All Student Vote (Summer 2022)

Warwick Wellbeing Strategy Review

This motion seeks to call on the University to open an investigation into the effectiveness of their Wellbeing Strategy.

This Union Notes: 

This section should include any facts, figures or statements that you believe are relevant to the topic of your policy. Remember in this section clear and effective referencing is important. 

1. During the Spring Term of 2021, three students living on Warwick’s campus committed suicide within the space of three weeks. 

2. This frequency of student suicide at the University of Warwick is substantially higher than the national average. 

3. The university administration’s Wellbeing Strategy 2020-24 places, in the words of the Registrar in a statement to the SU, an “emphasis on prevention.”1 

4. Warwick students continue to suffer from a widespread mental health crisis, while student trust in and satisfaction with the university’s Wellbeing Support Services remains dismal, with the recurrent criticism being the lack of access to direct, personal support. 

5. The Registrar has admitted, in their response to the SU’s motion ‘Save the RLT: Halt Rushed Reforms and Protect Campus Welfare Support,’ that “consultation on sharing the details of the proposal was not as it should have been,” demonstrating systemic failures in procedure and oversight at the most senior levels of the university administration, in regard to ensuring wellbeing policies are devised and enacted with sufficient care.  

6. Despite this admission of inadequate care, oversight, transparency, and scrutiny, the Registrar reported that the UEB intends to continue with the dismantling and replacement of the RLT before the start of the 2022-23 academic year. 

7. The Director of Wellbeing and Safeguarding, has stated an intention of avoiding “learned helplessness” among students, and cited this as justification for removing systems of direct, personal support for students, including the Mental Health Coordinators and Residential Life Team.  

1. “Learned helplessness” refers to a psychological condition wherein an individual becomes convinced that they must rely primarily, if not solely, on others to ensure their wellbeing. Despite elaboration on this belief being requested by the RLT, the Director of Wellbeing and Safeguarding has not provided any justification, nuance, or explanation for their apparent claim that systems such as the RLT and Mental Health Coordinators encourage “learned helplessness” in students. 

8. Despite repeated requests from the SU, Senate, and RLT, the Director of Wellbeing and Safeguarding has failed to produce any evidence of the consultation on which they based their proposal to dismantle and replace the RLT, or the paper she submitted to the University Executive Board in December 2021, or a copy of the presentation they was recently obliged to give to the SU sabbatical officers at the Registrar’s behest. 

This Union Believes: 

This section should include opinions or supporting statements for your policy.  

1. The University’s Wellbeing Strategy is a failure. 

2. The priorities of the senior university administration are not aligned with the interests of Warwick’s students or staff. 

3. The university’s de facto policy of refusing to make any official statement to the students upon the death of one of their peers by suicide contributes to its culture of opaqueness, suggesting a continued desire to “sweep under the rug” any incidents which could potentially harm the university’s reputation – as the university attempted to do during the Rape Chat Scandal – and suggesting to other students that the university values superficial optics over their wellbeing. 

4. Continuing with the university’s current Wellbeing Strategy poses a systemic danger to the wellbeing and lives of Warwick’s students, and places unreasonable pressure on university staff – particularly personal tutors – to compensate for the Strategy’s failings. 

5. The Director of Wellbeing and Safeguarding’s apparent belief that providing the direct, personal support Warwick’s students will create “learned helplessness” among them is both condescending and dangerous to Warwick’s students, indicating a belief that she is justified in further reducing the availability of support and fully intends to do so further, as evidenced by the replacement of the RLT with a system comprised primarily of Third Year undergraduates available only between 17:00-23:00. 

6. The behaviour of members of the senior administration towards Warwick’s students and staff, particularly in their response to criticism of their plans to dismantle and replace the Residential Life Team, has highlighted a culture of contempt towards those outside the central administration, and undermined the administration’s self-professed commitment to transparency and accountability. 

7. The University Executive Board and Senior Leadership Team’s procedures for scrutinising their own policies are inadequate, as illustrated by Registrar’s admission that the consultation conducted by the Director of Wellbeing and Safeguarding regarding the replacement of the RLT was “not as it should have been;” and the condemnation of and opposition to this replacement by bodies, such as the SU and UCU, which the Director had previously misled into supporting her proposal. 

8. The dishonest conduct of the Director of Wellbeing and Safeguarding towards the SU and UCU, combined with her repeated refusal to provide adequate justification for her proposal or documentation of her consultation, even on explicit request, undermines the SU’s trust in any further dealings with her and in her commitment to ensuring the wellbeing of Warwick’s students. 

9. The aforementioned dishonesty lends itself to the hypothesis that the UEB and other members of the SLT may have likewise been misled by the Director of Wellbeing and Safeguarding, and indicates that their claims about the effectiveness of her department, to any party, therefore cannot be trusted implicitly. 

10. The Registrar’s admission of the fault in how the Director of Wellbeing and Safeguarding and their department conducted themselves must be followed up by an investigation into the failures in oversight and procedure by the UEB and SLT which allowed such faults to be missed and/or ignored prior to the SU motion.  

This Union Resolves: 

This section should be about how you want the SU to react, the outcome of this policy. Remember to mandate specific departments/sabbatical officers; this will make things easier for future accountability 

1. To formally call upon the Vice-Chancellor and the University Executive Board to open an investigation into the effectiveness of the university’s Wellbeing Strategy.  

2. To work with the university in identifying the flaws of the current Wellbeing Strategy and related departments, and to consult on reforming and improving these areas on behalf of Warwick’s students and staff. 

3. To launch a parallel investigation into the state of wellbeing at Warwick, with the intention of collating a broad range of testimony and evidence from students, staff, and other relevant parties, to aid in devising a revised Wellbeing Strategy for the university and ensuring this continues to serve the needs of Warwick’s students. 

4. To liaise with the University Senate, Faculty Representatives, and Residential Life Team, among others, to identify points of systemic failure within the university’s Wellbeing Strategy and how they affect university staff. 

5. To continue opposing the university’s proposed replacement of the Residential Life Team, as per the motion passed unanimously by the Student Council on 08-03-22 to that effect. 

6. To call upon the UEB to share the consultation and information presented to them by the Director of Wellbeing and Safeguarding – which they felt was sufficient to justify voting for the dismantling and replacement of the RLT in December 2021 – with the SU, UCU, and University Senate, both to restore some measure of trust by demonstrating the transparency the Registrar has told the SU the UEB is committed to, and to prove that there are not crucial elements of the UEB’s decision regarding the RLT which they are attempting to hide.  

7. To contact local parliamentary and council representatives whose constituents include university students and staff, informing them of the situation concerning Warwick’s Wellbeing Strategy and the RLT, and requesting their support in ensuring an adequate response by the university, particularly in light of the contempt for the students and Students’ Union shown by the Director of Wellbeing and Safeguarding and the lack of sufficient oversight by the UEB.