Tag Archives: student loans

Student movement or stagnant movement? My problems with the NUS Black Student’s campaign

Politics aside, I was really looking forward to getting involved in the black student’s campaign this year.  However, after attending the campaign’s annual summer conference, I have some serious reservations.

My suspicions began when I looked at the conference’s final motions and amendments document. I thought the steering committee were supposed to be impartial, but any motions submitted that criticised the structure of the campaign had been scrapped altogether or had been warped beyond recognition. I can only imagine this happened at compositing- a meeting at NUS HQ that motion proposers had to attend to put forward the case for keeping their proposals. The problem was, not everyone could go, thanks to money or travel issues.

One motion in particular that stood out was entitled ‘winter conference is too cold’. The motion resolved to do away with the campaigns annual winter conference and replace it with regional activist training days. In the final motions and amendments this had been merged into a motion named ‘winter conference is amazing’. Training days were only mentioned in the final resolution, cleverly phrased so that no delegate could take parts and attempt to scrap winter conference at all.

Clearly, there are political elements to the black students campaign’s steering committee. Members of the committee were clearly politically affiliated to candidates running in the election. I later discovered that Pav Ahktar, chair of steering, was black student’s officer from 2004 to 2006, and had graduated a very long time ago.

Pav’s political affiliations were confirmed in the election for next year’s steering committee, in which he recommded that delegates should also vote for Bellavia Riberio-Addy, who incidentally, is also a former black students officer . Personally, I object to two former black students’ officers running to be elected on to the steering committee as I don’t believe they can be impartial after being involved in the campaign for such a long time .

I believe the student movement is transient by nature, and for that reason, should always be kept regenerated, fresh and new. I didn’t see that in this campaign. I saw students and graduates who had been involved for 5 to 10 years moving from post to post. I think this suspicious, and indicative of a select few who  obviously do not want to let go.  It is a phenomenon that strangling progress and putting off new delegates.

My dissatisfaction came to a head when I decided to run for women’s representative on the black student’s committe. Standing orders (the same standing orders I had read on NUS Connect and in my delegate pack) dictated that there were two open places available. This is why I ran.

When we entered the room we had to wait 45 minutes because one candidate (who has been on the black student’s committee for 7 years) insisted that one place should be reserved for further education candidates only.

Upon consulting steering, the room was informed that a place should be reserved for further education, that this had been forgotten on the standing orders, and that we had the opportunity to take it to a vote.

Now, I agree with this proposal in principle, but in the context of the women’s caucus I thought it was an absolute farce. The candidate who ran for further education women’s place was Rebecca Sawbridge, who has comfortably sat on various positions on black student’s committee for seven years. Conveniently she was the only further education candidate in this election. In this election, I saw a committee member (who had already enjoyed too much time sitting at the table) reserving herself a place on the committee for another year. I was outraged.

With the same people maxing their term limits and moving from post to post to post, year after year after year, I believe that the black student’s campaign is stagnant. This is a case of the same people, with the same ideas, same politics, and ultimately, the same cliques. First time delegates who are keen to get involved are shafted by old timers using their political persuasion to fix things and create certain wins for themselves. When we are welcoming delegates to their eight year on committee, something is seriously wrong. In all honestly, I think some campaign and steering committee members think they are the black student’s campaign, as if it could not survive without them.  The democracy is warped, and the movement is going nowhere.

I also object to the way the motions are set out in the black students campaign. Delegates must vote on four main motions with a series of amendments after each one- forcing delegates to accept the a main motion whether they like its content or not.

I think committee members should accept criticism gracefully. The campaign needs progress and reform.  When new delegates are unsatisfied,  it’s not helpful to brand us ‘right wing’ just because you don’t like constructive criticism. I do believe the black students campaign is in the stranglehold of a select few individuals who are hanging on to the campaign like a comfort blanket. Ultimately, this results black activists who are being shunned, and black students who are being failed.

The future’s bleak, the future’s blue: the reality of higher education cuts

Snapshot from a 2008 student protest in Dublin

If you’re studying a degree anchored in the arts, humanities or social sciences, prepare to rip up your text books- because according to the coalition government, your degree is worthless. As a result of the comprehensive spending review, English universities are facing a 40% cut in central government funding. Courses including but not limited to science, medicine and technology will continue to receive funding, whilst it’s looking likely that degrees in the arts, humanities and social will have all of their state funding cut, leaving these courses to be paid for in their entirety by the students who take them.

After universities minister David Willets branded students ‘a burden on the taxpayer’ in June, the implementation of Lord Browne’s higher education review, whilst depressing, shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Arts and humanities subjects are sometimes viewed as pointless pursuits- and any student reading one of these subjects at university will be able to instantly recall divulging their degree of choice to a listener who has responded with something along the lines ‘well…there’s more useful things to be studying’. Perhaps I speak as a bitter humanities student- but there are thousands upon thousands of us, and we are none too pleased.

That’s just those of us who are lucky enough to be studying for a degree. Would be students are now finding themselves in a dire situation- with some reconsidering their university bound aspirations altogether. Tony Blair’s New Labour emphasis on ‘education, education, education’, and the party’s 50% promise of young people into higher education somewhat diluted the concept. In terms of higher education opportunities, young people have gone from a fruitful land of plenty to a sparse, dry desert- this year, over 200,000 people were rejected from university places as higher education institutions responded to record numbers of applicants with a hiatus on places.

For a while now, university has been billed as a rite of passage – a place to grow, learn and change. But with these cuts to higher education funding, one can’t help but suspect that these changes aren’t being made in favour of the universities or students themselves, but rather in the favour of the companies waiting in the wings to employ graduates. Leaving the arts, humanities and social sciences to stagnate is dangerous, and has the potential to transform England’s universities into two tier, Dickensian graduate machines.

Young people, it’s time to scrunch up your hopes and dreams and chuck them in the bin. With the cuts hitting women twice as hard as men, the comprehensive spending review appears to hark back to that old adage- women and children first. If you take the time to sift your way through all the deficit talk, and dodge the increasingly patronising credit card debt analogies of the people in power, you’ll eventually discover the facts under the layers and layers of rhetoric.  If you’re not too convinced by Clegg and Cameron’s constant and insistent reassurances to the general public that these cuts are both progressive and fair, and you raise an eyebrow at the phrase ‘we’re all in this together’, you are not alone.

News of the comprehensive spending review has hit the general public like a torrential downpour of rain – one we were all expecting since the weather man’s gloomy forecast on Wednesday 12th May.

At the moment, it looks like the nation is quite content with standing miserably on the pavement – getting hopelessly, thoroughly drenched. We’re British, and we’ll put up with it. We knew these cuts were coming, and despite disparate news of the odd dissenting voice or organized protest, the majority of those affected are suffering silently. However, just across the channel tunnel, the population of France are rejecting their imminent downfall. They’re donning raincoats and heavy duty wellington boots in the form of mass protests and street riots in response to Sarkozy’s proposal to increase the French national retirement age by two years.

Far more change in happening to us in the UK, and it looks like the next four years are going to be very difficult indeed. In response to the largest ever cuts to public spending to affect my generation, I think it’s time we made more of a fuss.

Hands up if you feel betrayed!

In light of our new Conservative universities minister, Mr David Willets, branding university students ‘a burden on the taxpayer’, it was only a matter of time before the tuition fees debate reared its ugly head again. As soon as the Conservatives chose to form an alliance with the Liberal Democrats rather than forming a minority government, it was glaringly obvious that both political parties’ opposing stances on university tuition fees would not sit well with one another- so much so that, to avoid division in the new coalition, the Lib Dems have been allowed to chose to abstain from voting for against the issue in parliament. Convenient, once you consider the long standing Liberal Democrat stance on the abolition of higher education tuition fees.

On the campaign trail, both Nick Clegg and Vince Cable signed an NUS pledge vowing to vote against a rise in tuition fees if they were elected into parliament. It was this core value that drew a lot of previously apolitical students into politics, and gave us an incentive to go out and vote- a policy that directly affected us. In stark contrast, the Conservatives remained sketchy on their stance on tuition fees throughout the general election campaign. When asked, representatives from the party told student voters that they wouldn’t comment on whether they’d raise tuition fees until they’d examined the results of a review into the state of fees. Again, rather conveniently, those results will not be released until long after May 6th (it’s been reported that the results of the review will be available some time in the autumn). Willets spoke about the current loan system, commenting that it was ‘unsustainable’- and many students felt the sting of the overwhelmed system last academic year when thousands of us received late payments of our student loans. His remarks are the strongest indication yet of a rise in tuition fees.

The phrase Con/Dem Nation emerged as a trending topic on the social networking website, Twitter, after Britain’s new coalition government was slowly and painfully announced. Funny as the phrase was at the time, Cameron’s savage spending cuts have revealed the flippant phrase to ring uncomfortably true.