陈雨舒 Yushu Chen

学生会竞选

Six hundred votes in four days

Experience
英国 UK
Role
Candidate, Equality & Liberation Officer
Organisation
Leeds University Union
Place
Leeds, UK
Dates
February 2025

The problem

A student union election is a recruitment problem in miniature. A fixed four-day window, a distracted audience of thousands, no budget, and a ballot most people were not planning to fill in.

In short

A campus-wide election campaign built on specific, unglamorous promises. It won an award of its own.

600+
Campus-wide votes secured
4
Days of voting
1
Butterfly Award
Yushu Chen's election manifesto poster for Equality and Liberation Officer at Leeds University Union, listing five commitments beside a photograph of her.
The manifesto poster. Five promises, a QR code, and four days to turn out the vote.

Every promise on the poster is small enough to be checked: period-care boxes, food options people can actually afford, chairs that do not hurt, a wellbeing service that exists at three in the morning. Campaigns lose when they promise a better culture. They move people when they promise a specific object in a specific building.

The mechanics are the same ones that fill a recruitment event five thousand miles away. Find the people who are not looking for you, give them one clear reason to act, and make acting take less than a minute. Hence the QR code, and the four-day countdown printed at the bottom of the sheet.

Leeds University Union recognised the campaign with its Greatest Personal Growth Butterfly Award.