamics a capella, a Purple Radio DJ, and drums for the band Hayk.

Experience: Bex has served as one of the Assistant Welfare Officers over the last year, worked as a Frep, serves as the Netball B Team captain, and has served on Events Committee.

Plans: Bex’s grand designs for VP include to revamping Trevs Talks for more engagement by merging them together with Dissertation Open Mics, introducing a design competition for exclusive stash, and working closely with the ESO to ensure college is running as sustainably as possible.

Voting is open until Sunday 16th February

Welfare Officer(s)

Isabelle Smith

About Izzy: Izzy is a Third Year Maths Student, who is involved in a variety of Trevs societies, such as Gamesoc and LGTBQ+ society.

Experience: Izzy has served as the LGBTQ+ Rep this year, working as part of the Welfare Campaigns Committee, and setting up the LGBTQ+ History month guest lecture. In addition, Izzy is on the exec of Gamesoc, and worked as a Frep.

Plans: Her main plans for the role are to ensure that the welfare team is known across the college by as many students as possible by organising more welfare run events outside of the set campaigns, and to increase feedback from the wider JCR towards the Welfare team. As she says, “this would be a good way of fostering a sense of community within college.”

Helena O’Neill

About Helena: Helena is a Second Year History student, who in her own words, “loves cats and musicals”. She grew up in Belgium and Germany and has experience working as a barista on her gap year (like all switched on people). She will shortly be performing in a DST production for the first time, in Adrian Mole The Musical.

Plans: Helena’s relevant experience for this role includes her position as the Welfare Officer of Trevs Cheer, her elected membership of Welfare Campaigns Committee, serving as a frep this year.

Experience: Amongst other goals, she is campaigning on a platform of updating Welfare Campaigns, as well as promoting anonymous messaging services to help make Welfare as accessible and inclusive as possible.

Publicity Officer

Sarah Margerison

About Sarah: Sarah is a Second Year History Student, whose interests include reading, playing musical instruments in groups such as TCOS, and participating in a wide variety of Trevs Societies.

Experience: Sarah has served as the Livers’ Out Rep this year, running housing campaigns and assisting with welfare through her position on the Welfare Campaigns Committee. She has experience publicising these campaigns on platforms such as Canva, something that is vitally important for any Publicity Officer to be au fait with!

Plans: Sarah’s plans for Publicity Officer are to continue the work done by Ben, the current Publicity Officer, which has seen Social Media Engagement on @trevsjcr flourish, whilst further promoting some of the lessen seen aspects of the JCR. She wants to promote interaction with the JCR as much as possible through publicity.

JCR Chair

Andrew Hamilton

About Andrew: Andrew is a First Year Politics and IR student from Northern Ireland. Outside of Trevs, Andrew is a disability rights activist and lobbyist who has worked on projects with governmental organisations such as the UN, UK government and Northern Ireland institutions advocating on disability policy issues.

Experience: Andrew describes himself as an active member of the JCR, which as the current Chair, I can definitely attest to. He is a member of Steering Committee, assisting with standing orders and selecting motions for meetings. He also, to quote him, likes “reading the standing orders as a hobby”.

Plans: In his own words, Andrew’s platform is threefold: he is running on a platform of “Empowerment & engagement, Inclusion and representation and Accountability and oversight”, and he is committed to engaging further with potentially disenfranchised members of the JCR community, and making the JCR as transparent as possible.

Technical Manager

Dan Wattis

About Dan: Dan is a third year Electronics Engineering student, who serves as the President of Trevs Gamesoc and Trevs LGBTQ+ Society. Dan also spends their time in Durham’s music scene through Musical Theatre, Orchestras and Jazz groups, as well as working tech or photography at events all around Durham.

Experience: In their own words, Dan has been involved in Trevs Tech since joining the college back in 2022, having run over a dozen Unpluggeds and helped out with Tech at various college events, such as Live on the Hill, Trevstock and Winter Ball. In their own words, they have “practically being doing this job already”, for the last year. Dan also has Exec experience, having served as the Clubs and Societies Officer this year.

Plans: Dan has three main plans for the role: firstly, they want to see the continued growth of the Technical Committee, which has become the biggest it has ever been this year under their de facto stewardship. Secondly, they want to engage Freshers to show them how to get involved with doing the Tech at events. Thirdly, they want to re-energise the “rather neglected” MASH room.

Other candidates

Lastly, it would be remiss of me to not acknowledge the important role played in this election by RON (Re-Open Nominations), indisputably the most committed electoral candidate (standing in no less than 6 positions this time around). This option is there for the electorate to demonstrate their opposition to a candidate or candidates, therefore advocating for the nominations for the role to be re-opened.

Voting is now open, and will close this coming Sunday, 16^th February, at 20:00GMT. Vote here!

Images used with permission of each candidate