A message for all NUS representatives and a call to all students

Now that we have reached the end of our time at the 2011 National Union of Students (NUS) Conference, let us pause and reflect. We have elected Liam Burns as the new NUS president, a president elected by 446 votes to represent seven million students. Seven million students! He is the one the vast majority of those students will come to equate with the NUS. Charged with representing the entirety of the student body he is the one who they will see on the news.

 
The Sage Centre in Gateshead, Newcastle – site of this year’s NUS conference

Yes, we have been elected to represent our student bodies and yes, we do have a mandate to act in their interest – but are you telling me this mandate really extends so far as to allow us to choose their leader? No! Of course it doesn’t. How can a so-called democratic body refuse to allow its own members to choose their president?  Full elections would be easy to run – we already have live video streaming of the conference. The UCU has direct elections, our trade unions have direct elections…are they really that much more capable than us at organising elections? Even our own government has direct elections…why shouldn’t the NUS, who claim to champion the democratic rights of students?

There is a legitimate concern allowing every student to vote would drown out the interests of smaller campuses or institutions but this is wrong. By making every campus or institution into an NUS constituency the president will be  elected by student bodies rather than by individual students. Campuses can have vastly different issues and we must not allow a tyranny of the majority in our pursuit of democracy.

It’s no wonder students tell me they are feeling disenchanted and disenfranchised with the NUS. It’s no wonder they feel it’s out of touch with their interests and it’s no wonder they don’t take an interest in it themselves when they have almost no impact on its direction. Further (and bizarrely) the inaccessibility of the NUS system ostracizes those students who are already politically active and have little time to spare for its complexities. The NUS President is not just a chairperson: he is a public figure and one who has a huge impact on the priorities of our union. By all means elect the National Executive Committee to run the NUS, but we absolutely have no right to choose who should lead it, especially when we’re trying to connect with the views of the student body as a whole. 
 
How can we hope to accurately represent the views of our students when we don’t trust them to make the most important decision of all? We seek to represent them to the best of our ability, but we can’t always get it right. When there’s an easy way to keep us on track and to hold ourselves to account, we must embrace the opportunity. We should welcome input from above as well as from below. Our fellow students must always come first.