Hello everyone, sorry this is so late.

**IMPORTANT: there has been a double booking for our usual slot in Committee Room 1 so we are moving to the ST ANDREWS BUILDING ROOM 443A at the bottom of Gibson Street, opposite The Old Schoolhouse. There will be someone inside to show you where to go.**

First things first, congratulations bakers and crusaders – what a success on Thursday! We certainly marked International Day Against the Death Penalty, raising £121.30 and collecting over 60 signatures for Reggie Clemons: a great start to the year. Thanks again to those of you who stood in the beautiful sunshine/freezing shade to help out.

In summary:

• Our campaign plans for the rest of October
• ‘Stef Smith: Cured’ at The Arches on Tuesday 22^nd
• BOOK YOUR PLACE FOR THE STUDENT CONFERNCE! See below for details.
• Our Pub Quiz is on the 27^th in Jim’s Bar

Tomorrow’s meeting – Conflict minerals and the crisis in the DRC

We shall be taking a break from LGBT rights for this week and looking at our conflict minerals campaign. We need to get this back up and running before David Newall (our Secretary of Court) starts thinking that we have disappeared.  I will take you through the Conflict Free Campus Initiative’s mission and give an overview of the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and how we as consumers are linked to this deadly conflict through the technology that we use every day.

Tuesday 22^nd – LGBT rights continued, pizza and ‘Cured’ at The Arches

Presentation on LGBT persecution in Russia. This is when we will take a closer look at the situation in Russia decide how best to use our photos and publicise our ‘Day of Silence’ solidarity action.

I know that some of you didn’t make last week’s meeting and therefore haven’t participated in our LGBT photo campaign, but don’t worry, because we will continue with this the week after. In the meantime, we shall be adding photos of the SRC, GUSA and hopefully the QMU and GUU to the bundle.Also at this meeting we will need to make our visual props for our ‘Love is a Human Right’ Jamnesty in November so we’ll have the paints out again.

This is the day that we were hoping to go and see ‘Stef Smith: Cured’ at The Arches in town. Since it starts at 7.30pm, a brilliant suggestion was put forward for us to grab some Dominos ‘Two for Tuesday’ action during the meeting so that we can head into town together after the meeting. I am currently waiting for a reply about getting a group discount for the play, so will get back to you with that – without discount, tickets are £8.

Tuesday 29^th – Guest speakers

Our campaigns officer Dom is working very hard to get someone from Equality Network/the Scottish Transgender Alliance/Patrick Harvie MSP (or all of them!) to come and talk to us about LGBT rights and UK based campaigns.  We’ll keep you posted, but fingers crossed.

Student Conference – book your place!

We will be finalising numbers on Tuesday so that we can book our travel so let us know by then if you are coming!

Dates: 2^nd-3^rd November 2013

Location: Amnesty International UK HQ – London

Cost: £20 + travel

Fun to be had: Are you kidding? 250 students in the same place at the same time, I guarantee it will be one of your most memorable experiences at university.

There have been several people interested in heading down to London for the Student Conference, which is great. We have 8 places to fill so get cracking and book your place here. Also let us know if you are planning to come and we can all arrange our travel together.

These Amnesty weekends are truly inspirational and empowering.

This year’s agenda includes:

• Syria: ‘I can still see hope’
• Afghanistan: Violence against women
• Sri Lanka: Torture and impunity
• Northern Ireland: Failure to deal with the legacy of past human rights abuses
• Looking to Amnesty’s future

As well as this, there will be workshops and campaign actions to get involved with, not forgetting a social event on Saturday night. We shall also be collecting our award for our Secret Policeman’s Ball 2013!

[If you are unable to attend the Student Conference in November, remember that Action for Change happens in March. This is a similar weekend in terms of structure and workshops, but will have different speakers and talks and campaign actions. ]

PUB QUIZ – Sunday 27^th in Jim’s Bar

We are all set for our pub quiz – all we need is for you to bring friends. We are making it £3 entry per person, of which £2 will go to us and £1 will be added to the winning pot.

Game on.

See you (somewhere) tomorrow,

Ruth