Whilst YUSU President Kallum Taylor took a lot of flak following the recent announcement that YUSU’s finances were at “breaking point” – the criticism is far from that experienced by other Students’ Union Officers around the country.
With Sabbatical staff coming toward the end of their time in office (or the half-way point for Taylor), students and staff have been voicing their opinions on the successes and not-so-successes of their Sabb teams.
Oxford University’s inventively titled The Oxford Student recently covered a report given by the Oxford University Students’ Union’s Scrutiny Committee about outgoing President David J Townsend – and the criticisms are fairly damning.
Townsend is slammed for his conduct, which the report describes as “often aggressive and rude” whilst his fellow Sabb Officers raised concerns about “the way [Townsend] conducts himself with respect to them.”
It’s something that is not quite on a level with what we see at York – with Sabb staff more likely to be criticised for posting dodgy 90s music videos in blogposts than causing “a great deal of tension and stress for the team.” It’s not too bad, eh?
Earlier this year, Edinburgh’s The Student reported on an Emergency Special General Meeting of their Students’ Union to debate whether to sack Max Crema and one other staff member from their Sabbatical team. This came after Crema took eight months to apologise for a series of ageist tweets, and, rather more scathingly “his contempt of the electorate.”
Perhaps more bizarrely, Edinburgh SU have banned clapping at meetings, in accordance with their ‘Safe Space policy’ – as a result when the motion failed to pass, Crema’s fans amongst the crowd waved “jazz hands” to show their support – a little different to the rowdiness of YUSU’s Elections Results night.
So perhaps before pointing the finger at Taylor and his team we should appreciate that our gripes are more about banana analogies than the problems at SU’s around the country – and if you have enjoyed their time in office, at least you can give a round of applause, should you wish to do so.