I’d quite happily give up my membership if it didn’t involve me having to actually do anything. Why on earth would I want to run for YUSU? I’ve just talked about how they’re useless and have no power. No-one can change this, it’s the way it is.

If you’ve no time for reading my posts, then how about you don’t respond? mmkay?

And Sam, given you think your job is more important than it is (judging from posts here), I’m guessing you’d say the same in an interview.

I think if anyone is the “pompous arse” its you.

The fact is that thousands of students attend YUSU events, use YUSU’s services, participate in societies, sports, rallies and campaigns. All of these things are run by other students who care about them. If you don’t benefit from any of the things these people do, fine. But stop using a YUSU funded, YUSU run, newspaper website to abuse the people who aren’t so selfish that they can see the need for things that they don’t personally benefit from.

Either spend some time actually changing things by standing in elections or submitting UGM Motions or if you don’t think it makes a difference give up your union membership; don’t participate and disengage completely.

Constructive criticism is essential for the Union to operate; selfish whining is not, I have no time for people who willing to abuse those who give up their time for YUSU, but don’t have the balls to either stand up and change it, or to give up their membership.

I for one, am sick of reading your misinformed diatribes posted on a Union website.

I’m accountable to the student body, and that includes you. It doesn’t mean I’m here to take abuse from you, and it shouldn’t mean I have to constantly defend my decisions behind working for students on a personal level. If there’s something we haven’t done right, or there’s something you’d like us to do, I’m all ears.

I’m sure you’re too busy to take me up on the offer, but if you really think that we just sit in the office to enhance our CVs, why don’t you come in and shadow one of us for a day? I’m all for an open and transparent Union and I like people to know what we do, because then individuals usually change their tune from “YUSU has never done anything for me” to “I didn’t realise YUSU did so much for me”.

Sam, please don’t make judgements about what I did or didn’t do to sort things out, you pompous arse.

“So who did you tell about it? If you’d come to YUSU, we could have put pressure on to get you moved. I suspect that you didn’t bother.”

I spoke to both the secretary of said college and emailed YUSU Welfare to be told. “We ran out of non smoking accomodation and you were put with others who opted for non smoking. Unfortunately due to some people hiding their smoking from their parents many people lie on the forms and there is nothing we can do about it.”

Yeah, GREAT help there mate. I also had asthma for the record and it flared up a lot during my first year. I was mentioned this and was told “You should have put this on your form originally.” I didn’t think I’d *need* to.

My department takes feedback on board as I’ve directly spoken to lecturers on how things could be improved, and they have employed my suggestions.

“Welfare support: how do you know it hasn’t been used by friends? And in any case, it’s here if you need it, whether you have in the past or not. Hardly unimportant, is it?”

I didn’t say it was unimportant. I said *I* haven’t used it and Tom said YUSU is important for everyone. I’m talking about myself here, not the student body on a whole.

“Portering: If you go to lectures, or anything on campus, it does affect you.”

You’re right, and a mighty “fine” job they do as well. I forget how long the lights were broke in P/X/001.

“Plus, surely you went to a Freshers’ Week event when you arrived at Uni, which is where you met the friends you now go to the Lowther with?”

True, although I have a few suggestions to how you distribute tickets. A number of freshers I know wern’t aware of the process and the tickets were all sold out, bought my 2nd and 3rd years. But like I said, this only applied in my first year.

My point still stands, you’re not as important as you pretend to be when describing your jobs to a prospective employer.

As soon as he makes a mistake they’ll throw him to the wolves.

Whether you love him or hate him, you have to admit that Mad Cap’n has somehow managed to do the one thing that YUSU candidates have been trying to do for absolutely years - revive interest in university politics. We no longer talk about uni sport or funky cocktails or the social night of current choice first now. The election, controversy, and all of the ruckus it has caused is on everyone’s lips.

And that in itself is commendable. Sure, he “did it for the lulz”, but how is this in any way a bad thing? Why after all should student politics be serious? University has always been about working hard and playing hard and making the mistakes you wouldn’t do later in life while getting the training you need to go out in the big bad nasty real world.

A lot of the comments have been focusing on how we should take it seriously, because university politics are important.

Let me ask you this: if university politics are important, and Serious Business, why is the winner the one who at the end of the day managed to reap the apathy vote, as much of the critics of his campaign have said? I am sorry to say this, but the vast majority of students don’t care about university politics. There are a minority who do, and they are vocal indeed, but the votes are counted and tallied and less than half of us have bothered to vote. Why is this? Is there a lack of faith in the candidates? Or maybe it’s the fact that there’s no real noticable change? Maybe it’s the fact that year after year we don’t notice the many things that YUSU does. Maybe it’s just how old and jaded we are, or maybe we’d just be happy with a university policy of laissez-faire.

Change will happen if we go out and do it, not if we vote for someone who will promise change. If I wanted YUSU to do something I’d go out there and kick and scream and fight tooth and nail until I got some attention. Tom has got YUSU’s attention, and now he can make the real changes.

How is dressing up in an attention-getting pirate outfit any dfferent from what the rest of the candidates have done? Running around, accosting the rest of us on the way to lectures with flyers and posters - I’m sure I saw one girl wearing a large sign. Now the Cap’n has opened the floodgates and I’m sure this time next year there will be a load of people in cardboard boxes clunking around campus claiming to want our vote for the mighty army of Optimus Prime.

We can only hope.

Politics may be serious business, but taking anything in life at all too seriously results in autofail of a giant degree. The proof in the pudding - of all these people running around with giant cutlasses shoved up their buttocks, declaring a protest against the Cap’n, have failed to see the point of university politics altogether.

For once, I’d like to see a candidate who didn’t promise us the moon but in actuality got us absolutely everything he or she promised. A cannon on campus seems more likely than what half the others are promising.

And why is serious better than humorous? If you can get the job done and enjoy it, surely that’s a better thing?

* What’s been said here time and time again here is that we ’shouldn’t take it seriously’

I suggest you read his interview on The Yorker where he specifies what exactly he meant by this statement.

* And I’m not saying he’d let an issue like top-up fees pass him by - it’s simply that that campain will not be easily won, and this will do nothing to make it any easier

I don’t think it’s doing anything to make it harder to win either

* The problem is that in a turnout of 1,500 students that will sadly be a minority, there will be many, many students who only voted for him because he was in fancy dress. This can only have been the case,

You’re speculating without any facts to back it up, and stating it as fact. For all we know, the vast majority of students at York could be pastafarians and they’re voting him because pirates are important figures in the CoFSM.

* Your accommodation: *snip*

YUSU didn’t do anything to help two years ago when the cleaners stopped cleaning some of the Alcuin blocks, and that was a problem that was reported to at least one person on Exec. I think we got Nuts banned from Your Shop that year though!

If you read it, I clearly said that these are the issues of student politics, which I don’t think can really be argued with. That doesn’t mean that the Union is directly (or even indirectly) responsible for all of them, but it is the body that can represent York students on these issues - both to our own institution and at the National level. If something goes wrong with any of those things, the Union is the ready-made voice you’ve got to do something about it. The president and other officers have always acted on behalf of students in committees, and most of the University policies on things like accommodation, admissions and departmental supervisory structures/feedback have been heavily influenced by their work over the last 40 or so years, and continue to be so now. This isn’t a wild claim, and I can give you current examples if you really want them (Differential rates and standard accommodation on Hes East/ falling numbers of state school admissions in the wake of top-up fees/ strengthening of boards of studies - respectively).

As an example, had you gone to the Union with your smoking room problem they may well have been able to help you, though it isn’t always possible to change accommodation.

Anyway, I’ve spent too long discussing this already and I’m very aware I’m repeating myself in a way that must be immensely tedious for anyone who has perservered to the bottom of this page; so I’ll sign off by wishing the next president the best of luck in what would always have been a difficult year.

just to clarify, I’m NOT calling for Scott to step down, neither am I calling his ability into question. I don’t blame him for what’s happened here, I just think it’s quite revealing about student attitudes.

Nor do I think everyone who voted for him did so only for the comedy value: there will be those who voted for him becuase they knew him and thought him capable, because they heard him speak, or for many other reasons. The problem is that in a turnout of 1,500 students that will sadly be a minority, there will be many, many students who only voted for him because he was in fancy dress. This can only have been the case, as there was no serious information about him or his policies in his campaining material, and he always said that he was only running as a joke. I’ve spoken to many people who voted for him on exactly that rationale, which I don’t find too inspiring.

And I’m not saying he’d let an issue like top-up fees pass him by - it’s simply that that campain will not be easily won, and this will do nothing to make it any easier. I personally do not like to think about the consequences of losing it.

All I’m saying is that student politics is, and has always been, very serious and has a really significant impact on the lives and studies of students. What’s been said here time and time again here is that we ’shouldn’t take it seriously’ - if we do that then we are betraying not only ourselves and the others around us, but future students as well. It’s not that funny.

Who ever said the MRL didnt want to win. i agree that if they got a seat in the commons there would be total outrage, but that would just highlight how hippocritical world politics is.

I mean who would vote for a party who want to introduce the 99p coin, ban tractors from driving on roads as they can go across country and make all socks sold in 3s as 1 is always lost in the wash….

And such ‘crazy’ policies as 24 hour drinking, lowering the voting age so its in line with drinking/the army/getting married and having a none of the above option on voting cards.

I think its great that he’s got in, especially cos its kicked up such a fuss. it really has highlighted what he said about the joke of YUSU politics (please note, this was about politics, not about YUSU’s job)
Why would you want him out already, he might well be one of the bast SU presidents ever!

Fees: Come the “lift the cap” decision, fees won’t be standard. It’s the Unions that argue and fight to make sure you’re not paying £10,000 a year in a couple of years’ time.

Your course and feedback: Who trains your Board of Studies Reps? And who chases up the departments (we’ll name no names) who do nothing with the feedback? Having sat on department meetings personally about courses, I can quite categorically say that you’re incorrect.

Your accommodation: You say it was “shite”. So who did you tell about it? If you’d come to YUSU, we could have put pressure on to get you moved. I suspect that you didn’t bother. Are we supposed to guess that you’ve got a specific problem in your accommodation? And we constantly fight to improve standards in University (and privately owned) housing.

Welfare support: how do you know it hasn’t been used by friends? And in any case, it’s here if you need it, whether you have in the past or not. Hardly unimportant, is it?

Portering: If you go to lectures, or anything on campus, it does affect you.

Events: We don’t run the Lowther. However, if you wanted to use the free minibus to get you home from there safely, you could feel free. Or, for that matter, from Autumn, the FTR, now that YUSU have put pressure on them to run a late night service to save students money. Plus, surely you went to a Freshers’ Week event when you arrived at Uni, which is where you met the friends you now go to the Lowther with?

Safety net: Who would you turn to support you if things went wrong? As you’ve said with your accommodation, whoever you turned to in the past doesn’t seem to have really helped you sort it out. If you were at an appeal for Academic Misconduct, and you needed a representative – YUSU will help you. Need a hardship loan? Pop into our office and we’ll do our best to help. University not listening? They quite often listen to us.

Tom’s right – YUSU affects you in lots of ways you don’t know about, and it doesn’t matter whether you care or not, or get involved in societies or clubs, or run for office. We’ll be here when you need us, and whether you spend your life criticising us or not we’ll fight for what students here want.

I’m not suggesting that any large number of York students will start going to anti-fees demos (or whatever) and going dressed as pirates; that is implausible. But if they hear Tom and some of his most committed supporters are doing so they might think it will bring a bit of fun to demonstrating about an issue they care about.

Also, I think there’s huge potential for getting more people involved in RAG and Student Action if we’re seen as a fun university where people don’t have to take themselves 100% seriously to get involved with good causes. Unfortunately we are a small university and our voice in politics is always going to be limited. We do still have to make an effort to be heard but I see charity as the most direct and reliable way that students here can make a positive difference in the world. Even a couple of big pirate-themed events could raise a lot of money for RAG.

Of course, I could be wrong about this. Perhaps Tom Scott will get pissed on (discount) rum, spend most of his presidency in a drunken stupor and generally be a disaster. But I see no reason to think so and I’ll be looking to him to use the broad appeal he’s obviously got to make a genuine positive difference to students.

Remember that he’s also said that he’s going to be going the best job he can.

* The important thing is what York Uni thinks about the student body and their representatives.

And the student body has spoken in a bigger voice than ever before saying “This is the guy we want to represent us”.

You also contradict yourself, you say in one line that he’s capable and will hopefully raise to the challenge, but later down you make the assumption that he’s going to let a proposed increase in top-up fees pass by. You can campaign and represent without being political.

* In doing this they have sent the Uni administration a loud and clear signal that so many of them are not aware of what is going on on their behalf, and that they do not care about it, and they have terminally undermined the authority of their primary representative

That’s a very sweeping claim. Got any evidence to back that up?

I’m fed up with all of the “oh noes, the person who won the election is a pirate, the sky is falling” claims that assume the worst in the general student population and have no substance behind them.

“It’s your admission, your fees, your course, your feedback, your supervision, your accommodation, your welfare support, your portering and cleaning, your college, the events you meet friends at, the society you’re a member of, the sports equipment you use, the safety net you know that you’ve got if everything goes wrong.”

Admission - YUSU had nothing to do with me being admitted to the university, care to explain further?
Fees - Fees are standard across *all* Universities in the UK (except that private one), how can YUSU affect this in the slightest?
My course - You have absolutely no say in how my course is run. All feedback from course students goes to the lecturers and they decide how things should be done.
Feedback - All my feedback was given to lecturers in my department. What do you have to do with this?
My supervision - I’m supervised by my department.
My accomodation - My accomodation in the first year was shite. I asked for non smoking and got smoking. Cheers for sorting this out for me! (Sarcasm by the way, I suffered a floor of smokers all year)
Welfare support - Haven’t used it, so this doesn’t affect me.
Portering and cleaning - I’m not in student accomodation anymore, so it doesn’t affect me.
My college - I haven’t actually set foot in there since I left halls.
Events I meet my friends at - I didn’t know you guys ran the Lowther…
Socities - I’m not a member of any YUSU run socities
Sports equipment - Ditto
Safety net - If I had a serious problem, YUSU is the last thing I’d thing of turning to for “support”.

So… care to explain how *I* was affected greatly by the YUSU? I think you’re trying to make YUSU look more important and useful than they actually are. I’m pretty sure the majority of students agree with my viewpoint. Actually, isn’t a joke candidate being elected proof?

I’m not judging him on his costume - I have no doubt that someone in a pirate suit can argue as capably as anyone not in a pirate costume (though not, incidentally, without contravening the union code). The difficulty is that he entered the election as a joke candidate, asking only to be judged by his costume, and presenting no serious policies or other criteria by which to judge him as a candidate. He stood as a pirate: not as a serious candidate with an eccentric wardrobe , but as a self-proclaimed joke. It was on this basis, by this image, that york students voted for him - the fault isn’t his (beyond a slightly tedious snese of humour perhaps) its theirs for failing to take student politics seriously. There are so many times I’ve heard people say ‘it’s only student politics, it’s not real or anything’ over the past few days.

Student politics isn’t so called because it’s not real, or becuase it’s a step down from ‘grown up politics’ or because its a practising ground for the ‘real politics’ as seen in the House of Commons (there are plenty of debating societies that will cater for that kind of whim), but because it’s the politics of being a student. This encompasses everything from the day-to-day representation of students to their departments on University commitees and academic tribunals, to the hugely significant conversations he will have to have about fees and student welfare and provision on Heslington East. Student politics has a massive impact on every student’s experience here, whether they know it not, and the conversations going on currently will have a collosal impact on students who will be here in a few years’ time. It’s your admission, your fees, your course, your feedback, your supervision, your accommodation, your welfare support, your portering and cleaning, your college, the events you meet friends at, the society you’re a member of, the sports equipment you use, the safety net you know that you’ve got if everything goes wrong. You might not realise it, but pretty much everything about your time here is at least partially dependent on the hard work of Union officers and staff and other dedicated student volunteers (JCRC’s etc.) It’s important, whether or not you like to admit it. You might not feel ‘engaged’ with YUSU, but it’s been engaged with you: you’re a part of it, and you probably have no idea how many of your experiences have been dependent on that membership.

Who cares what other Universties think? The important thing is what York Uni thinks about the student body and their representatives. Any succesful argument in a University committee (I speak from experience) will be made by demonstrating that you have a mandate from your students and that you are representing what they want. York students have given their primary representative a mandate of ‘cutlasses for all’ - a provision I can only imagine Brian Cantor being all too happy to agree with once he has £7,000 extra per student per year to play with. In doing this they have sent the Uni administration a loud and clear signal that so many of them are not aware of what is going on on their behalf, and that they do not care about it, and they have terminally undermined the authority of their primary representative. It’s not just the president’s position that will be undermined as a result of this, its every representative of York students - on accademic, financial, environmental and every other issue.

In perhaps the most crucial year this Union has ever faced, in which we face issues that will have a real impact on current and future students, the student body has voted for a joke.

Stop being so shallow and look past the costume.

* That this was the choice of the student body tells us a lot about what many students are like: shallow, ignorant, selfish and short-shighted.

Well yeah, I mean shallow like someone who judges someone only on their personality, ignorant by not fully researching how knowledgeable the person they’re slating is, selfish by throwing a hissy fit because the candidate they voted for didn’t win, and short-sighted by only thinking that people voted him for the comedy value?

The point is that for whatever reason YUSU does not engage with the majority of the student body, this is evidenced by the low turnouts, therefore by engaging with more of the student body (still not a majority though) we’re more likely to get a candidate who is *more* representative of what we want.

As for those that think York is now going to be a laughing stock by external Universities, I was talking to one of my friends last night. She’s a lecturer with the Classics Faculty at the University of Oxford and she thinks that it’s fantastic.