The Sabbs currently rely on cluttered emails and grumpy Facebook posts to communicate with students, which is half-hearted to say the least.
If you ask any first year, and plenty of second and third years the names of their Sabbatical Officers, you will be met with someone trying to name them all like someone tries to name all 50 States.
The only reason I knew what Sabbs even were in first year was because of the awkward speeches they gave to all new undergrads in central hall. Naturally, this can’t be done for a while, but why haven’t they come up with new means of talking to students?
Yes, the Sabbs this last year have had a harder job due to these ‘unprecedented times’, but they cannot reasonably expect their emails to be heartily digested by the student population, especially as the emails themselves are not a quick read – there are so many words, yet so little information.
The Facebook posts are marginally better, as they can be done around one specific issue, but this is a dying platform. Interaction with these posts is minimal UNLESS it is about a hot-button topic (like the no-detriment policy, for example).
Communicating with anonymous pages is also a big no-no. YUSU President Patrick O’Donnell has recently been caught answering questions for these irrelevant account admins, which is clearly the wrong route to go down; interacting with pages that people are too scared to put their names to is no substitute for engaging with student life where he could at least find out the name of the person he’s talking to.
What these new means of communication will be however, is a riddle that still needs to be solved. Hopefully we can soon bring back forcing hungover freshers into a tightly packed hall to listen to something they already care so little for, but even then we need to evolve.
Maybe Sabbs need to be more present in events across the year, within societies, course meetings, and college gatherings, so in a sense, no one can escape their presence. Ultimately, it’s a small price to pay for knowing their names.