Student President Robert Foster

 

This year’s James Watt College (North Ayrshire Campus) student president Robert Foster, 31, talks to our reporter Michael Francis about the role and his responsibilities to the college and its students.

 What made you want to become student President Robert?

 “I served as Vice President last year, and the president from last year wasn’t running, so I felt I had a duty to run this year because I had an understanding of student politics and so I felt well placed to represent the student body, given my experience last year.”

 Do you think being student president could inflict upon your personal studies?

 “ I hope not, I don’t know yet because I’ve just started.  I’m doing an HNC Social Science this year so I will be out on placement a lot plus I have to find seventeen and a half hours a week to devote to my position so it will be a challenge but I’m sure I’ll manage.”

What are your views on student funding?

 “I don’t think there’s enough, I don’t think there’s anywhere near enough for the students especially young students who don’t get any help whatsoever because their parents’ income is taken into account and maybe a lot of the younger students don’t live with their parents, in that case I don’t believe their parents income should be assessed. There’s also a lack of funding for the college itself to employ lecturers because we lost nearly a hundred staff last year due to cuts from the government so they need to up their game.”

Is there any way you can see of changing it?

“The only way to change it is to plough more money into it; I think the plan that the education secretary is proposing of merging the colleges to save money is obscene.  He believes that merging colleges means that there are fewer colleges therefore there are lower costs, it just doesn’t make any sense.”

Were management pleased with your appointment?

“I don’t know! You would have to ask management.  I think they would have been pleased with anyone as long as it is it someone they can work with then it doesn’t really matter, because it’s my job to represent the students not the management, you just take the issues to management.”

 Were you proud of the margin by which you won the vote?

 “I was obviously happy that I won but I was slightly disappointed with the turnout of the votes.  I don’t think there was so much an apathy among the students, rather that the election wasn’t very well advertised. There was one wooden box that said vote here and it wasn’t advertised as voting Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday or even a big banner saying vote now.  I even had to visit the James Watt Facebook page myself and post a notice about the election, but even then the message was limited as not everyone’s a fan of the Facebook page.”

If you were hosting a debate show like Have I Got News For You who would you like as your guest host?

”I would like the first minister to be one of my guests for obvious reasons mainly that I would like to discuss student issues with him. “

Robert can be contacted by coming in to the office, which is G23 on the days I am in which will be going up on the notice boards soon.  You can also email me at my address, which is Rfoster@jameswatt.ac.uk.