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A year of equal and diverse experiences

June 27, 2006
Neil Barnes

Students often know very little about what the SU actually do. Neil Barnes reveals all about his year as a sabbatical officer

Never did I imagine, when taking my first few steps as a sabbatical officer of the Students’ Union, the ups and downs I would experience in my amazing year as Academic & Welfare Officer. In the past 12 months there have been moments of absolute joy tempered with occasions of total misery, and working full-time solely for the benefit of students is certainly something that has provided many experiences and provoked many opinions.

My work started at the beginning of last summer, which was mostly spent preparing for Freshers’ week – there’s always a certain amount of naivety amongst new students, so there needed to be plenty of information out there to gently ease them into university life. Unfortunately, a lot of information got lost in translation as students were bombarded with the message of alcohol. Despite some people’s best efforts, and the promotion of non-alcoholic events, the overriding message was to drink, drink, and drink more. This disappointed me, as there was so much potential to ease people gently into a student lifestyle through a carefully considered week of socialising and getting to know one another, which would lead to everyone being equally integrated.

There have been situations where the Students’ Union has been culturally insensitive when dealing with societies.

However, as soon as the socialising becomes alcohol-soaked a divide is created between those outgoing people who steam on ahead and quickly gain notoriety, and those who aren’t so outgoing, get left behind and spend the rest of their time at university catching up. I’m not arguing against drinking alcohol (in fact I would be a total hypocrite if I did, as many people will stand testimony to…), but Freshers’ Week provides your one chance to get university off to a good start, and the raging beer-soaked events that occur every night during the week don’t help this.

Moving on from the lecture though, Freshers’ Week was possibly the busiest, most enjoyable and certainly the most sanity-threatening week of my year. There was the talk and video in Central Hall that was put on for all the freshers on the Monday and first years still remember it now, screaming ‘WELFARE!’ in my face when they see me in nightclubs. I even felt like a celebrity at Access All Areas that night where so people I’d never met before spontaneously came up to talk to me. I relished the attention without the slightest feeling of modesty or guilt – dammit, I was enjoying myself! You would have assumed that as co-ordinator of all student welfare activities on campus I would have resisted the urge to pull a fresher, but no, I was a bad boy, and should have known better. I guess I was revelling in the fact that I was suddenly more popular with the ladies as a sabbatical officer than I have been in any of the previous three years!

Most of the year has continued in the same vein, with a constant stream of work, partying, drinking, and clubbing. It has not always been a healthy year, but it’s certainly been eventful. It has also been a very productive year, in terms of how much has been achieved by the Students’ Union. At times we are accused of only doing what benefits us, and not doing what the students want. Although sometimes the work we do may lead to our egos being fed, we always go into everything we do with one aim: doing our best for students. Even if views differ between officers, all our opinions are based on reaching this goal. The problem is that so many people want different things, and this makes it hard to assess what the prevailing opinion is amongst students.

I’m quite a fence sitter at heart and I’m always reluctant to get involved in controversial matters – it comes from an eagerness to please everyone at the same time, which is sometimes one of my failings. The big issue was the reformed YUSU Constitution, especially the flack flying around regarding the role of the equality officers on the Executive Committee. I worked with the other sabbatical officers on this, and I still believe that one of our earlier ideas was the best, which was to have an Equality & Diversity Officer on the Executive with the four equality officers only sitting on Senate. However, certain people rejected this, and thus the first proposed constitution had a severe gap in it when it went to a vote. It was this which led to its downfall. I still refuse to believe that the SU needs the four equality officers to be on both the Executive and Senate; it’s not necessary or efficient and perhaps more people are now realising this. The abuse I received for supporting the first proposal insulted me and the work I have put into the Students’ Union for over 3 years, but that’s the pitfall of being a Union Officer.

Then came the ‘revised’ proposal, which was no more than just slotting in the four equality officers on both Exec. and Senate. This left us with very little time before the main SU elections to have it passed or failed. It failed the initial vote and since then the story has passed into SU legend. Do abstentions count as votes or not? It still makes me shudder to think about how seriously dodgy the process became. On the night Exec. voted on the issue of whether to discount abstentions as part of the vote, I decided to be one of only 3 people who voted against. That was the decision my conscience led me to on the night, as I couldn’t be part of something that wasn’t clear-cut. In the end, we were left with a disrupted election schedule, and a constitution that isn’t ideal.

For me personally, the big welfare issue has been drink spiking. I planned a simulated drink spiking campaign at a Planet V in the Autumn Term but to my horror there was suddenly a spate of incidents that led to a running battle between myself (with the help of JCRCs) and the evil bastards who think it’s fun to spike drinks. I think we won, especially as Nouse publicised the issue widely, and awareness is now regularly promoted at events. What concerns me is that the majority of the alleged incidents were at events held in Derwent, and only this year. Is there some evil first year targeting student events? What drives someone to seek some thrill from endangering the lives of others? Just sheer perversity in my opinion.

Any proposal the University has come up with will betray and destroy student spirit – all just to save a few thousand pounds.

The ‘Save the Bars’ campaign of the Spring Term was the biggest SU campaign I’ve seen in all my four years at York. I enjoyed the two weeks of the campaign immensely, sacrificing my liver in the process, but trying to keep the bars open 7 nights a week was not just about the alcohol, it was also about providing a shared social space. With so many JCRs being regularly booked out to societies, there’s no longer a constantly available space for people to chill out in, regardless of whether they are drinking alcohol or not. Some people claim that even if a bar is shut the area will still be available, but the point is that the bar being open adds to the atmosphere and means all groups can mingle.

Any proposal the University has come up with will betray and destroy student spirit – all just to save a few thousand pounds. I’ve actively opposed any suggestions that the Students’ Union needs to agree with any University proposal. We can work with the University on any model of closure, but we must still actively disagree with anything that is not what we want and I hope that after I’ve gone that some future officers may hold this view. It’s my opinion that the University wants to be able to say that ‘the SU supports this’ – it makes them look better, but it makes us become the University’s bitch. The SU isn’t supposed to be the University’s bitch, we’re supposed to be the Students’ bitch!

The campaign also brought one episode that ranks as one of my favourite incidents of the whole year. In week 9 of the spring term I went to the Goodricke bar quiz, and was conned by two JCRC chairs into taking part in the ‘barricade’ that Goodricke carried out. Suddenly several Nouse reporters turned up with a camera, and I was worried that it would look terribly embarrassing if disciplinary action was taken and a sabbatical officer was right in the centre of it. But I soon realised that nothing serious was going to happen, and enjoyed the mini sit-in, and Doorsafe’s attempt to eject the Nouse reporters from the bar was the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages.

Do abstentions count? It makes me shudder to think about how dodgy the process became.

There have been moments of inappropriate conduct within the confines of the Student Centre, although it’s never been outright bad behaviour however there have been occasions when I’ve felt that people within the SU aren’t as ‘equal opportunities’ friendly as they should be. Some people seem to regard equality and diversity issues as a nuisance that they have to placate and, although I admit that many students may not care about non-alcoholic events or whether smoke or strobe should be used, that’s no excuse to forget about the people that are affected by this issue. I’ve personally felt marginalised as a disabled person, especially in SU committees where my disability seems to be a joke with everyone laughing whenever I mishear something, or miss what someone says. I’ve witnessed occasions where sexism against women is still present, especially on occasions regarding publicity of events.

There have also been situations where the SU has been culturally insensitive when dealing with certain cultural societies, and times when ‘being gay’ was used as an insult. In order fully to engage with all students, the officers within the Union need to be more aware of the implications of what they say both privately and publicity, and the opinions they express. Without this awareness, we stumble down the road to greater apathy amongst students, despite the hard work of those related to equality and diversity.

I don’t want to be too negative though – I certainly won’t try to put anyone off running for a sabbatical position next year and I definitely don’t want to scare the incoming sabbaticals. The elected candidates weren’t all my first choices but were definitely either my first or second. I’ve also worked with an amazing team of officers this year, and am privileged to have done so. It’s a long way from six blokes innocently playing croquet on a training weekend to the fatigue and general gladness that our time is nearly up. The decisions we’ve made have not always been well received by ordinary students, but everything we’ve done was, from our point of view, for their benefit. It’s been a year of joy from campus to Toffs, to Ziggy’s to countless bars and clubs, to Lancaster and back to campus again. At the same time, it’s been a year of some lows from feeling isolated in my office to wondering why things go wrong.

However, even with the hindsight and knowledge of everything that’s gone on this year, I wouldn’t change a single thing that has happened. In what other job do you have the collective students as a boss where it requires a majority decision to sack you? In what other job can you be a little late and hung-over, and not be admonished for it? In what other job can you escape for a few hours if the workload is getting you down? In what other job can you earn money but still live a student life?!

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