SUSU and the NUS - In or Out?
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Right, in response to the empassioned debate over this Issue that has gone on on the Sit in Facebook event, i have set up this thread as a place to air your views on the topic.

My own personal feeling is that SUSU MUST remain out of the NUS. Not only will they cost us around £50,000 in membership fees, plus the cost of an extra 'NUS Co-ordinator' working at the Union., more importantly they are an inneffectual campaigning organisation. Because of their umbilical chord tie to New Labour, they are both unwilling and politically unable to seriously fight the Government's policies on higher education, and they have done nothing to stop either tuition fees or top up fees being put in place.

 Moreover, joining the NUS would mean joining NUSSL - their trading arm. NUSSL would decide the products we can and can't sell in our shop, cafe and bars. They would list the beers we can offer at the bar on the basis of NUS conference decisions, rather than what students really want.

JP Mattar and Pete Lamb came to UMB to ask for reaffiliation in December, and this was unanimously defeated by those of us on the committee. This defeat was then repeated by council, even though both Pete and JP didn't actually turn up. Joining will offer us nothing, whilst limiting our activities and ability to satisfy our student's needs. And we can still campaign with any other student body in the country, through both Aldwych and informal agreement.

Why should we join?

Posted at 18:16:13 on 13-05-2008

I agree that we shouldn’t join. However it is always important to look at the other side of the argument and try and see the motives behind joining.

 
With some reflection I think the underlying reason for joining is to provide a platform for aspiring labour politicians at Southampton to hone their skills. They would be given the opportunity to bask in higher levels of bureaucracy and practice how to waste other people’s money, so that one day they can apply it to the entire country.

Posted at 20:24:22 on 13-05-2008

Tom, i'm glad you mentioned the Labour link. My posts on the event discussion were a bit party political - and inappropriate when there was a bigger issue at stake - and for that I apologise.

But for Hannah Walford to say that the debate on the NUS should not be party political is a contradiction in terms. It is not a coincidence that only the members of the Southampton Labour club (all eight of them, i'd guess) have come out in support of the NUS - and anyone who is against it is brandished a member of the 'Tory boy squadron' (Welcome to your new political affiliation Tom! You oppose the NUS, you must be a Cameron crony.).

What riled me most was the suggestion that membership of the NUS would have in some way maintained the Union President's ability to vote on the new vice-chancellor. What a load of absolute tosh. As i said in that discussion, I have seen no evidence whatsoever that membership of the NUS would have helped resolve the situation. Any idea that the uni 'chiefs', having fought off anger from their own Students' Union, would then pander to the opinions of Gemma Tumelty and her tribe of rabid and ineffectual unionists is both ridiculous and hilarious.

This is simply an attempt by Labour-supporting students to score cheap political points - knowing full well that membership of the NUS would have achieved nothing, but knowing also that they could gain a few converts at this time of apparent high emotion.

Posted at 20:39:31 on 13-05-2008

I strongly agree with us remaining out of the NUS, having been here for 4 years I have seen no benefit for my friends at other unis who have NUS cards.

The NUS now is run like a business rather than the student voice it used to be. This is evident in the fact that the NUS has done little to protest student fees in the past few years, considering its massive membership.

The fact that the people on the facebook thread, who are arguing for rejoining the NUS, are committee members of the Southampton Labour Club speaks volumes about the NUS link to Labour. I don't feel that an organisation which has pinned its colours so firmly to the mast is capable of truly representing the student voice.

I personally consider £50,000 a year, plus the approx. £16000 a NUS officer would cost a ridiculous amount for no tangible benefit. Although I appreciate that not everyone in Southampton plays sport, if this amount were taken away from the Union I would strongly expect our sport club budgets to be the first to suffer, if not cube events as well. 

If a shop advertises student discount they will give it to any student with Uni ID regardless of if it is NUS or not, because if they advertise it as 'student discount' that is the law. It is also true that if we joined the NUS we would have to abide by their trading arm, in other unis this has meant they were not allowed to stock Guinness for example.

I might add that the speed with which the facebook group thread degenerated into a slanging-match does not reflect well on the political clubs of Southampton Uni.

Posted at 20:41:36 on 13-05-2008

I am not the best informed on this subject, but I do not see the benefit of joining the NUS if, as you say, these restrictions will be held against us.

 I have always viewed our seperation from the NUS as a good thing, and would wish to keep it that way.

 If a national issue were to come up, then being part or not of the NUS would obviously have no difference, as any change made would effect all, so I don't really see the point of rejoining. We have been well equipped to deal with problems ourselves for years, so why change now?

Posted at 03:43:52 on 14-05-2008

I think you'll find James that JP's comment was in response to an earlier comment that it might help if we could get other Universities involved, he simply pointed out that the whole point of a confederation of unions, much like a union, it to work together to accomplish change. There are any number of ways in which they could apply pressure by making the case on the national level.

I was anti-NUS, when that's the only line you're hearing it's easy to go with the tide. When I got the chance to find out about the NUS for myself I found that many of the criticisms were either outdated or never had any truth to them in the first place. I saw NUS Conference first-hand, I talked to their officers of various affiliations and I read up on current issues in the organisation (such as the Governance Review).

Having found these things out for myself I became convinced that it was undoubtedly in SUSU's interest to be a part of the NUS, unfortunately some institutional perceptions are hard to shift and I'm tired of bashing my head against a wall on this issue, but for what it's worth here are some interesting facts and points worth raising:

•  In terms of the net cost of joining the NUS it's somewhere in the range of £0 to profit. When Edinburgh University Students' Association, a union of similar size and structure, rejoined they found that the real savings made by being part of NUSSL and other NUS structures more than made up for the entrance fee.
  
• In the 2007-2008 term only four NUS executive officers were Labour our of a much larger number, Labour Students has lost control despite its anti-top-up fees and anti-Iraq stances. The current executive contains Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and many, many independents.
• Exiting the NUS was never put to the students in a referendum, from what I hear there was talk of this being unconstitutional and legal action was discussed but never came to fruiting. Winning a vote 111 to 99 isn't hard when you pack an AGM.
• The argument for leaving was that the NUS cost too much and wasn't focused on real student needs. Since we left membership for a Union of our size has almost halved in cost and through efforts such as the Governance Review steps are being made to ensure the NUS works to help students. The reasons we left no longer stand, to that extent we have accomplished our goal.
• The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills is in the process of establishing a variety of means in which the NUS can put students views across on higher education, as such they have influence on government policy.
• There is a continuing need for a national body to represent students, 98% of students are represented by the NUS, SUSU doesn't register at all on the national level. Aldwych is essentially a statalite body of the NUS, it only employs one member of staff and as far as I know we are the only member of Aldwych not part of the NUS. When media/government/anyone of any note wants to talk to UK students they go to the NUS. We are represented by them, but have no opportunity to have a say in what they say on our behalf. If having a say is of no interest then I can't understand why we should bother protesting for the comparatively minor issue of a vote on the next VC. The NUS succeeds on the national level, Richard Angell got the Treasury to invest 80 million (approx.) back into student communities. Without the NUS there would be no voice for students on the national level and if you think accept that that's a bad thing (it would certainly have bad consequences for us), the choice is between continuing to leech off the work of the NUS and other unions without contributing anything, or starting to actually act like a Union and cooperate with others for our mutual advantage.
  

Posted at 11:15:58 on 14-05-2008

I don't know where you found the information about the NUS executive officers, but from taking a couple of minutes to look at Wikipedia I found that since 1982 only 1 president of the NUS has had no affiliation with Labour (the Independent Presidents were members of the Labour Party rather than Labour Students).

This suggests to me that the Labour leanings of the NUS are still firmly entrenched.

Pete, maybe you could actually address our points rather than giving a line of misleading bulletpoints. For example, if you could illuminate us to exactly how we would break even with the NUS costs?

Posted at 12:24:19 on 14-05-2008

As high a regard as I have for your Wikipedia searching skills you just need to look at how many Labour Students candidates lose per year at NUS conference to realise that Labour doesn't have some sort of Stalineque grip on the NUS.

I know how many there are of each group because I met alot of them and so I know who is of what group on the Exec. The President post is one of any number of officers, a list of the rest usually can be found somewhere on the NUS webpage.

Misleading in what way? As for the NUS costs that's easy, NUSSL is a buying consortium which every union in the NUS is part of, due to their size they are able to buy in bulk and negotiate prices down. This means we are able to make savings on what we sell in the union shop and at the bars (decisions on this are not made at conference as Tom claims, they are made on an economic basis of getting the best deal for member unions). The savings were shown at Edinburgh, as I've already said, to more than offset the cost of membership.

But this isn't really about costs is it, things would be much easier if it were. Afterall we are one of the top five, if not three, Unions in the UK when it comes to funding and if we are able to throw money away on half of the shiny, new and pointless stuff which UMB has for some reason decided to buy over the last couple of years then no doubt we can afford what almost every other Union in the country can afford.

If it didn't cost us a penny would you still be against us joining, Sam?

Posted at 13:12:28 on 14-05-2008

If it didn't cost us a penny? Pete, I am no happier about some of the equipment that UMB has spent money on over the last few years than you are, but you cannot suggest that joining the NUS would offer us better value for money.

 NUSSL would force us to change our stock in the bars every year, and would seriously limit what we can and can't offer to students in all of our commercial services. Try talking to a few of the commercial managers in the Union and see how positive they are about the idea.

Posted at 13:30:36 on 14-05-2008

I agree with Tom, I would rather not be forced to join NUSSL.

Even if it didn't cost us a penny I would rather not be part of the NUS, as I strongly believe that tuition fees should be abolished and I do not think the NUS does enough to oppose them. I would rather not allow the NUS to speak in my name, when I do not truly believe it represents student opinion or interests.

I believe that voting is a more effective way of making your opinion heard, it is just unfortunate that so few students vote.

Posted at 13:44:31 on 14-05-2008