University of Huddersfield Students' Union Archive

This collection contains records of the Student Union and its preceding committees and organisations. There is a series of records relating to the representation of students within the Union, and how that representative worked for the benefit of the student body. This includes minutes of Student Representative Councils and Annual General Meetings. There are reports from the sabbatical team and papers that detail both the day to day support and the one off advocacy projects undertaken by the staff.

There is a long run of student media, exhibiting examples of topics of interest to the student body, and news about what was occurring in societies and student groups. There are numerous examples of publications produced for welfare and recruitment purposes, giving the unofficial union view of the organisation.

There is evidence in committee minute books to suggest that the first formal representative boy for students on campus was the formation of the Student Representative Council, which first met on the 30th November 1927 (see SRC Minute book and September 1928 edition of The Mock Turtle). Student groups and societies seem to predate this committee, but there was no overarching group before 1927.

The first student publication, the Mock Turtle, began to be published in 1926, and was in its first issue recording the activities of existing societies, such as the Chemistry Society, the Rambling society etc. Grants were available for students to apply for to put on events as early as the 1930s, and student fundraising for good causes was in evidence from the earliest days, with reports of students supporting the Haig appeal for ex-servicemen in the 1920s.

There appears to be a gap in the student publications between the mid-1930s and late 1940s, although it is clear from other records that students continued to run social activities during WWII as students from Avery Hill Teaching college, which was evacuated to Huddersfield for the duration of the war, were also involved with this.