Your VP for Student Engagement candidates: Felicia Dean

Alex Charilaou 10 March 2021

Image by: Felicia Dean

Felicia is a fourth and final year student studying Digital Anthropology with Data Analytics who is standing to become the Vice-President for Student Engagement. Her experience includes being a former President of the Anthropology Society, Kent Union Activities Network Chair and the Team Leader of Canterbury Homeless Outreach.

Felicia said that although the Sabbatical had ‘done their best’ given the circumstances of the pandemic, there wasn’t a good enough effort on the part of the officers to reach out and communicate with societies and university groups, especially where they’ve really needed support with the move to a digital platform.

After Felicia has delivered on her ‘first point of order’, affecting better communication between the Union, students and the university, she will go forward to develop new groups and societies. She said that societies need ‘better representation’ and that fostering university-wide cooperation would be optimal.

Felicia explained that the Union needs a ‘reshuffling’ of finances, and, despite last year’s referendum on the subject, she would like to ‘look at’ our membership of the National Union of Students. Felicia was also open about wanting to ‘reshuffle’ staff at the Kent Union, though explicitly ruled out wanting to call for redundancies.

Quick Analysis:

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Felicia came across well in our interview and was confident about the shape of her campaign thus far.

Felicia’s Kent Union experience is impressive, her work as a society president and membership of the Activities Network will stand her in excellent stead if she does get elected on the 11th. The role does demand much more than experience of course, and Felicia might have to do a little more to convince people that she has the leadership skills necessary to make a success of the VP role. I also noted a certain vagueness in Felicia’s proposals, such as the ‘reshuffling’ of the Union finances she wants to push for – this makes it difficult to believe in the efficacy of her ideas.

Nevertheless, Felicia seems a competent and confident candidate for the VP Student Engagement role, and it will be interesting to see how the final days of the campaign change the dynamic of this tight race for the role.