A near miss? NUS Governance Review defeated at last stage by narrow margin
Tallie, Ben and Elle have all just been in touch to let me know that The NUS Governance review has been defeated by a very, very narrow margin - the review needed 717 votes to be passed, but only received a (scarily-close) 692.
While I am a lot less opinionated on matters of student governance than some of my colleagues - a conscious decision to avoid a heart attack before 30 - I have to say I wholeheartedly disagree with the way in which bluster, rhetoric and speculation have been used as the main selling points of a “reform” process whose single biggest change appeared to be the abolition of the NUS Conference which, for all its faults, has served for many years as a vital proving ground for policy review and direction-setting by democratic consensus.
What happens next remains to be seen, but I sincerely hope any similar attempts to review and restructure the NUS are carried out with a significant amount more openness, honesty, and consultation with the students' unions the NUS is responsible (and duty-bound) to represent.
(As always, anything here is my tuppence-worth and not the views of the Union as a whole, or of anyone apart from myself!)
Posted by Alex on Tue 1st April 2008
That’s all folks!
That's the end of elections for another year, and the last year I'll be involved in the Union. It's been a helluva fortnight, with a larger UPSU Media presence than ever before.
For the first year ever, we've had photographers and videographers (is that the right term?) running around at pretty much every elections-related event, a massive amount of visual media, a great deal of coverage in Pugwash News, not to mention Pure FM's involvement in interviewing the candidates live on air and broadcasting the hustings candidates' question time events in the evenings last week.
I'm amazingly proud and grateful to all of our student volunteers for all their work in the last few weeks - we have, for the first time, a lot of video footage (and there's more to come, which will be used as teaser-material for next year I hope), and there's been an almost constant stream of photos and updates going online from elections-related events.
(You can check out the elections photos, videos, and Pure FM podcasts, and our elections minisite - the largest ever at 75 pages - here).
This year, we've seen roughly a 15% rise in voter turnout despite the poor weather and the end of term (who doesn't know at least one friend who went home half way through this week suffering from parental withdrawal symptoms? ;o) and, although candidate numbers were the same as last year (fourteen candidates), the distribution among positions has been almost diametrically opposed, with last year's least-contested positions seeing the largest numbers of candidates this year.
A couple of people have observed that this year's line-up has been a very marked “pitched battle” between sports clubs and societies and, while I can't comment on how accurate that statement is - it is, after all, a pretty narrow-focused assessment of a candidate to say that they're a “sporto” or “society person” (or “soco”?) - the figures do seem to show that the candidates who received the most votes in each position are all well-known faces around the Union.
Last month, I made a conscious decision not to choose who I wanted to support during the elections process. To have done so would have been to make my life as a trustee of the UPSU charity and editor-in-chief of a lot of the Union's media much harder, and I have no doubt that at some point or other I would have found myself second-guessing any editorial decisions I made to reassure myself that I hadn't unintentionally biased myself for or against a particular candidate. It's a decision I definitely don't regret, although explaining to candidates that I wasn't planning to vote was a difficult process (although, in my defence, I also didn't realise I could vote until yesterday!).
The hardest part of the elections process, for anyone involved with the Union, is the thought that a candidate who you count as a friend might not be elected. Unfortunately, that's a position I found myself in this year, and it's never nice to see a friend's election bid failing to be successful but, that said, there's a small amount of comfort to be gained in knowing that everyone who was elected this year have, so far, shown a great deal of promise and ability, and a willingness to go out of their way for the positions they all campaigned for which will hopefully translate into rampant enthusiasm for their new jobs when they come into office.
So, here's to the new Sabb team. The old Sabb team have a short four-and-a-half months left in office, and the last few weeks are going to be spent working closely with the new team members, so in no time at all, last night's successful candidates will be sitting at their desks in the Sabb office learning the ropes of the new jobs.
Good luck! :o)
/al
Posted by Alex on Sat 15th March 2008
Have I scared everyone off?
Just a quick question - have I scared everyone off from running for my position or something?
There's only one candidate for Media & Publications Officer (”MAPO”) this year - last year there were 4, and the year before that there were two…
What gives?!
Posted by Alex on Fri 22nd February 2008
Who’s in charge, then?
I read today on the Epigram's website - the newspaper of Bristol students' union - that the students' union feels they are facing a very real and present danger of their University taking over their Union.
If you're at all interested in students' unions, and their right to remain independent of - and to challenge - their parent institutions, I urge you to read these stories:
- Epigram: Senior University staff plot to seize Students' Union independence
- Epigram: Not on my watch, says Webb on Union take-over
- Epigram: New precedent for Union control
I wish them all the best in their struggle. This is a topic I have no doubt I'll be returning to in a short while…
/al - working late. No surprises there then :o)
Posted by Alex on Thu 7th February 2008
Reading around the subject
If you're in the market for something interesting to read, you could definitely do worse than take a look at University College London SU's PI Magazine, which has a fascinating piece by one of its student journalists on their take on student “apathy” at their Union. The article makes some very interesting, very eloquent points which apply, I suspect, to a vast majority of the students' unions across the country.
Go read it now :o)
Posted by Alex on Wed 26th December 2007
Whoah whoah whoah whoah whoah - slow down a bit!
Do you ever have one of those days when everything's happening so fast it's impossible to take enough mental notes to remember something for later? I've been having one of those days weeks months, and things are showing little sign of slowing down any time in the near future.
This week, I have mainly been updating vast swathes of webpages on UPSU's democracy, get involved and media pages; trying to do some housework in the form of the mass mails, some code changes, and a couple of news articles; attending the UPSU AGM (where was everybody?); trying to convince a stack of people that they *really* need to be a bit more open and honest about a situation which might or might not be building into a bigger situation*; and hearing how another situation which might have become a *really* big situation has been peacefully resolved (until the next time it happens, of course).
Meanwhile, in pixel-land, my notes pages are rapidly filling up with “blog entries I must do” notes, and the UPSU bugs list seems to be getting longer at the same speed my ever-increasing to-do list does now thanks to an upgrade to our database, plus Mike Cooter and Fraggy have just about finished the last ever issue of Pugwash (for this year, of course).
In amongst all this I'm trying to find a flat for next year. I went to see a lovely place today which looks beeyoooteeful. It's a bit small, and my bedroom wouldn't be big enough to kiss a cat in, let alone swing one. There's also a table and chairs which look suspiciously like they've been “acquired” from the Union, but I'll deal with that if and when I move in.
Still, it's all good fun. I worked a total of 32 hours in the first two days of this week, and my arms didn't drop off, so at least what my mum always told me - something about hard work not killing me - wasn't a lie after all. Dread to think how much caffeine and nicotine I took in during that period, though…..
Hope you're all having fun out there, and don't have nightmares :o)
Posted by Alex on Fri 11th May 2007
Sorry!
I've been a bit very slack in writing up what actually happened at NUS Conference. In the meantime, have a video from David Darkin from the conference. Very random… (Can't see it? Go here).
Posted by Alex on Sat 31st March 2007
NUS Conference day 1
(Tuesday)
Well, we're here in Blackpool. For some reason I keep calling the place Brighton. More beer needed I think…
We rocked up yesterday after a 5-ish hour drive up the motorway and immediately renamed our hotel Fawlty Towers. I have the pleasure of sharing a room with two other guys - Nick and Gordon - something which I haven't done for a few years.
I have to take my hat off to the plumber who put our shower in, as (s)he is clearly someone with a brilliant sense of humour; having spent ten minutes this morning wondering why, even with the shower set to its hottest setting, I was only getting freezing water, I admitted defeat and was just about to head downstairs when room-mate Nick wandered into the bathroom, fiddled around for a couple of minutes, and announced there was copious hot water.
The problem? Silly old me had forgotten that, north of the Watford Gap, blue means *hot* and red means… You guessed it - cold.
Duh - of course… ;o)
Rewind to last night; wandering around town, we must have made it quarter of an hour down the road before we saw any signs of life at all. Blackpool out of season feels a lot like a colder version of a mid-west American ghost town.
We also passed the NUS Conference venue last night, which appears to be a bingo hall-cum-former town hall. Peering in the windows, I saw a largely empty venue with the occasional bit of rubbish peppering the floor, but very little else. I'll be heading down to the conference shortly, so fingers crossed there'll be slightly more going on today. Otherwise it's back to bed.
As I type this, the rest of the Oxford University bods have just arrived. They're carrying enough luggage to survive an arctic winter or two, which makes me feel less daft for bringing more luggage than anyone else from Portsmouth seemed to. Hey, I need a lot of makeup…
My only real grumble - now I've figured out the shower - is that our hotel has to be one of the few places in the world not to have discovered a wireless internet connection. I'm not complaining *that* much though - it just means I can't do any UPSU.net work while I'm up here.
Conference is looking interesting, but long. I've just examined the small print and found that cameras, laptops, mobile phones - in fact pretty much anything more complex than a wrist-watch - aren't allowed into the main conference area. Notepad and paper for anything I need to remember then. The only minor problem there? I can't read my own handwriting at the best of times.
Wish me luck - this could be a long day.
/al ;o)
Posted by Alex on Wed 28th March 2007
Conferences left, right and centre
Now elected, I've been driving a few people potty with hare-brained ideas and half-baked plans which I'd like to see started before the end of this academic year.
Having - I think - reached the ends of their collective tethers, the management bods have decided to pack me off to the NUS Conference this coming week along with a number of other students, and also to the NUSSL Conference next week, to restore some sense of quiet to the Sabb office. At least, I *think* that's why they're sending me away ;o)
The NUS Conference is generally regarded as a melting pot of student ideas and enthusiasm, with a nice sugary coating of evening misbehaviour - usually found to be about 35% alcohol by proof - and the latter is a more business-like affair involving lots of companies trying to sell their products to you. No-one knows the alcohol content of the NUSSL Conference since no-one's made it back sober yet…*
Of course, since I don't do any buying of alcohol - that's down to UPEL (the bods running the bars at the Union) - the NUSSL excursion should be a good opportunity for an interesting insight into the trading side of Student Unions across the country… Ok, and a good excuse for a few hangovers as well…
As long as the top brass have no objections, I'll try and report back on what actually happens at both conferences, especially the NUS conference, as it's an important example of the good use of the Union's NUS membership fees.
* I could be lying here, of course - NUSSL might actually be a serious business event - I have yet to find out for sure.
Posted by Alex on Sun 25th March 2007
Campaigning through hoops
One of the less well-known aspects of the campaign trail during elections is that campaigns can only take place during the official campaign period*, which is only five days long, and that there is a limit on how much one can actually spend on campaigning - this year, it's
Posted by Alex on Tue 20th March 2007