Sustainability Zone (28th October 2014)

Apologies and attendance was noted as above (note: Scott McCarthy, Nickola Moore and Tony Addison were not present).  BT welcomed everyone to the first Sustainability Zone Committee meeting of the year.  

The minutes for the previous Sustainability Zone Committee meeting in June were approved. A review is given below. Some action points have been carried over from the previous meeting, see list of Actions.

In the review of actions from the previous meeting, the following points were noted:

2.1 BT updated that SB and BT have met to discuss what was wanted in the plans for gender neutral toilets, and BT has emailed Kamaljit (Diversity Officer) to arrange a meeting to formally discuss these plans. (ongoing action)

2.2 Regarding an update on University discuss and the visit to Sussex University, TA will provide an update at the next Zone meeting. (ongoing action)

2.3 BT updated that the Essential Medicines policy lapse was confirmed with Medsin and there will is no further discussion required on this policy lapse.

2.4 LB will chase up the numbers on student participants for previous E&E events, including E&E week. (ongoing action)

2.5 In preparation for the next Zone meeting, BT will explore the option of a central SUSU travel policy, for student groups funding. (ongoing action)

2.6 SB updated that E&D Committee are currently working to implement the Trans Inclusion Policy, including regarding gender neutral titles for student records systems.

2.7 BT and LB updated on the E&E Promise Tree, which had been disposed over the Summer - a new one was created for Freshers' using the twigs handed over from last year, and the tree was a success at Highfield and Winchester!  BT will be publishing a blog post on this story soon.

2.8 Over the Summer a final E&E Officer report was not by Charlotte Hollands (former E&E Officer), however this has now lapsed.

2.9 Over the Summer BT met with Jess Lobo (former Sustainability Action Intern) regarding ideas for Freshers’ Sustainability activities, and a callout was sent to E&D and E&E Committees for ideas.

2.10 Charlotte Hollands (former E&E Officer) and LB met over the Summer to discuss Freshers’ Festival activities ideas and handover duties.

2.11 The E&E by-laws were written up and published as a formal document

2.12 BT and TK drafted the BEES Officer role and responsibilities, and over the Summer via email, the Zone Committee approved this role and responsibilities. E&E by-elections for the position of BEES Officer and two other roles, will take place in late November.

2.13 Regarding checking feasibility of the Recycle on your Doorstep collection of kitchen items – this was not feasible, however British Heart Foundation bins were used on the Concourse for a few months. BT needs to find the figures on the amount collected, and will discuss the option of having the bins year-round, with TA – who is currently awaiting a reply on this from the University. LB also met with Southampton City Council waste officers, and is discussing getting permanent clothes banks for campus. (ongoing action)

2.14 For the University's annual Sustainability Survey due to go out in January, the questions and timescale are limiting for BEES (which needs statistics from this survey as part of the project's reporting to funders).  LB will ask Julia Kendal (University, Sustainability Action) regarding the survey's timescale and content. (ongoing action)

2.15 Regarding ‘communicating SUSU’s processes on Food Waste’ – this will be discussed at the next meeting, with an update from TA (ongoing action).

2.16 BT updated there are now more vegetarian and vegan meal options in The Bridge and also Bar 3.

LB outlined the officer report and further updates on E&E Committee’s recent activities.  LB updated on her recent visit to Winchester School of Art (WSA), where links were established and will now be developed.  E&E Committee held the first formal committee meeting of this year, in October, and discussed committee roles.  E&E Committee by-elections will take place in mid-November, for three roles: BEES Officer, Energy & Water Co-ordinator, and Sustainability Action Co-ordinator. 

LB reported that Blackout will be on 14th November and signups have now closed, having recruited over 200 volunteers.

For this year's private accommodation energy project, E&E is currently looking at case studies for developing this project and talking with the Environment Centre, based in the city – they give free resources regarding energy efficiency in homes. Plus links with Southampton Accreditation Scheme for Student Housing (SASSH) are being looked into.

This year the committee are also looking into increasing E&E's promotion; the committee have been promoting use of the University's Sustainability e-learning module.  LB is a supervisor on the module, and will update on numbers of students/staff who have used it, at the next meeting. (action)

Planning for the ethical fashion show is on-going, plus plans for E&E Week and other related events for the year - this planning is currently on hold until the relevant co-ordinator positions are elected.

LB noted that E&E are looking into bringing BEES together with an upcoming Eco Campus Audit, to conduct audits of the University and SUSU.

Regarding transport provision for Winchester campus (to/from SUSU) LB is looking to meet with VP Sport (Katie) and VP Student Communities (Anjit) – the discussion is on-going and LB aims to push on this.  LB has talked with the University's Transport Manager, currently developing travel plans this year - so this is a good opportunity to bring Winchester travel into this planning, as this has not been included as a priority.  LB noted that currently the Winchester travel options are looking quite costly, for running daily minibuses.

BT added that the new Winchester Manager will soon be in post, and this should help facilitate this travel planning.

SB added to the E&D officer report, noting   that over the last two weeks in October, Black History Week posters have been displayed around SUSU, commenting that people have engaged with them really well, and that this is the first time E&D committee have done something for this event in the past few years and is good work to build on for next year.

Trustees have now had Inclusivity training being run as part of the SUSU Your Skills programme, and more sessions are planned for student officers, E&D and others to attend.

SB updated that Winchester School of Art (WSA) have been talking with E&D Committee, and WSA made first contact so this is a great step – on Wednesday 29th October E&D Committee is due to go up to WSA to have a lunch with interested members there, and are looking to start doing events with/for them soon.  E&D Committee is also going to have a Winchester Officer, which will cover this role well.

SB reported that the University's Accessibility Discussion Group is coming up - this is an opportunity to raise issues and see what is out there.  Scott McCarthy is keen to attend.

E&D Committee will be holding by-elections at the next meeting, and are inviting Student Groups Reps along to attend for this meeting, to hopefully get more people coming along and involved.

BT updated that Sabb plans were shown at the recent Union Council meeting - the relevant areas for this Zone are: Equality (with SB, for E&D Committee, and Zoe Hart, SUSU Head of People Development).  This will involve a studentcoaching programme, the anti sexual harassment campaign, and developing sustainability training for students/staff.

The other area is Employability – BT is using the research conducted over the Summer which looked into what SUSU and other Students' Unions offers in terms of developing student employability, and the best practice, in drawing up a Project Initiation Document (PID) regarding SUSU developing this over the next few years, and linking more with Careers Destinations as part of this work.

Following this, SB asked why there not yet an Employability student leader; BT stated she is keen for this to happen and it is being discussed, and will be taken to the next Student Leader Review.

BT noted that SUSU's Your Skills programme is offering a range of free training sessions this term, and would like Zone members to promote these to students, to make sure students make the most of the programme, and to prevent any sessions having to be cancelled (action).

BT updated that: she has written a blog in October for Black History month; the Trans Inclusion proposal is being developed with SB to implement the policy; this year's Inspiring Women event is currently in planning, and requested ideas for the fourth speaker at the event (action) - plus encouraged having more student stalls alongside Southampton Women in Business, SUSU's LGBT Society, Lean In, and others. 

Eco fashion week planning is ongoing, with EC and LB.

Wellbeing day is taking place on 4th November, with a range of talks, and arts and crafts events within SUSU, plus Peer Support drop-in sessions.  This event involves SUSU's mental health campaign, and importantly, the University and SUSU signing the Mindful Employer Charter.

Lastly, BT noted that a Southampton PhD student is doing a project on improving participation of diverse groups at University, involving a questionnaire which SUSU can add more questions to, to gather data as part of this.

TK gave an outline of the BEES update report, noting that over the programme's first year this involved a lot of project setup, pilot audits within the University and SUSU, and as part of this there was a lot of learning for developing the BEES audit methodology, ready to use in local organisations this year.

This term BEES has been involved in Freshers events for volunteer recruitment, and in October the Sabb team visited Portswood to get local businesses there onboard with BEES, gaining new business contacts to organise audits for this year.

In November BEES will hopefully be running local audits, with this term's newly trained volunteers.

TK noted that she is also project managing Blackout this year, which will be taking place on November 14th. 

Democracy Zone requested feedback on the penalty scale and starting points in the updated Disciplinary Committee penalty guidance document.

Regarding question 1, on the criteria for the penalty scale, the committee agreed with the criteria, noting that it is positive that the Valuing Diversity policy is mentioned in this scale at quite a high level (level 3), and that it is good to be broad within the criteria for this penalty scale (decision).

On question 2, regarding the examples of mitigating circumstances, the committee suggested for the initial sentence explaining this section to state ‘change/alter the severity’ instead of ‘could reduce the severity of the punishment’.  The committee agreed with the examples of mitigating circumstances.

For question 3, on the starting points, the committee suggested that the penalty of community work is specified as for 'both individual, and for a whole group's members'.  Additionally, the requirement of training/education should always be considered by the Disciplinary Committee along with the decided penalty.

The committee also discussed consideration of scale; whether there is individual or group responsibility, for example, whether the group's culture was responsible - as the current list seems to relate to individuals, not specific to a whole group and its collective responsibility.  Therefore it was noted that the Disciplinary Committee should consider whether it has been done by everyone, or a few.

BT further noted that it is also important that the Disciplinary panel itself is diverse and balanced, and should be open, for example - if there are eight positions on the panel, two or more seats could be allocated for female-identified persons.

8.1 E&E policy – priority actions

BT updated that last year, BT and TK worked on merging seven E&E-related policies, consolidating them into one coherent SUSU E&E policy ( http://blogs.susu.org/policy/2014/05/21/ethics-and-environment-policy/ ).  BT requested the Zone Committee's steer on where to focus for action within SUSU's E&E policy, noting that this policy is about driving SUSU to become more ethical.

LB stated that to choose the main areas to focus on for action within SUSU, a plan is needed (for development following this discussion) which says where SUSU is currently, and where SUSU wants to get to.  It also needs to be considered what limits there are on what can be done; what SUSU can do directly, and what would require lobbying of the University to do - plus whether to start with big action areas, or something smaller to build then on.

BT noted that the seven key objectives in this policy link up with E&E Co-ordinator roles, and therefore filter out the action areas that are too large and focus on areas that the E&E committee can work effectively on.  LB noted that Awareness and Action (objective 7) already takes place, within E&E committee's  work, and therefore does not need to be included in the priority actions.

Regarding Purchasing of Good and Services (objective 5), BT stated that Corporate Critic (an online product which rates the Corporate Social Responsibility records of companies - http://www.corporatecritic.org/ ) is being used by SUSU's Commercial Development team to assess the ethics and environmental responsibility of current and new suppliers, so that is a significant part of working towards this objective.  The Corporate Critic students survey conducted over the 2013 Christmas period, was used to rank priorities for the Corporate Critic categories adopted by SUSU ( https://www.susu.org/representation/minutes/931 )

In terms of further working on this area, BT stated that a good starting point would be the ethical sourcing of Student Leader hoodies, and then rolling out for other major SUSU hoodie purchases.  This requires identifying who buys hoodies across the organisation, and then seeing if this sourcing and buying can be co-ordinated - first talking with the SUSU Marketing team as many of the orders are made by them (action).

TK noted that SUSU has signed up to the Procurement Flexible Framework (a sustainable procurement self assessment mechanism widely used by public bodies) and is working to Level 3.  However, it is not clear who agreed to this, so this requires following up to clarify (action).

EC identified the additional area of Waste Management, objective 1 - particularly points 1.2 and 1.3 - as both residents and students have been communicating with EC regarding the need for reducing waste produced, and increasing recycling and re-use.  EC suggested she could work more on this area, together with local residents, students, charities, etc., and this could be a timely activity at the end of the academic year, to coincide with students leaving their accommodation in the summer. 

Other suggested ideas to consider, were enhancing wildlife and green areas on-site, and planting more areas of wild plants and flowers.  BT will take these ideas on areas to start looking at, for discussion with the Chief Exec (action).  LB will start drafting out plans of what work E&E could cover (action).

8.2 Union plan – focus area

BT explained that the new Union plan for 2015-20 is being drafted, and was discussed at October's Union Council meeting ( https://www.susu.org/downloads/democracy/papers/9_972_1413394179.pdf ).  The next stage is for Zone committees to discuss what strategic focus areas are required, refining the current list of 17 suggested areas/words, to around 5-9, for which the Zones will flesh out what will be done in these areas.  Sustainability is currently in the list of focus areas, and no longer listed in SUSU's values. 

In terms of Sustainability Zone discussing the focus area(s), BT explained this could for example, involve having Sustainability as a focus area, to include equality, ethics and environment (currently these are not listed).  BT suggested discussing whether it is better to include 'sustainability' as an all-encompassing word, or whether it needs to have more specific and actionable focus areas.  SB noted that the current Union Plan is specific, the new Plan will be more open - an important consideration for this new five year plan is that people will lose the meaning if not specific, and it will become difficult to interpret.  TK also noted to look ahead – to consider in five years' time what would we like to be?  Then look at whether this currently is or is not happening.  BT sees the Union Plan as the way to get students more engaged in what SUSU is doing - or it could be about change in/for the organisation - so there are two different ways this plan could be used.

It was noted that as trustees, the focus is on the organisation - as student leaders, the focus is on student engagement, getting students to be more sustainable.

There were questions regarding what part the Zone is playing in the process, of feedback for the Union Plan, and BT will check on this with DMW so that the Zone will be ready on deciding and providing feedback (action).

Logo for E&E

LB asked regarding the new E&E logo – BT will find out about the logo and send it through (action).

The next Sustainability Zone Committee will be held in December.