Dr Chris O'Donnell (University of the West of Scotland)

Election address

I am a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and the Branch Secretary at UWS. UWS is a post 92 University, as an institution, we educate and impact in our local community, with many of our students coming from Scotland's most deprived areas.  I am a working-class academic, someone proud of their heritage, its impact on my commitment to fairness, equality in gender, race, role, and the right to be valued.  I am standing for two Scottish roles as they have a seat at the UK wide NEC and HEC. 

It's important that the lived experience of Scottish post 92 HE is represented at NEC.

For me HE is a job, I know that many of us see it also see it as a calling and its this commitment, that is used to exploit you.   Many of us are employed precariously, overworked, our Gestalt devalued, debased and quantified into metrics.   The COVID-19 crisis brings that exploitation into sharp focus, members are being compressed from every angle, instructed to be agile, swift, creative, world-leading.  Whilst support students in crises when we are ill ourselves, our commitment to the values of HE that attracted us to this profession are used to manipulate us.    Our lived experiences are a lens that brings clarity to your undoubted skills and commitment to HE but that brings sharp focus to the malady that working in HE has become.   The university's responses to the pandemic are to pressure you into accepting, an increasing workload, unmitigated stress, mental health crises, and the constant threat of redundancy.    This against a backdrop of institutional managers using increasingly precarious contracts, supporting an attack on your pension, cultivating the fetishization of the measurement of our "productivity", and perpetuating a narrative that you are never good enough.

I see members that are "the University experience", you are talented, you are changing, shaping lives, and the wider communities that we are so strongly a part of.     I want our union to deliver a vision of academia that reclaims the University as a workplace that delivers learning, research and a cultural voice.  It should be a workplace free from, unfeasible workloads, precarity, racism, inequality, bullying, harassment, abuse, and fear.

I am deeply committed to providing effective representation, I have a reputation as an active and engaged member, committed to defending transparent governance, accountability and equality.  I have been inspired by several talented, committed colleagues from across HE who bring with them an immense skill, diverse lived experiences and commitment to making our Union function for your good.   That's why I agreed to be part of the UCU Commons slate, and you can read more about the group here (https://ucucommons.wordpress.com/).

Thank you for reading.