Ms. Kudakwashe Rejoice Chingono SRC Second Semester Report 2018

Rhodes>SRC>Latest News

Kudakwashe Rejoice Chingono
Kudakwashe Rejoice Chingono

Third term was a very short term but in the same breath it was a challenging term for the University at large. The university was mourning the loss of three of its own students and three memorial services were held for these students. The University had an academic shutdown that was led by the SRC on 6th and 7th of August to mourn Khensani Maseko’s death and also to talk and reflect on issues about and related to Sexual and Gender Based Violence and its effects on students at Rhodes University and other institutions of higher learning in South Africa. This drew a lot of publicity around Rhodes University and the SRC in many cases had to face questions from media and other platforms around issues of sexual and gender-based violence. The president and I were invited, and we went for a committee meeting of parliament in Cape Town which discusses crime and gender-based violence.

However apart from what I mentioned above, in third term this is what I was doing as the Vice-President:

Meetings

I was attending my council meetings, executive meetings and the committee meetings that I sit on. I also had one cluster meeting on the 24th of July when the term started. The aim was to get report back from council members on how semester one went, the challenges they faced and the successes they encountered after that map a way forward for term 3. This meeting was very fruitful and successful and helped in understanding what and how each of the councillors are doing. Next cluster meeting is set for the 7th of September 2018.

Constitutional Review

One of the biggest SRC project this term was the Review of the Constitution of the Students. This document had not been reviewed for the last 6 years and this year the SRC has done amendments to the document that will go through the necessary committees for approval. This project was being led by the SRC vice-president’s office although I must say it was a team effort by the SRC to get this review going. After the SRC made amendments the document was presented at Student Parliament where more corrections were made. Thereafter the review was presented to the student body. The next stage was to send it to Institutional Forum, unfortunately this could not be done before the sitting that happened in third term. However, the document was sent to Institutional Forum and will be discussed in the next sitting of Institutional Forum.

SRC representation

I also did dh visits with my group before SRC elections when the term started to encourage people to run for the SRC and those were successful.                                                  

I am the nominated SRC member to sit on the Postgraduate Committee and on the 26th and 27th of August was part of committee that planned the two-day conference. This conference was for all postgraduates across campus, it was a good conference and a huge success.         

I attended SRC training camp for 2019 Council I had to prepare a couple of presentations which I presented at their camp. The camp went well

I have also attended SRC events in the third term outside of my portfolio and I also did my office hours

Generally, third term was a really busy and hectic term but the SRC made it through strong and also learnt many lessons along the way.