My name is Archer Skinner, and I am your QUT Guild Treasurer for 2024. I am a 4th year Law and Business student.
I had originally run for the education officer and after 2 months in that position I had the chance to become the Treasurer. The Main reason I ran for Treasurer was because I had seen what a great difference the QUT Guild can make in students’ lives through great initiatives, activities and advocacy and I wanted to ensure that students fees were going to helping and assisting students where it was needed.
I have always believed that unions have an important role to play at QUT. Student unions are incredibly important to ensuring that QUT students have the best possible advocacy support. I’m passionate because, as someone who has been at QUT for a while, I have seen how many new students have struggled with the things QUT enforces onto them and it is the role of the guild to stand up and support and advocate for students when this happens. Just being able to be a part of that is incredibly exciting to me.
I want to see the Guild get a larger percentage of the SSAF (student services and amenity fees) as it is student money and should be spent by a student run entity. With more SSAF, the QUT guild could do so much more, from big events for the entire student cohort all the way down to more funding for individual clubs.
There are many different ways that I plan on achieving this but some of the main ways are increasing engagement with students so they understand what SSAF is and to let them know where their money goes. I know that as more students find out that only 25% of their money goes to their guild, they will find it as unacceptable as I do.
I will also work to increase transparency in the guilds financial reporting so that students know exactly where their money is being spent instead of hiding it away as QUT does.
