Rethinking Student Rep: The First Higher Education Student Citizen's Panel

In 2021, Western Sydney University launched the Reimagining Student Representation project which worked alongside newDemocracy to put together a world-first higher education citizen’s assembly. The assembly was comprised of thirty-two (32) students selected by a democratic lottery and tasked with providing recommendations they find agreement on to answer the question:

How should students have a voice at Western Sydney University?

2022

Students met four times in the first half of 2022 to learn, deliberate and find common ground around innovative approaches to student representation at the University. The product of this was a report listing 14 recommendations from the panel, which was presented to and accepted by the Vice-Chancellor in 2022.

2023

In 2023 a Project Officer was engaged to assist with the scoping, design and implementation of the Universities responses to the recommendations (Response from the University [opens in a new window]), and ongoing consultation with key stakeholders including students. There was a heavy focus on scoping what was already being done at the University to address the panel recommendations, which reached over 17 different teams at Western with the aim of avoiding duplication of projects and wastage of resources (Phase 1). Many of the responses to the recommendations have been complete in 2023, or are moving in the right direction.

The project demonstrates Western continuing to innovate in democracy, and student politics on the domestic and global fronts, and a commitment from the University to deliver on the recommendations that came directly from the student body.

Further information about citizens’ assemblies and their ability to facilitate a representative mix of everyday people finding common ground solutions to difficult problems can be found at new Democracy’s website (opens in a new window) and for new Democracy's article on the project can be  found here (opens in a new window).

Using citizen juries to improve democracy (opens in a new window)

By Hilary Harper on Life Matters