People often use the weather as small talk. In higher education we talk about the weather and the pace of the university in a similar way.
We give nervous chuckles as we jokingly say the pace in HE is glacial.
It’s a common thread that everybody in an institution faces, the slow crawl of change. It is seldom fast enough.
In my few months in term as a student leader, I’ve pushed a project to completion. A project that has spanned seven years of lobbying, one that started before I even started highschool, and one that I could complete purely out of luck – The Green Hub.
The Green Hub is a university room. It’s a place for students to connect around sustainability and a space for thematically similar societies to use. The original proposal for the room was typed up on March 11th 2018 and the doors to the hub finally opened on the 1st October 2025.
But it is a room, and it took seven years to find it.
Only hindsight can give us the opportunity to reflect and learn how to be more efficient and hit the bull’s eye on the first try. Through this project I’ve gained an understanding of bureaucracy that will help me (and hopefully other officers) navigate it easier. For any project, I believe it all boils down to nailing three components robustly: definition, ownership and money.
Definition
You have to start by defining your project in two ways.
The shorter definition that can be thrown around in meetings and informal chats, something sticky that catches on but something short enough that it can be remembered like, “the Green Hub is a thematic student lounge centred around sustainability.”
And then a longer definition for when someone is interested, or ready to scrutinise the project. Usually a one-page document or a small slide deck, so that you can share it to someone new and fill them in quickly.
It’s not often that the first person you contact will be the “right person,” so you may have to pass this document around before you find a hopeful lead to pursue your project.
Ownership
Projects you champion are great, you’re committed to it and will see it through, but what happens after you leave your post.
Will your project get left behind? You’ll need to find an owner in the university or students’ union to ensure the longevity of your projects. Usually this would be a department, or a key staff contact whose role won’t be going away any time soon.
This can be hard. Especially in universities that are experiencing staff capacity constraints. For the Green Hub, the owner and maintainer of the space on paper was the estates department. While they ensure the locking and the cleaning and the repairs, I get to focus on getting the space used.
Money
Last but not least, you’ll usually need money for your projects. One-time funds are great for some things, but if you need to pay for a service or feature year-on-year, you’re going to need guaranteed annual funding. The Green Hub had no money attached to it except the initial funds to redecorate and uplift the space, which has made it quite difficult to bring the space to life.
It’s taken years to deliver the Green Hub and now that it’s complete, a new problem has presented itself: the students that originally asked for the space have long left the university. And the sustainability groups have now forgotten that they asked for the space.
It’s taken too long to impact the students who first asked for this space, that doesn’t mean it won’t be a positive development. But it’s ultimately taken too long. The challenge now is how to re-engage student groups to use the space as initially intended.
Born into bureaucracy in an ever changing climate, after seven years of lobbying, the Green Hub is now open but pending use. Only time will tell if it’s successful, but the success here is that it now exists for better or for worse. For current officers, my advice is to nail down definitions, ownership and money to ensure these projects extend beyond your term.
