Despite an exceedingly close race, YUSU Sabbatical officer, Charlie Leyland, was unsuccessful in her attempt to become the NUS Vice President for Higher Education.
After several tense stages of voting which showed Leyland in the lead, the fifth and final round revealed that Leyland’s main competitor Usman Ali, a current member of the NUS National Executive Council had taken the top spot by a margin of just nine votes.
Speaking before the results were announced Charlie Leyland told Vision: “I think I’ve done my best and I’ve also had the most amazing support team.”
Leyland’s impassioned speech went over very well with the crowd during the VP HE hustings. Outlining her motivation for running she told the conference: “running for this position is part of who I am.”
Leyland went on to promise such improvements as a more fairly funded Higher Education system, an online Higher Education Knowledge Base and a weekly video blog which would allow students to see how she was working for them.
After the results had come through, YUSU President Tim Ngwena said: “The fact that the vote was so close shows that Charlie’s policies definitely struck a chord,” adding: “on a different day the result could have gone her way but it’s politics – it happens.”
Ngwena also suggested that the fact that his fellow Sabb ran as an independent candidate, (as opposed to with a political allegiance, which is common at the NUS elections), definitely had an impact on the voting; “Usman targeted the left in his speech and that’s probably where he got his votes.”
Other results so far at the conference include Aaron Porter becoming the new NUS President and Shane Cowen becoming VP for Further Education.
A full list of all the newly elected NUS officers will be available online here the end of the conference.
Really, really sad to see Charlie miss out on this. I think York students should e very proud of her though. She ran for the RIGHT reasons. She ran to improve things and to ring things up to speed, not as a route into politics. Fantastic candidate and it really is the NUS’ loss.
On a seperate note – it was really good to see Tom from Vision at Conference, as well as Laura, Chris and Ben from Nouse. Far more (and far superior) York Media coverage than any other Union. Good stuff!
I heard that Nick went instead of one of our elected delegates – how did he get chosen?
Nick went as part of Charlie’s campaign team – helping a friend.
Ben Humphrys was too ill on the day to attend conference. Nick was then asked to take his place, to make sure York were fully represented.
Seeing as no other York people helping at conference had recently been elected to YUSU, it was the most democratic way of making sure York’s voice was heard.
No offence to Charlie or her team, but doesn’t this make her second term in office completely pointless? From what I’ve heard, she’s been focussing her efforts this year more on NUS than on her actual duties as an elected YUSU officer. It wasn’t fair of her to run for Academic officer, then let NUS take precedence over York.
Well maybe you shouldn’t rely on rumours Pedant. Charlie works very hard for this uni, she puts more effort in than most.
Charlie has done more in this term whilst running in a national election than most sabbs do in a year. Go and look at her blog. http://www.yusu.org/blog/entry/331. If she’d have focused more on her own career and played the system spending time and money jaunting around unions, neglecting her duties like her competitors she’d have blown them out of the water. She didnt, and did what she said she’d do here, and more, and lost by 9 votes.
Yeah, I would chime in and say that her dedication to York cost her NUS support and not vice versa.
YUSU has to work in line with NUS policy so having Charlie be a part of both was nothing but beneficial for York.