2026 SRC President's Report

Hi there, and if you’re just beginning your University of New South Wales (UNSW) degree, welcome! I’m Billy, your 2026 Student Representative Council (SRC) President. The SRC is not something all students, especially those just joining UNSW, are familiar with. So here’s a little rundown about what we do and what our goals are this year.

As representatives of the student body, the SRC has many responsibilities to ensure that they are well taken care of, such as compelling the university into institutionalising changes to their policies to better reflect students' needs, providing them with services to support their welfare, and working on better reflecting their views. One part of this process is meeting with university management, but these meetings go nowhere if there isn’t any force behind them. Commonly, when university management changes their policies it’s because of students mobilising around the issue. Management generally doesn’t like protests on campus, but they are especially compelled to action when they are the ones being protested against. You don’t have to be on the SRC to affect change on campus, so if you care about an issue you have to get out there and fight for it.

The SRC also manages autonomous collectives for different communities and policy areas. These include the Education, Welfare, Environment, Ethnocultural, Indigenous, Women’s, and International, Students with disabilities, Queer, and Paddington collectives. The officers for these collectives push for policies relating to their portfolios, as well as running events to keep their respective communities engaged and supported. 

My meetings with management are not just about convincing them to adopt SRC policy goals. If that were the case, everything from free period products to semesters would have been implemented long ago. I would encourage everyone to follow SRC meeting coverage, but to always remember that these meetings are often about deciding the goals, stances, and strategy of the SRC, rather than unilaterally changing university policy.

As much as any SRC President would love to take all the credit for positive changes that occur during their tenure, it is, of course, the case that changes come in slowly. Thus, it is all the more important that the SRC runs its own projects, so that we’re achieving something while those longer-term policy aims are in the pipeline. The projects I am focused on are continuing and expanding the Clothes Hub program and introducing SRC barbecues (not to make that a conclusive list). Clothes Hub allows students to donate clothing at special bins across campus. Throughout the term, students can then grab anything they want from these donation bins at our Clothes Hhub stalls we run on the Quadrangle several times a term. Our SRC barbecues will allow students to receive free meals and drinks regularly. With the limited time I have as your President, I want to focus on helping students through the cost of living crisis in any way I can. 

However, not every student will make it to these events, so I want to make changes that will be felt by all students. 

Some of my top priorities are:

• Ensuring the university completes the transition from trimesters to semesters as soon as possible without lowering student wellbeing
• Implementing short extensions for all courses
• Making all hand-in assignments due at 11:59 pm to help students better fit study around their schedules

And much, much more! 

The last pillar of work on the SRC is directing students to support services. The SRC is not trained or resourced in offering these services ourselves, but we are always more than happy to direct students to the correct service, whether you are experiencing financial stress, mental health issues, or require academic support for any reason.

I look forward to continuing my correspondence with you throughout the year to update you on my progress on these goals. 

A warm welcome, or welcome back, to you all

All the best,

Billy Scharzenberger Moran (he/him),

Your 2026 SRC President