As we approach election season, I am writing a series of blogs with my take about what the role of VP Union Development involves. Each week between now and the close of NUS nominations (on the 24th of February details on how to stand are available here http://www.nusconnect.org.uk/conference/info/)I am blogging about 1 of the 5 area’s , defining what it means, what we are currently doing about it and suggesting possible questions for the future, candidates can of course ignore all of my views, but I thought rather than only speaking to people who I already know it would be good to make it freely available.
Working with my zone committee we have agreed 5 key area’s for union development:
-
Championing Students’ Unions
-
Breaking Down Barriers to Participation in Students’ Unions
-
Deepening Participation in Students’ Unions
-
Empowering Students to Make Change
-
Finding the Voice of Millions of Students outside Students’ Unions
This week I’m focussing on Breaking Down Barriers to Participation in Students’ Unions
My first involvement in my student union came whilst I was chair of a society; we couldn’t get any meeting space so I asked the ‘Vice President for media, societies, communication and community’ how I could change the process, they said that I needed to be on societies committee. So I asked at reception about how to get onto societies committee, and was given a 14 page nomination form which had the entirety of the SU bye-laws attached as an appendix. I promptly filled my form in, wrote my manifesto about society meeting space…. Unfortunately you needed to write at the top the standing order which related to the committee you wanted to be on, and I put in the wrong code so ended up standing in the Finance Committee election by mistake.
I was duly elected to finance committee saying absolutely nothing about finance. At the first meeting we spent over an hour debating an application for a new kettle to put in the staff room, (costing about 12 quid) and then about 2 minutes debating a £1.5 MILLION pound re-build for the student union. Because of this my first involvement could be broadly summed up as frustrating and irrelevant, not affecting the change I wanted but rather witnessing how a bizarre process got in the way of effective decision making.
My story is not usual, all of us can think of unnecessary barriers in our own unions that do anything but empower students to make change. Luckily for me I gave my union a second chance, but not many do; we are missing out on millions of students who want to get involved, want to help out and want to change the lives of their fellow students but can’t find a way in.
When this happens we all lose out and we need to break down the barriers to participation in our unions if we are going to be truly representative. It’s the first stage that’s crucial in anyone’s journey to becoming an activist.
Why can’t our democratic processes be a vehicle for engagement rather than a barrier?
Coventry SU gave us a great example of this recently when they smashed attendance figures for their annual All Student Meeting, getting over a thousand along 1,080 when just 4 years ago, they struggled to get a quoracy of 50. They achieved this turn around identifying the barriers to students getting involved, then broke them down. They held it over a lunchtime, so provided lunch. They held it during a teaching period, so worked with the University to postpone lectures to allow the meeting to happen. Instead of just running through the Union’s accounts, they made the agenda interesting, with speakers and topics that actually mattered to their students. Although some of these changes might seem small, they made a huge difference.