My experience in various roles (e.g. as a JCR Vice President, a society chair, a union officer, and an ordinary student) has led me to believe that our major problem is one of attitude.

The approach of the University is often "Wouldn't it be nice if there were no students?" this attitude seems to slowly rub off on LUSU. For a students' union, students simply have to come first. And everyone in the union needs to start working this way. The fact that there are a lot of students, a lot of JCRs, a lot of societies and a lot of clubs... is just not a good enough reason for ignoring students who have a concern, or for sending away students with a great idea empty handed. In LUSU students should always come first.

As a union we need to acknowledge the hard work put in by elected officers. By my count there are 55 Union Council Officers, 142 JCR officers, about 600 Society Exec members and about 210 AU Club Exec members, that's roughly 1000 executive positions. If each involved student was to only hold one position that would mean 1 in 12 students were executive officers of some sort. Even given the fact that most involved students hold 2 or 3 positions, that's still a huge part of the student population putting in the effort to make Lancaster a better place for all students. LUSU needs to work with all these groups and people and support them, while they get on with providing the services they do to our students. No part is more important than another, and many of the core activities that LUSU aims to provide are actually done by students on LUSU's behalf. LUSU's role is to support this with encouragement, advice, acknowledgement for a job well done and ofcourse funding. After all, this is why we have a union and why the university gives it about £ 442,000 each year. LUSU should be a facilitator and supporter, not try and be everyones boss.