YES: Chris Wall, leader of the 'Yes' campaign
The NUS isn’t a perfect organisation, but there are two parts to it. The democratic structures, and the work they do to make SU’s stronger.
Having been an officer and involved with NUS for two years, I want to clear up some myths about both. Having seen first hand the work NUS does I know how valuable it is to the York experience. Leaving the NUS doesn’t hurt them, it hurts us.
The ‘No’ campaign want to leave the NUS because they feel that the system doesn’t represent them. Currently the NUS makes all their big decisions at a 3 day National Conference at the start of third term. Here, ideas are debated and policy is put in place. These policy submissions mostly come from students at other Universities and Colleges (because NUS represents many college students too) who are submitting issues that affect their students. In the same way that the students and officers who attended on behalf of York this year submitted (and passed) policy on Mental Health and Prevent.
Like other Unions, the students who attend on behalf of York are decided upon in an election that takes place each year that every York student can vote or run in. The number of people we send is weighted to reflect a balance of institutions, to ensure they all get a voice.
The reason that I take the time to explain this is because there seems to be this opinion that the NUS is ran by people doing shady dealings or that are superior to us.
The people who vote and decide upon things are other students across the country, who are voting on what matters to them and their institutions.
When you get students from across the country together, disagreement happens and different priorities mean we end up with outcomes we might not always agree with. However there is plenty the NUS is doing that York students will agree with. Work on mental health, the cost of living, hidden fees. We lose out on this knowledge without them.
Central to the ‘No’ campaign’s argument is that because One Member One Vote fell, the NUS aren’t interested in reform, and we must show our dissatisfaction by protesting so they implement it.
The way the NUS works, we aren’t able to suggest or vote on policy if we aren’t a member. York keeps taking ‘OMOV’ forward because it matters to York. Who will do that if we leave? Who will vote for it if we leave? It’s not a parallel to other places where this has worked.
The NUS did pass policy for reform at this years conference, and they’ve committed in a press release to make ‘OMOV’ a central discussion point of that reform, with York voices being central to that, but if we leave that goes. We don’t get a say in what the reform looks like. We cut ourselves off from having our say.
The NUS only gets weaker if York leave because we aren’t there to shape it. We have several York students on NUS committees now and we currently have a York graduate in one of their Full Time Officer positions. York has a powerful voice in the NUS. We shouldn’t lose it.
There are always going to be problems with the NUS, over my 5 years here the arguments haven’t changed much. Interestingly few of these were raised before conference. When I was a delegate, I can count on one hand the number of students who reached out proactively and asked me to vote a certain way at the conference. That’s an issue. YUSU knows it and the NUS know it.
The way to combat the issues with the NUS is to mandate us to be stronger. Manchester Union hold votes to ensure that the delegates are voting in a way that matters to Manchester. We should arguably be doing the same.
The second part of the NUS is around the support we get as a Union. Now, there is a reason your liberation and part time officers are standing up and asking you to vote to remain. The support their networks get is invaluable. The support we get centrally is absolutely invaluable.
We are able to act on issues that matter to York students so much more effectively because of them. Being able to ring someone from the NUS to check something, offer advice or clear something legally is absolutely invaluable to my job. That’s why I know it’s important we stay. If you want us as elected officers to be the best we can be and for YUSU to be at its strongest. We need the NUS.
Many students are clearly unhappy with the NUS, it needs to become more transparent and clear in how it operates. Let’s ride out the storm however, and not punish ourselves by jumping ship.
NO: Robin Brabham, leader of the 'No' campaign
One hundred thousand pounds. By any standards, this is a huge sum of money, which only seems bigger in a salary. You may expect a high-flying city banker to earn that much, or perhaps a slick corporate lawyer on their way to a partnership.
However the person in question, again receiving £100,000 a year, is Simon Blake, the CEO of the NUS. That means that students, many of whom are struggling even to feed themselves or pay for the roof over their heads, are helping to pay a six-figure salary. It’s not clear what this man does to earn a salary five times larger than the average graduate, but what is evident is that in paying such exorbitant sums to its leader while students are struggling, the NUS is fundamentally broken.
This was demonstrated at the annual NUS conference in Brighton this year, where the new President, Malia Bouattia, was elected with only 372 votes. She claims to represent seven million students, yet was elected by just 0.005% of us. Further to this, when this supposedly elected official is happy to make use of anti-Semitic tropes yet fails to be meaningfully disciplined by internal investigations, our association with NUS becomes a critical issue. Are we comfortable being represented by an organisation which is passively tolerant of these views?
The Yes campaign say that we can change the NUS; that we can work from the inside to make it accountable and representative. This shouldn’t be a surprise though, as they said this in the last referendum. And the referendum before that. And the referendum before that. In fact, as far back as 2002, the President of Southampton University Student Union said, “For decades, the NUS has refused to reform, deciding to instead to remain under the control of political factions and giving real students very little.” The NUS has been talking about reform since before many of us reached secondary school, and has consistently failed to deliver. There is no evidence suggesting that this disillusionment-referendum-meaningless “change” cycle can be broken from within.
Perhaps much of this would be less disagreeable if the benefits we derive from the organisation were in any way substantial. The problem is that they aren’t. It is claimed that the NUS helps to keep prices in campus bars down, but this is misleading in the extreme: the pursuit of minimum pricing of alcohol by NUS completely contradicts this self-proclaimed commitment to saving students money at the bar. Looking at this in more depth, YUSU bars do buy from a consortium, which orders supplies in bulk. This works well for smaller universities, but we are by no means one of these. With the freedom to purchase from whoever we want using our gravitas as leverage, competition could drive prices down. We can see this by the fact that we pay 5p less for a pint in D Bar and V Bar, which are independent of the NUS, than in Courtyard. It would also give us the ability to order a greater variety of food, meaning that if we were to leave the NUS, we could have a much larger menu.
Here, as well as in many other areas, the NUS acts to constrain rather than aid us. The progressive argument is to leave: as the leader of the University’s Green party, I implore York students, who should be the torch bearers for progressivism, to throw off the shackles of the NUS. Real progressivism is about making real changes that actually benefit people, and the NUS has forgotten this. When, in the 2015 general election last year, the NUS threw away £40,000 on attacking Liberal Democrat MPs, they showed their true intentions: all about the agendas and careers of their officers and delegates, with the real needs of students being a mere afterthought. This is the national student voice being appropriated by a sectional clique who represent not students but merely themselves. Any attempt at progressive change is usually thwarted by internal bickering or institutional incompetence: tuition fees are still rising, maintenance funding is still under attack, and Prevent is still racially profiling students and infringing on their rights to freedom of expression. Unless, of course, no platforming is involved: NUS goes head-over-heels for speech-restricting no-platforming policies, despite receiving legal advice – commissioned by the NUS no less – stating the illegality of such policies. In leaving NUS, we won’t be losing our political voice; we will be finding it, strengthening it, and using it to campaign on issues that York students care about.
This is why we as a Union need to say no thanks to the NUS. There is an alternative to its costly and murky waters. We need real democracy, real accountability, and a real voice.