Committee for Student Support and Rights (ComSSaR)
ComSSaR is an exciting new committee which brings together all student officers with a student support or rights role and aims to give students a more powerful voice within the University and support student support officers in their role!
ComSSaR is coordinated by the CUSU-GU Welfare and Rights Officer and will be your chance to make your voice heard within the University, the Student's Union and wider student body, your chance to raise problems and concerns, and find solutions, your chance to share ideas and experience, and a great opportunity to meet like-minded people and work to make a real difference together.
It meets every other week, with a mixture of training and discussion-focussed sessions. You can find out more in the 'Short introduction to ComSSaR' below.
Top ten reasons to get involved with ComSSaR!
1. Support your students and peers better
2. Gain skills and training
3. A space to identify problems and share concerns
4. Work together to achieve real change
5. An opportunity to share your skills and train others
6. Have a voice and direct representation in the University
7. Keep informed and get involved of the many campaigns and events in the University
8. Get the support and representation YOU want from YOUR student Union
9. Meet like-minded students and have fun!
10. Looks great on your CV!
Skills and training
One of the most important ways in which we can support students and achieve short-term change is by developing our peer support skills to enable us to support and represent others effectively. ComSSaR is a forum for training and developing skills, as well as for campaigning and discussion. Remember: its your forum, and your space, so do ask for training on issues and skills you want!
ComSSaR is a great way to develop your skills, both informally and formally. Across the year you will have the opportunity to receive training on a variety of peer-support areas from core skills to cultural awareness to understanding mental health. These will all be delivered by professional services inside and outside the university, such as the Student Advice Service, the University Counselling Service, Open Out and the Disabilities Resource Centre.
You will also have the opportunity to develop a whole load of other skills simply by participating, such as committee skills, team work skills and planning skills (great for the CV!)
Achieve real change
ComSSaR's aim is to achieve real change within the university and colleges and work together to support students and work to make sure their University experience is the best it possibly can be. This covers everything from awareness-raising to structural change within the University, and its only through working together that we can make this happen!
Have a voice and direct representation
As a student officer, you encounter so many issues and things you'd like to change, but don't get the opportunity or time to raise your concerns and ideas, really delve into them or plan possible ways forward. The aim of ComSSaR is to provide this opportunity to raise concerns or ideas and to positively work through them together.
As JCR/MCR officers you are represented by other members of your JCR/MCR on CUSU and GU council, and from there, by your sabbatical officers in wider university committees. ComSSaR is your opportunity for direct representation within the university (through the Welfare and Rights officer) but also for your view points and ideas to be carried through and represented in other colleges (by fellow members of ComSSaR).
It is through these networks that our individual voices together are powerful. ComSSaR allows you to share the knowledge and ideas to help you improve your welfare and rights skills. By sharing the workload of events, campaigns or planning it allows us to aim higher and achieve more- a successful campaign (for example a zero-tolerance scheme or a peer2peer support scheme ComSSaR allows us to coordinate campaigns, petitions or publicity events across the University for Greater Impact, and gives us a untied voice and the power of numbers in an argument.
Coordinate and link up events and work together
As part time officers, you have very busy lives and loads going on. By linking and coordinating, and pooling resources and facilities, we can maximise the services and support we offer. For example, does the college next door run aerobics classes? Maybe you can pool resources and offer a service at your own college, for example yoga, in return for aerobics?
Learn from each other
As officers, you all have great ideas and amazing achievements! At ComSSaR, we can share skills, ideas and knowledge. How do you set up an anonymous email service for secret questions? What worked in freshers week? What didn't? What is you big achievement in your college, and how did you make it happen?
Identify major problems (and solve them!)
As an individual in a college, it might seem like there are vast number of things you'd like to change or problems you'd like to address, but that there are too many and they are too difficult for you to solve alone on a college level. Often the problems you encounter won't be specific to you but are common to lots of colleges and lots of people: by sharing individual issues and concerns, we can identify common areas and systematic problems, and work together to solve them.
The students' union is here to support and represent you! We have the time and resources to support you and your ideas and take them further. This could be in taking a paper to a committee to address a long standing systematic issue or me supporting you to run a survey or write a paper or letter to your college governing body.
Structure and organisation:
ComSSaR is a new committee, and its structure is very much open for discussion! It's here to serve you! Generally, we'll have a mixture of training sessions and discussion/planning sessions. The basic building blocks are:
Agenda
Each session will have an agenda to make sure that we cover everything we need to get through, but this isn't meant to prevent conversation or be overly formal. If there is something you want to raise at any point, just go for it! If you want to add something to the agenda email comssar@cusu.cam.ac.uk. Possible Agenda items you might want to include are:
NOTICES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS: For example events in your college or Cambridge, upcoming CUSU/GU elections, campaigns that others might want to get involved in
POINTS FOR DISCUSSION: Problems, questions, concerns or issues you have experienced, a big achievement you have made and would like to share (and how you did it so we can do it too!), a question you'd like to ask to the group about an identified problem (For example how could we make mental health less stigmatised? What are the accommodation regulations in your college?)
POINTS FOR PLANNING: If we've identified a major problem, we can set some time throughout the year to plan how to tackle it, and we can also work together to plan campaigns and events, both within colleges and within the university.
QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, SUGGESTIONS, IDEAS ANYTHING ELSE!
email conssar@cusu.ac.uk to add something to the agenda
Focus groups and working groups
Throughout the year we'll be running a series of small groups aiming to identify and work on specific issues, for example, how to achieve equality of provision of finance, identifying sexual health needs or campaigning for tutor and supervisor training.
Membership
ComSSaR will meet every other Thursday 5pm-7pm in term, and is primarily intended for College Welfare Officers, LGBT officers and international officers, but is open to any officer or student who has a Student Support or Rights role among their peers.
Reminders and agenda items will be circulated before the meetings, and it would be great if as many people as possible could reply in advance saying whether or not they will be able to attend (so I know how many people to expect).
If your interested in Wlefare, Student Support and Rights, please email comssar@cusu.ac.uk to join.
Shared agreement for confidentiality and sensitivity
You might want to talk about specific instances or problems which relate to individual students or groups of students in your college. Remember to be sensitive when discussing anything like this, and to not pass on names or make their identity obvious in any other way within the group.
Remember to be aware that sensitive issues might come up in discussion; think very carefully about what you want to discuss outside and avoid passing on discussion points in the group which are either confidential or very upsetting, for example stories about individual students (even if you don't know what they are called). ComSSaR is intended to be a positive space in which everyone feels included, accepted and valued. Aim to be non-judgmental and non-critical. ComSSaR is a forum for discussion and debate, but always should aim to work forward in a positive and encouraging way.
What's on this term?
ComSSaR II: Planning/Campaigning focus
Working out your role, planning your year and achieving change
Thursday, 3rd November from 6pm-8pm, GU building
ComSSaR III: Training Focus: Understanding mental health
Thursday, 17th November from 6pm-8pm, GU building
ComSSaR IV: Reports, Plans & Christmas Party
and possibly a Christmas formal….
Thursday, 1st December, GU building
Maps, directions and contacts
You can email me on welfare@cusu.ac.uk, ring me on 01223 76 16 90 or drop by the CUSU Offices on the New Museums Site or Grad Union on Mill Lane. I'm split between the two Student Advice Service offices, so if please email in advance to make sure I'm in before you make a special trip. For specifically ComSSaR related stuff (RSVP, questions, agenda etc.), please email me at comssar@cusu.ac.uk.
Meetings are held in the Graduate Union Building. For a map see http://www.gradunion.cam.ac.uk/gradunion/
Downloads:
A Short Guide to ComSSaR
ComSSaR handbook
Student Support handbook, contacts and resources
The Student Support Handbook is aimed at providing the basic information, support and advice any College officer needs if they are in a support role. Please email the Welfare and rights officer (welfare@cusu.ac.uk) if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.
The Useful contact Sheet has all the key resources and contacts listed on one sheet- ideal for referring students and putting up around colleges so students know about all the resources on offer in the University and beyond.