I had arranged to meet the new YUSU President at the Charles XII where, upon arrival, she orders a J20 from the bar. “I’m not drinking [alcohol] until after freshers’ week,” Millie Beach explains. This self-denial certainly makes a lot of sense when considering the workload of an incoming YUSU President. Beach not only has to organise freshers’ week but put the wheels in motion for fulfilling her campaign pledges as well as deal with whatever pressing unpredictable issue YUSU faces this week. Currently, Beach explains, YUSU is overhauling both their website and entire social media strategy while also dealing with long-term projects such as figuring out how to encourage use of the new student noticeboard.
Millie Beach rose through the ranks of JCRC politics acheiving chair of Vanbrugh College before standing for YUSU President and it shows. Beach is highly distinct from the YUSU politico firebrands who see the YUSU presidency as a platform to advance national campaigns, or the one-issue candidates running as free speech or safe space advocates and not much else. Beach portrays herself as a safe pair of hands, often recognising the merits of several opposing arguments and trying to come to a happy medium.
Take her stance on the tuition fee hike to £9,250 for the 2017/18 academic year as an example. Beach starts by stating that “in an ideal world all education would be free."
She then acknowledges the practical point that fees hold universities more accountable as students hold their courses to the same standard of scrutiny as any other product they purchase. The significance of the fact that, with inflation, a £9000 degree does not cost as much as it used to in real terms also informs her thinking on the issue. Beach also makes the point that York has to stay competitive with other universities or risking dropping down the league tables.
The student noticeboard was launched with great anticipation last year but so far is not generating as much traffic as YUSU expected. The noticeboard, the main legacy of the last YUSU President Ben Leatham, is an online platform for students to advertise and purchase goods and services. If a society wants semi-professional pictures taken at an event, they can make a post on the noticeboard offering a flat fee for a budding photographer – such is the idea.
After its launch towards the end of last year, the noticeboard received barely any traffic. Millie Beach is adamant that the project has a far greater chance of success if it is pushed in the former stages of the academic year when students are still orientating themselves and falling into new routines and practices.
Inevitably the YUSU President is expected to take a stand on campus issues that fill column inches in the national press as well as generate the most furore whenever YUSU comes down one way or the other on related policies.
I bring up Beach’s stance on YUSU’s membership of the National Union of Students after the referendum, won by remain, at the end of the last academic year in which she stayed officially neutral. “There are valid arguments on both sides,” Beach concedes. She counts the platform the NUS offers to liberation networks as well as the more practical benefits of the purchasing consortium among its virtues. Beach bluntly admits though that the NUS “have an issue with anti-Semitism” and was far too bureaucratic in its nature and attitude.
YUSU itself had to issue an apology over the summer for not doing enough to address anti-Semitism on campus after a Jewish student was paid compensation for anti-Semitic abuse he had received whilst studying at York. Beach concedes without excuse that there is a problem with anti-Semitism on campus and pledges to work closely with the Jewish society this year to ensure that no other student suffers the same experience. Importantly, she also pledges to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day something the NUS has voted down.
We move on from the hot topics to what kind of President Millie Beach aspires to be. I ask her whether she wants to be known as a woman President or a President who happens to be a woman. With an issue like this, so easily presented as a rhetorical inversion, it seems inevitable that one ideologically pure stance or the other must be adopted. Again, however, Beach’s realism shines through.
She says that “originally I saw myself as a President who happens to be a woman” before recounting anecdotes from several occasions where female students had approached her to tell her how inspirational her victory was to them and their ambitions. Characteristically Beach reaches the conclusion “if people want to see me as a female president, I’m fine with that.”