A guide to the ‘Year of Reform’
THE STUDENTS’ UNION have claimed success in their ‘Year of Reform’, despite the criticisms it has received from students. The reforms, which started in the autumn term, have involved a complete overhaul of the SU, and, most notably, led to the introduction of the new constitution, which has been seen as one of the sabbatical team’s most controversial moves in their term in office.
Over the last year, the SU also faced a number of incidents that were not expected, from the University’s threat of bar closures, to the recent AUT strike, and there is no doubt that their reactions to these will affect how the students chose to remember them.
Campaigns
The SU’s sabbatical team become most visible to students when campaigning on campus, whether that be defying the National Union of Students over the lecturers’ strike or protesting to the University to keep the college bars open.
Students’ Union President, Micky Armstrong, claims one of the Union’s biggest successes was standing up to the NUS, and choosing not to support the lecturers in their strike action and assessment boycott.
Micky said: “I’m disappointed that as a national union we suffered a massive spilt but I had to put the needs of the students first.”
While most students applauded the SU’s stance on the assessment boycott, the outcome of the ‘Save our Bars’ campaign has been seen as a disappointment.
The two week campaign, which was one of the biggest in the SU’s history, led to students packing out their college bars one week and ‘barcotting’ them the next. Over two thousand signatures were collected in a petition, and Micky Armstrong promised “we will not back down”.
Despite the initial claims of success from the SU, the University are still planning widespread closures in the next academic year. At the time, Vanbrugh College Chair, Micky Macefield accused the SU of “leading everybody to believe that closures were negotiable”, and other JCRC chairs have hit out at the close relationship between the SU and the University in the discussions.
Services and Finance Officer, Nat Thwaites-McGowan, however, claims the SU’s biggest success was “dialogue with the university” and said “we’ve finally got them talking to us”.
In negotiations, it has been agreed certain bars will open two nights a week. Armstrong said: “I have huge reservations about how successful this new plan will be”.
The JCRCs have now taken action, and in a recent UGM a motion was submitted to ensure that the SU would not back down over the bar closures. Halifax College President, Sam Bayley, said: “Thanks to the motion we submitted to the UGM, the campaign will be ongoing”.
‘I probably would have been more hard-line with the University had I been “chief negotiator”’ he added.
Behind the Scenes
However, Thwaites-McGowan and Armstrong have outlined that a number of their successes have been “behind the scenes”. Armstrong claims a new five-year strategic plan as one of his high points, while Thwaites-McGowan has concentrated on a financial reform of the Union.
“To be honest our entire budgetary system was a joke before this year”, he said. The SU have worked to restructure the Union’s budget, which will allow societies to get their funding sooner.
The new constitution was cited as another one of the Union’s successes. Armstrong said: “The constitution made the Union more democratic and representative”.
However, last term, the constitution proved so controversial that some students threatened to no-confidence Armstrong and Thwaites-McGowan, the two officers behind the document.
This followed a controversial move by the SU to pass the new constitution, which meant a reinterpretation of the voting rules. Despite their claims that a wide range of constitutional experts had been consulted, a Nouse investigation found that the SU had misrepresented advice, and most of the supposed ‘experts’ had not been able to pass comment.
Neil Barnes, the Academic and Welfare Officer, said: “It still makes me shudder to think about how seriously dodgy the process became.”
Working relationships
The SU has stated that the relations between the sabbatical officers and other members of the Union has been much better than in previous years. Commenting on the former sabbatical team, Thwaites-McGowan said: “It was an absolute disaster. It was like a soap opera.”
However, Goodricke College Chair, Matt Burton said “he found that the current sabbatical team weren’t very approachable”.
This followed a heated email exchange between Burton and Thwaites-McGowan over the SU’s Ents Tech. Thwaites-McGowan advised Burton: “don’t fuck us around”.
There were similar accusations of unprofessional conduct from the student body. In a response to an Ask YUSU question, Thwaites-McGowan told a student to ‘fuck off’ and was forced to apologise for a statement which claimed that the people persecuted under the Nazi regime were “stupid”.
However, Thwaites-McGowan believes Ask YUSU was used to harass the sabbatical officers and college chairs: “There are some students who take it to heart to make your life a living hell”.
The outgoing SU team have argued their ‘Year of Reform’ was a success and has delivered a more efficient, democratic and representative Union, while at the same time dealing with crises such as the threatened bar closures and the lecturers’ strike.
Thwaites-McGowan has admitted: “there’s been times when we’ve dropped the ball, hopefully next years team will pick up the pieces that we dropped”.
The SU seems hopeful that there will be a ‘year of consolidation’ under the next sabbatical team, and then it will be possible to see the true successes of the ‘year of reform’.
