Student Activist Diary

Across the country, Student Union officers, sabbatical teams and youth representatives of a thousand organisations are working hard to engage ‘everyday students’ – a dynamic group of people whose passions lie outside of political change making.
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However and all too often, young people (particularly students) who want to make a change are disempowered. For example, the term ‘student politics’ is thrown around when young people try to engage politics through their own means. Connotations about how ineffective and futile it is to make positive or significant changes envelop this ‘student politics’ and it leads to a judgement ridden perception that anyone involved with Student Unions, Student groups or ‘youth politics’ is simply wasting their time.
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Politicians, community leaders and ‘every-day working people’ (possibly the same group of people in the Daily Mail’s ‘silent majority’) harp on about how young people today have become disenfranchised. They talk about how more needs to be done to engage young people. Our alleged apathy is even sometimes linked to the rise in youth unemployment and violence. They often conclude with some statistic on gang culture and how only national service can save the children. SU hacks reading this will have viciously tweeted away about this on #bbcqt , gritted our teeth reading the comments from dodgy facebook acquaintances and carried on the next Morning.
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In the world of Student Unions, you hear phrases like ‘how do we mobilise more students’ and ‘Widening participation outreach’ – ridiculous phrases that show us that we’re looking at the symptoms, whilst ignoring the causes. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to engage more people and win them over to whatever we’re campaigning on. However, when we run campaigns, hold debates to try to start discourse – do we seriously mainstream the issues or procedures on engaging the debate so they’re accessible to peers who don’t care for ‘standing orders’? Do we even understand how to?
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On the national scene, the National Union of Students (NUS) is at an interesting place – a debate at National Conference (the top decision making body for the organisation) on One Member One Vote (OMOV) has led to a working group rendering possible solutions in delivering that. Its terms of reference are unclear and the debate here is marred with factional politics and bad blood between groups that mean little outside of the cliques and clichés.
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One of the biggest arguments for OMOV is that it would end factional politics and free up elections – I don’t know about you, but has anyone seen the state of our national politics? Political parties are increasingly viewed as a necessary evil rather than positive change makers. The bigger factions would win out, people with money would get the shiniest leaflets, and everyday student issues would drown in the macro-manoeuvring for the top jobs – much like today but on a ridiculous scale; just think of the #egoparty at the end of those elections? Most of us just shuddered, some of you got excited.
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The argument that more people would feel engaged is also a red herring – yes, the campaigns would become enormous, there would be more stunts and more students would know the name of our national president; but would more students actually engage through active participation? I doubt it. Currently, NUS National Conference Delegates across the UK are meant to be elected from cross-campus ballots. Ask yourself, how seriously does your Students Union take those elections? How many people outside of your SU bubble run for those places and what are their chances? If it’s anything like my SU, a tiny tear probably left your eye. Factions may be able to focus attention on a handful of national candidates, but they can’t control well-contested local delegate elections.
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A few years ago, when I got involved with the National Union of Students, I read an interesting report about the changing landscape of the student world. The trends spoke volumes about the fast paced nature of students and how we’ve organically adapted to the recession through our behaviour. I don’t think we should be looking to the NUS for some grand answer from the all mighty democratic procedures committee. Instead, we should look to our campuses and identify what we’re doing to make the elections of these national representatives bigger and bolder. Figure out how local issues correlate with the motions going to national conference.
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The tools are here to do that…sort of – NUS have a guide near the front of the motions document on how Student Unions should engage that process with debating amendments at student councils. How many of us actually go through this process and how many of our election timetables allow for delegates to go through this process are issues I think that stop most of us going through this.
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I suppose what I’m saying here is that OMOV looks very appealing because we all think it’ll be the quick-fix solution that would bring the national issues home to our campuses. But before we reach for the defibrillator that might have devastating consequences, would it not be healthier to make local changes to the way we elect and treat our delegates for national conference?