the delegate - complete volume 1

THE TEAMJoe RennisonSam CreightonAlex HackettGala Jackson-CoombsStewart HewittEmilie TappingNatasha WynarczykBen ParfittBeth BridewellJames JohnstonJoseph BlytheRyan WainDaisy JonesAshley BullardPaul DunneKate LittleEsther Beadle..As well as many others

The National Student Journalism Support Network (NSJSN) is a new initiative spear-headed by student journalists from London to Scotland. Over the past few days we have created the first co-ordinated student media presence ever to be seen at conference. This is optimised by the twice daily print publication The Delegate, produced for everyone at conference. NSJSN would like to thank every student media outlet that got involved. We would also like to thank every other individual contributor who helped produce The Delegate. Finally, NSJSN would like to give great thanks to NUS for facilitating our aim and for allowing us to remain independent throughout. We hope you enjoyed our coverage. Look out for us over the forthcoming year and at the next NUS National Conference.

The NSJSN would also like to thank the countless number of people who contributed to the live blog

over the conference.

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THE DELEGATEVolume 1:

Coverage of the NUS National Conference 2011

THE DELEGATE

While NUS Conference is a hot-bed for political debates and the arena where an increasingly important political movement is shaped for the year to come we must remember that we are still students. In this vein, James Johnston, President of Heyth-rop Students’ Union has devised a drinking game to help hasten the week’s proceedings. The rules are as follows, take a drink:

1. Whenever anybody says ‘Com-rades’

2. Whenever a procedural mo-tion is proposed

3. If anybody attempts to lead a walkout

4. Every time Aaron gets heckled

5. 2 DRINKS OR A BIG GULP whenever you hear “a couple of smashed windows are nothing compared to what they’re trying to do to our education”

6. Whenever a Labour Party member is addressing the con-ference.

7. Every time you hear “I see that delegate there”

8. Every time Millbank is men-tioned or alluded to

9. Every time careerism is men-tioned or alluded to

10. Every time somebody begins a speech by addressing the room as ‘conference’

Good luck and happy drinking!

It’s the night before Conference begins and the Presidential can-didates are holding secret courts and clasping hands, hoping to win over wavering delegates. Liam Burns, current NUS Scot-land President and hopeful in the national presidential race, was charming the crowds in a bid to close the ground between himself and the current favourite, Shane Chowen. “It’s not surprising I’m the underdog” he said. “I’m not the establishment candidate as I’m challenging what the establish-ment are saying about some of our wins and how we take some of our movement forward. I don’t see it as a problem though”. He believes some of the higher education policies working in Scotland could be carried over to the national level. “I think there’s a lot of good news stories from Scotland” he declared, adding “we should rightly be parading them to the Coalition government and saying there is an alternative”. A first year student from York, and indeed first time attendee at National Conference, Thomas Byrne is perhaps more deserving of the underdog tag than Burns. He accuses Labour and NUS of scaremongering, professing “there’s no need to talk about debt, there’s no need to talk about loans”. Contrary to popular belief, Byrne is no longer a card-car-rying Tory, finding that people considered his arguments more credible when removed from party politics. Byrne believes he is a “different candidate”, offer-ing a “proactive solution rather than crying out for what we can save of quite a failed system”. He has no delusions of grandeur; all he is looking for is to change

the mind of one delegate to think that he can provide a “better future for NUS, a better future for students”. As the only candidate who has never gone to university, criticism of Shane Chowen’s candidacy has focused largely on his ability to represent university students. “It’s important to point out that two thirds of NUS member-ship are in Further Education,” he says. “That’s an incredibly diverse group of people.” He adds: “The student movement is a lot broader than just the typical 18-24 year old university student. I’m not going to skirt the fact that I haven’t been to university because that’s a choice that I’ve made.” Aaron Porter, the current President, is backing Chowen as his successor. However, with all the controversy that surrounds Porter, is Chowen really the “change” that Porter thinks is needed for NUS? “I don’t think that having Aaron back me is going to hinder my campaign,” says Chowen. “There have been times when we have disagreed on issues and there have been times when we have agreed on many issues.” He adds that it isn’t fair

to judge people based on who is backing them. He wants to be judged based on policy and on his vision for the future of NUS. “Does Aaron Porter represent students as a whole?” That is the short, sharp, shock of an answer from Mark Bergfeld, NUS NEC member and candidate in the race for National President, when faced with the accusation that he only voices the opinions of an already vocal minority. A key figure in the Education Activist Network and figurehead of this year’s left slate, Bergfeld is happy to court controversy. He’s been a vocal and constant critic of the current NUS leadership. “It has been said that we need to apply the right tactic at the right time. However, continuously our leadership has failed to take the collective decision and take the right decision and take the right tactic.” On the 9th December, the day the vote on tuition fees was put before Parliament, Bergfeld claims that “we almost brought the Coalition to the brink of col-lapse with 30,000 students on the streets of London but at the same time our NUS decided to have a glow stick vigil to mourn the death of Higher Education.”

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES: READ LEFT TO RIGHT

Johnston Says:“Drink your way through

NationalConference”

12th April 2011 AFTERNOON EDITION

SAM CREIGHTON

JOSEPH BLYTHE

FOLLOW OUR LIVE BLOG OF THE ENTIRE CONFERENCE AT NSJSN.CO.UK

FOR FULL INTERVIEWS WITH EACH CANDIDATE, LOG ON TO

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While Conference rages, the world outside of Newcastle hasn’t stopped turning and two more Higher Education institu-tions have announced £9,000 a year fees. The Courtauld Institute and Shefflield Uni-versity have both gone public with the information that they will be charging the maximum possible fees from the 2011/12 academic year. Daisy Jones, President of Courtauld Stu-dents’ Union and a delegate at the conference, condemned the “cowardly fashion” in which the University had made the decision and branded it as a “tragic day for Courtauld. Joe Oliver, Sheffield Students’ Union Education Officer and candidate in this year’s Block of 15 election, was on Radio Shef-field this morning talking about the decision of his institution. He said: “it’s a sad day for stu-dents and for the city”.

While Hall 1 was filling up, prior to Aaron Porter’s opening speech, the rousing music was interrupted by an old video from last year’s conference, featuring politicians welcoming delegates to the con-ference. When Nick Clegg’s voice came through, urging students to “shout for what they believe in”, murmurs and jeers rippled through the audience, with a few shouting criticism of him at the screen. In the video, which dates back to be-fore the general election, he says that he wants to “Join forces with you”, resulting in laughter and more jeering from the assembled delegates. It is clear that Clegg, and the coalition government, are still unpopular amongst the student crowd.

people pledge to vote Dannie as their first preference.A staunch Labour supporter, Dannie is standing on a plat-form of keeping Citizenship education in schools and more support for local anti-cuts cam-paigns. She has some big shoes to fill as Susan Nash takes a step down after two strong years as VP Soc and Cit to join the reams of unemployed sab-batical officers. A characteristi-cally calm and collected Dannie seemed unphased this evening in Spoons. Dannie likes to consider her-self in the left ranks of Labour with credentials to match, after being an active supporter of Ed Miliband in the Labour leader-ship race. She says she is look-ing for NUS to take back what

THE DELEGATE12th April 2011 Afternoon Edition

9K Fees AnnouncedDuringConference

Clegg Causes Stir

COMMENT: A Drink with the Gruffallo

Porter: “Student Movement is bigger than any one man”

the government has hijacked and return higher education to the societal good that it once was. Her main opponent, Akash Naik, seemed cool and calm in Spoons saying that his confi-dence has grown over the week. The Portsmouth sabbatical of-ficer is running on an environ-mental platform, and as far as I can tell he has no factional ties.Will this be the conference that smashes the factional dictator-ship? The slates on the confer-ence floor tell a different tale as Aaron Keily, another frontrun-ner takes to the stand with the far left slate. Will the rise of activism across the nation be enough to persuade the confer-ence to elect Aaron as VP Soc and Cit? We’ll find out soon.

“I know that I have been a con-troversial figure” said Aaron Porter at the beginning of his President’s Opening, acknowl-edging that some at the confer-ence may not want to listen to him speak. “All I ask is that you hear me out” he said. Porter acknowledged the successes of the NUS in the last year, citing widespread pro-tests and occupations among other actions. He did concede, however, that: “despite our successes we do not achieve what we wanted to.” Princi-pally, the bill to raise the cap on tuition fees did pass through Parliament. Throughout his address, Por-ter acknowledged his critics. “I have been accussed of getting things wrong this year,” he said, to be greeted with a jeer from the floor of “Yep!” Porter continued to condemn the Con-servative party, claiming they his wrongdoings were “hardly on the scale of these tories.” Acknowledging that he had “got things wrong,” Porter was certain that the NUS had “achieved a better outcome that would have been possible otherwise.” Porter condemned the government for ignoring NUS advice. Though the government said that the full tutition fee level would be charged in ex-ceptional circumstances only, more than half plan to charge £9000. “It is the worst possible outcome and we promised

them it would happen again, again and again,” he said. This provoked cries from the floor of “You’re a scumbag” and “Kill George Osbourne” Pointing to the screen behind him, Porter cast delegates mind back 12 months to the now in-famous video of Liberal Demo-crat leader, Nick Clegg, making his pledge that his party would oppose a hike in tuition fees. Porter suggested that Nick Clegg needs to go, provoking widespread cheers throughout the conference hall. Looking forward, Porter ar-gued that: “the battle may not have gone our way but our war is just beginning.” He called for “the right policies” and “the right tactics.” Convinced that the NUS posses the right policies, Porter asserted that the NUS “we must stick with it” while the means of achieving their goals is not so clear. Whilst that some at the con-ference may be in favour of free education, an idea that proved to be popular with the floor, Porter claimed that it simply isn’t a practicle suggestion. “No party will invest in [free education] at Westminster,” he said. Instead, Porter called for a system whereby the state, the individual and the employer all contribute equally to the cost of higher education. Speaking of the November 10 protests, Porter admits that he was not prepared for the events at Millbank. “I was taken by surprise at the violent elements

of the actions, by their scale and their speed,” he said. Porter condemned violence against people and poperty un-less in the name of democracy itself, dismissing the recent violence on March 26 as “van-dalism.” Speaking against the ro-manticism of revolution and comparisons with recent events in Egypt, Porter said: “Trafal-gar Square is not the same as Tahir Square. Its just not. Its insulting and demeaning.” He did, however, claim to support peaceful occupations of Univer-sity campuses and the recent protest in Fortnum & Masons. The address was wrapped up with a personal point. “If I was a candidate it would have turned into chaos,” he said. Believing that, if he was suc-cessfully elected, debate over the credibility of his leadership would have extended late into the year at the detriment of the NUS activities. “The student movement is always much big-ger than any one man,” he said. Porter’s final words urged delegate to “honour” and “rel-ish” their “awesome” responsi-bility to make genuine choices on behalf of their con-stituency.

BEN PARFITT

It was all go yesterday evening in the Quayside Wetherspoons as hundreds of delegates met, seemingly spontaneously, for a pre-conference beverage. Dannie “Gruffallo” Grufferty, currently a strong favourite for the Vice-President Society and Citizenship role, has taken campaigning to a different level after brokering a deal with Labour Students to stand as one of their Block of 15 candi-dates. She has also managed to score a Wales vote in the shape of NUS Women’s Officer (elect) Estelle Hart. Estelle, the daughter of Welsh Assembly Member Edwina Hart, has pledged to get a tattoo of the Gruffallo on her bottom if 100

EMILIE TAPPING

Sally Hunt, President of UCU, gave a well received speech at the start of the first session of Confer-ence. She stressed the need for co-operation between the students and the trade union in general. “We need to find what unites us and that is going to mean com-promise in our wishlist. It means bringing people with us and mak-ing sure people want to be along-side us and not alongside someone else. One term of this government is as much as I can stomach and it’s as much as we can risk.”

UCU Call for Unity

FIND A FULL IN-TERVIEW WITH PORTER AT NSJSN.CO.UK

5THE DELEGATE

“In it for the lash” - normally a complete LAD of a sports sabb, they will be the hungover one in the corner spewing up the rem-nants of last night’s three trebles for a fiver proudly sporting a love bite from a blonde educa-tion officer. Will probably vote Thomas Byrne “for the bants” and will stand up every time somebody does a ridiculously mental speech about nothing.

“stressed press junkie” - a new addition to Conference this year, they are often a Commu-nications officer or Media sabb wearing something “a bit weird”, holding onto a coffee and packet of cigs for dear life whilst chas-ing candidates for interviews and looking like they want to die.

“The proud of their job” - we’ve all seen this type of student politician at every single NUS event wearing the same hoodie with their name and position on the front. We get it, being VP Community of the University of Wherever is great, but buy a new jumper for the love of god. Although it helps us remember your name.

“Dithering wannabe careerist politicians” - most people sitting on the stage as part of the NEC, usually members of the Labour Party, will be Labour MPs in five years time, won’t make up their mind on where they stand on things, Aaron Porter, blah blah blah

“Trots” - Often spotted heckling the NEC on conference floor or shouting into the microphone about Palestine. Also refer to themselves as the “repressed minority” or some shit.

It’s not very often that you inter-view a candidate in an NUS elec-tion race who happily says they don’t really want to win, but then again it’s not often that you inter-view Sean Rillo Raczka - chair of Birkbeck Students’ Union, NEC member and candidate in the race of Vice-President Welfare - who has already claimed victory in an election this year and will take office in July as Vice-Presi-dent of the University of London Union. “I’m standing on a political manifesto” he explains, “I’m standing on a political slate that wants to make NUS a fighting organisation and the reason for that is that there is a real fight on, it’s a fight for our education, it’s a fight for our welfare state.” He is running in the election to raise issues, shape the debate and call NUS up on their welfare record this year which he says has been disappointing. “I’m

standing for VP Welfare because I think we need to have a differ-ent approach to welfare, defend-ing our right to protest, defend-ing young students who are being hit over the head, we need to be chasing the BNP off our campuses, chasing out the fascist EDL, we need to be talking about liberation and integrating dif-ferent groups into our Students’ Unions,” things which he said the current NUS leadership has abjectly failed to do. Sean has been a vocal member of NUS during this controversial year and an outspoken critic of the current leadership, he explains: “I’m one of the most frequent speakers at the NEC because I’m the person who asks the difficult questions and I raise issues that are relevant to mature and part-time students and I raise issues that are pertinent to activists and I’m proud of that.” Sean’s only opponent in this election is Pete Mercer, Welfare

Officer at Newcastle Students’ Union and Block of 15 member, who is generally seen as the favourite in the race, having both Labour Students and the Organ-ised Independents backing him. He does not however want to appear too cocky, saying “it’s never good to be too confident in an election” but he sees him-self as a “credible” candidate, explaining that “I think I’ve done a lot to prove that I get things done. I really think I can get to grips with the issues that NUS has failed to do over the last few years. He says he is hoping to take the role “in a new direction, one that actually improves the lives of every day students.”

THE WELFARE CANDIDATES:A TWO HORSE RACE?

The Five Types of Student Politician

12th April 2011 EVENING EDITION

NATASHA WYNARCZYK

SAM CREIGHTON


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realistic glare of the public eye, this is an opportunity for NUS and the student move-ment in general. We can finally advocate our cause and portray our message to those whom we often shy away from, or fail to engage in constructive debate: the British taxpayer. Our message can be spread far and wide; our new Na-tional President will feature in almost all our beloved national press and all of this without fire extinguishers or smashed windows. Yet, as is often the case, a number of delegates have picked up the metaphorical gun, aimed it squarely at their foot and pressed the trigger, with today’s festivities seeing 48% vote in favour of a na-tional demonstration next year. Thankfully, common sense pre-vailed (very marginally) but the dent in debating time, a result of two calls for a comprehen-sive and time-wasting voting count, meant that the watching world either switched off or we became increasingly disillu-

THE DELEGATE12th April 2011 Evening Edition

COMMENT: Time to Shape Up or Shut Up

THE GATESHEAD FRINGE FESTIVAL:A Round Up

sioned with students and our willingness to think of anyone but ourselves. 50,000 people may have marched on November 10th. Don’t get me wrong, it was good - I was there and looked hard waving a banner - but the time for direct action has passed, we need to convince the general public of our cause. Inform and influence. Utopia, a concept which has always been prominent in student politics, would dictate that this time next year we’ll be talk-ing about 50,000 students who entered primary schools, nursing homes and workplaces, peacefully juxtaposing their identity as students by becom-ing teachers, informing the taxpayer and general electorate that, through their support, we can fight against rising youth unemployment, back-door privatisation of our universities and the assault on support for the poorest in society. Just then, we might get some-thing done.

The HE fringes have been cov-ering broadly the same issues with one overarching issue, that being ‘what is the point of university?’ as one of them was aptly named and ‘how should we approach the new era of fur-ther and higher education?” Well, most conversations appear to have had quite a succinct answer: we have no idea and we can’t agree on it - ideologically or practically. Whether its the destruction of EMA, the fears for widen-ing participation, mature and post-graduate students being let down by the undergradu-ate model we can safely say that we don’t know what on earth is going to happen. The ‘Should we be paying Ryanair prices for Rolls Royce degrees’ fringe went off on a tangent in an attempt to ask the question on everyone’s lips - “should we be outright consumers?” As Emma Boon of the Taxpayer’s Alliance would like to see or should we be rejecting the ideas of consumerism for stu-dents all together - the corner Presidential candidate Liam Burns was fighting.

In times gone by, NUS Confer-ence was little more than a scratching ground for politi-cal hotheads, where so-called ‘campaigners’ discussed everything from Palestine to the intricacies of legislation surrounding marijuana and why it should be legalised. Quite simply they convened, got excitable and got drunk (or high in some cases). With most of these lefties now inevitably working in the city and voting Tory, it’s not only their ideology which has changed but also the nature, stature and importance of Conference. This year, more than any in recent memory, the outside world is looking into to the bubble of student politics, with the media, and by proxy, the general public, having a real interest in what is said and who’s elected on conference floor. Rather than run scared and seek out our own safe space away from the centrist and

RYAN WAIN

FIND INFO ON MANY MORE FRINGE EVENTS AT NSJSN.CO.UK

higher education across the EU. The conclusion: even after 10 years we are still a long way off, both in higher education and politically. The main mes-sage however: UK students are a long way off being as inter-nationalised as the HE they are working within - so if you get a chance go abroad and get some experience. Other fringes included “Pro-test on Trial” with an interview with an anarchist. The violence debate rages on across the stu-dent movement. It appears that

the student movement seems to be predominantly non-vio-lent, but as our interview with the SWP earlier suggests - not all sides of coin look the same. All in all the fringes have been exciting and eye open-ing, in particular for first time delegates. Natasha Wynarczyk of KCLSU fame was keen to get involved and said the fringes gave people a chance to get to know the candidates running for election much better than the conference floor.

Other fringes were a fresh taste of something different, away from the outright HE motions and fringes was “Meet the Zionists” presented by JSoc. A brilliant talk, regardless of your stance towards Zionism or associated politics, the event proved to be a vibrant, articu-late and impassioned debate that saw arguments for and against voiced with reason and thought. Other breathes of fresh air included the International Students’ Campaign fringe event on European Students’ Unions. It was hHosted by one of the few Presidents of a students’ union that can claim to be an international student, candidate for block of 15 Daniel Corradi Stephens. The fringe has helped to highlight the progress of the now 10 year campaign for coherence in

EMILIE TAPPING

Porter reacts to heckle

Outgoing NUS President Aar-onPorter has played down anincident earlier in conferencewhere he was heckled during a speech. Mr Porter was heckled fromthe conference floor duringhis opening conference speechwith a call of “you’re a scum-bag”. Porter nonchalantly brushed-off the incident. “I’ve long sincestopped caring about one ortwo people which it seemed to be. I took great heart from the fact that there was pretty mucha standing ovation at the end.” “I think my speech was received quite well and I tried deliberately to strike a con-ciliatory tone in what has been animpressive year for NUS.” Reflecting on the decision bycouncil to not commit to a con-crete date for a National demo this year Mr Porter said, “Con-ference made the right decision that we shouldn’t box ourselves in to another national demo”

Gossip Girl

THE DELEGATE

Political opinion was cast aside last night as delegates from across the country cavorted in two of Newcastle’s finest estab-lishments. To the right was fa-vourite for VP UD Ed Marsh’s party – rumours say it topped last year’s party by about 35%, and it turns out the “responsible drinks prices” promised on his Facebook event were the same three trebles for a fiver that we know and love to hate. True to his word, there were plenty of chances “relax and socialist with other delegates” as the party was handily right next door to the “Trot” party at Jimmyz. The drinks prices were much more responsible and the dance-floor was much bigger and it ap-peared to be open indefinitely. The balloon drop was a success and there was even a bit of fon-dling in the corner between a red-hoodied delegate possibly from Nottingham University and an unknown female. All in a lovely, a proper good knees-up. As far as I could tell there was only one chunder-sesh in Jim-myz which was swiftly put right by the lovely bar staff. Welfare sabbs across the country once again watching helplessly from the sidelines clutching their Drink Aware campaigns mate-rial. The Burns team were out in full force on twitter last night, hash-tagging well into the early hours. It seems Scotland never sleeps, but with the vote in a matter of hours will all the effort pay off? The Totes Inappropes patrol were also out on twitter last night with two new ill-advised tweeters from conference called @LashBanter and @LashSex-BoobsLad, treading the fine line between tongue in cheek banter and the usual “Lads On Tour” crap that our shiny leaders have tried so hard to condemn.


EMILIE TAPPING



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entation does imply that we might interpret our roles at conference as taking the sum of views on all the individual conference policies from all the students in our university, and neutrally putting them forward here. Yet this seems to pose more problems than it solves. How does one resolve the dif-ferences? Simply by splitting them? Initially, this might seem to be the most rational solution. The results of such a system are highly predictable – except in the near impossible sce-nario of total consensus on a topic amongst the hundreds or thousands of students in your institution – it means that you are always pushed toward the middle of the road on almost any issue. By taking a moder-ate stance on any issue, your decisions are rendered more

COMMENT: The Elephant in the Roombalanced, more representative. But is it balanced or repre-sentative to take the views of all students equally? This is what the Cardiff Sabb seemed to imply, and it leads to the uncomfortable conclusion that I should take the views which is bigoted, or racist, or misogy-nistic on an equal footing with any other. I am not sure that is desir-able either. I think we need to reclaim the definition of rep-resentation to a more substan-tive and much less impartial one – that the electoral process for delegates mandates them to make their own independ-ent decisions. NUS Conference could pass some much more progressive policies if delegates had the confidence to believe that they had been elected be-cause their students trust their judgement!

New delegates to Conference not only have to navigate the vastness of the Sage, the deluge of procedural motions, the millions of speeches for and against, and make informed decisions taking all of this in to account; we all carry the extra burden which is the need to be ‘representative’. Yet watching the scenes at conference unfold yesterday the elephant in the room amidst all the speeches was the question of what a word representation -- often bandied about in speeches -- actu-ally means. The President of Cardiff SU announced that representation gave us the responsibility to take the full breadth of opinion of students in our Institution into account to inform our decisions. I see her point; the word re-pres-

DAISY JONES

BURNS BABY BURNS

SEE THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH NUS PRESIDENT ELECT IN THE NEXT ISSUE OF THE DELEGATE

• BURNS - 446• CHOWEN - 279• BERGFELD - 151• BYRNE - 18

NUMBER OF VOTES IN THIER FINAL ROUND


PICKING OPIK’S BRAIN

Some may be asking why Lem-bit Opik is at NUS National Conference. We were initially a bit bemused ourselves. However, Opik used to be a member of NUS NEC back in the eighties and remembers his time fondly. “NEC was fractious, passion-ate, idealistic and energetic, which is why it was so inter-esting to be on it. The student movement was under great threat from the Tories and the country was in crises. I often felt that the NEC were one of the last bastions of common sense.” Opick is giving the Friends Of NUS speech after lunch. Cer-tainly many of his views would appear to be aligned to the mainstream student opinion that has prevailed over the past year. Opik is critical of the Lib-

I can tell you from the inside that MP’s who voted for tuition fees really felt the pressure and that is a way in for further campaign results. My advice to NUS delegates is don’t give up. Never give up, never surren-

der.” Many may know Opick less for his policy and more for his media profile. It is a media profile perhaps more akin to a professional footballer or c-list celebrity. Opick dated a cheeky girl, for example and also embarked on a career as a come-dian after loosing

re-election in 2010. “People who assume that I’m now dedicated to a professional stand-up career are victims of a practical joke themselves. I’ve

eral party he used to represent as an MP. He is critical of Clegg and Cameron, and he is critical of the increase in tuition fees. “My political views haven’t changed much over 25 years. I’m still idealistic, left of centre and libertarian. I feel that the political world has drifted to the right and to-ward authoritar-ianism and these trends worry me greatly. “I think NUS took too soft a line against labour over tuition fees at the beginning. It seems to me that it has found its way again and has had a credible performance in terms of demonstrating the anger across the country.

JOE RENNISON done about 30 stand up per-formances since the election. It’s an enjoyable sideline but my heart lies in public service. “Celebrity is far easier than politics but far less important. However, we seem to live in a world where eating bugs in a jungle is more important than eating your words on question time. So if people are expect-ing me to perform live at the Apollo, they’ll have a long wait. “In the short term I am hop-ing to be selected as the Lib Dem candidate for London Mayer. It is a test of the par-ties courage, it’s libertarian instincts and how left wing it feels. But if they want someone who still embraces the original values of the party then Lembit Opick is their man.” To follow Lembitt’s progress in his bid for Mayer search: Lembit Opik on Facebook.

Conference floor is alive with delegates voting for the man they think should lead our movement for the next year. But whilst eve-ryone is talking about the presi-dential debate, the candidates for VP Higher Education are busy campaigning for their election later this afternoon. Beating an incumbent is always a tough ride but Chessum, the cur-rent Vice President Educa-tion & Campaigns at UCLU, has been out campaigning since Monday. Michael is a co-founder of the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts and is standing as a sea-soned activist and campaign-er claiming that “NUS needs to get out of the shadows and fight to win.” Disappointed with conference’s decision yesterday to vote down another national demonstration, he said that first thing he would do is ask the NEC to call a national demonstration, imagining that all but one of the presidential candidates would probably back this too. His mani-festo isn’t all about trade unions and fighting cuts though – he’s looking for a “more holistic and a more honest approach to the way we deal with higher education.” He is claiming that the current leadership “talk in very abstract terms about things like widen-ing participation” and is keen to make sure that we aren’t luring young people into a consumer

maze. Despite this, he has se-cured wins at his home institu-tions UCL - a Russell Group uni-versity which are often bated for having terrible WP reputations - having worked on their own widening access agreement and fighting attacks on bursaries and support. Uncharacteristically, Chessum also agrees with a

recent state-ment from the Russell Group by agreeing that “poor kids aren’t at universi-ty because of broader structural

problems” and talking about widening access without a real plan just isn’t good enough.Usman Ali has been campaign-ing for Shane Chowen for president, and his policies themselves make it clear why. Usman is all about widening participation, and has been campaign-ing against the abolition of EMA and the closure of AimHigher schemes across the country, saying that widening participa-tion needs to start well before

university. Usman is hoping to see widening participation em-bedded in everything the sector does, claiming that “only when we’ve got it in the heart of what we’re all doing and is a priority for the student movement then the changes will start to take place”. Disgruntled with the current system, Usman has no confident in the Office For Fair Access (OFFA) who administers access agreements for universi-ties. He says that he also has no confidence that institutions will do the right thing, and that only once all of this is put right can we “start holding out institu-tions to account.” Ali believes that widening participation is so much more than getting people in to Russell Group universities, it’s about retaining them aswell. Unlike his opponent, Usman is not your traditional activist. When asked if the far-left had

grown strong enough to take the leader-ship, Usman simply said that the past six months have been “a wake up call in terms of activism” meaning that many more people are sympathetic to the cause; “It’s activism as a whole that has been on the rise.”

Neither is directly aligned to any political faction though both are enjoying support from their respective corners. Usman is keen to see more independ-

THE VPHE CANDIDATES:EMILIE TAPPING ents running for positions, and

says that the rise in independ-ent block candidates should be welcomed. Chessum on the other hand believes that factionalism is healthy and that no-one can be truly independent when you have blocks of voters behind you, Chessum himself running with the far-left slate.

Solidarity

Conference BINGO!

Comrade

Careerist

Count Trot

Tory Scum Moderate

Factionalism

Proceedural Motion

BONUS: If anyone manages to witness an entire rendition of the internationale (Note: Sean Rillo Raczka’s version last night doesn’t count)

Turn that filibustering into fun with The Delagates Confer-ence Bingo! Simply overhear all 9 of these commonly heard phrases to win. First person to tweet BINGO to @NSJSN wins a special prize (we have people on the ground, so no cheating!)

VP FUTHER EDUCATION

ToniPearce

Hirsh - 46Pearce - 125Morton - 38

VP UNION DEVELOPMENT

EdMarsh

Marsh - 592Pinto - 119


@NSJSN

THE DELEGATE

The delegates have voted, the count has been verified and the results have been announced. Liam Burns is NUS President for 2011/12. Two days seem to have really taken it out of the nor-mally energetic Scotsman. While obviously jubilant he looks more subdued than when The Delegate interviewed him on Monday evening. “There’s that small thing of the Scottish elections that we have on our doorstep” he replied when asked what he would be doing next, “so my focus will swing firmly back onto Scotland post-Conference.” That’s not to say that he will wait until he officially takes over on July 1st to get the ball rolling on his manifesto pledges. “After May 6th I want to start getting a move on getting an authoritative stance on not just how institutions should be funded but how students should be funded.” He’s also thinking about the long game and is plan-ning to meet with the TUC so they can start building towards 2014 together. Burns is not the usual NUS President, he certainly describes himself as the anti-establishment candidate. While he is taking on the mantle of the 55th President of the NUS, he is only the 13th to come from the Nations. His victory is also a bit of a coup, with even Burns himself admit-ting that Shane Chowen was the favourite coming into the Conference. He identified what he thinks was the turning point: “I think it was that people rec-

ognised that while I think Aaron has achieved some amazing things and that the organisation has made so many right calls, there have been some that we made wrong. I think what del-egates saw was that I was being honest about that and trying to tackle that head on. Shane simply was part of those decisions.” It’s been an unusual election for Presidency this year, with what is traditionally seen as a mere coronation, being too close to call right up until the end. Burns has nothing but praise for his op-ponents: “Every single candidate on that stage was credible. I don’t agree with everything that was said, but in terms of their legiti-macy, and that made the election a positive and enjoyable thing.” Burns thinks there are a lot of great ideas he can take from his opponents, he is particularly excited about Chowen’s idea of a young people’s commisision and his vision on how to turn NUS into an organisation directed by it’s individual members rather than Union officers. His victory was secured by the left, it was the second preferences he received after Mark Bergfeld was excluded that pushed him over the top. “What I think peo-ple like Mark recognise is that I’m someone who will respect them, who will want to hear their views. We’ll have robust discus-sions, we won’t always agree but what’s different now is that there’s far more common ground in the issues we’re working on that we now need to occupy than there was ten years ago.”

Burns has talked a lot this campaign about how he doesn’t think there are the parliamentary mechanisms in place to bring about major changes, but there are certain things he is deter-mined to achieve; an authoratati-tive position on student support and a more united movement: “I don’t want to be to-ing and fro-ing in the pages of The Guardian between Michael Chessum and myself week on week. I hope that we will demonstrably have show that the public are still behind us in our campaign to reverse the decisions made both in public funding and also the fees regime that we currently have.”

LIAM BURNS:THE BIG INTERVIEW

13th April 2011 EVENING EDITION

SAM CREIGHTON


VP HIGHER EDUCATION

Usman Ali

Ali - 314Chessam - 123

THE

OTH

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INN

ERS

Conducting this interview in a Dannie Grufferty shirt, Liam has a clear idea of who he wants in his team. He is backing Ed Marsh for Union Development, Usman Ali for Higher Education, Grufferty for Society and Citizen-ship and Toni Pearce for Further Education. “Equally exciting is the Liberation Officer elections that are coming up in the next few weeks. There are some bril-liant candidates going for them. It will be a while before I see who the whole team is but I’m sure there will be some great talent.” Will we be seeing more t-shirts with Liam’s name on next Con-ference? “I honestly don’t know if I’ll re-run. I’ll have to think long and hard about the timing be-cause you could give a President a run-up to the general elections if I didn’t run for another year but if there’s anything I learnt off Aaron it’s that twelve months can change a lot.”

A bought worthy of billing by Don King is set to take place tonight. Aaron Porter and Clare Solomon have clashed this year in their respective positions of NUS President and ULU Presi-dent. Porter’s preference for lobbying will be pitted against Solomon’s advocacy for direct action. Violence & Vandalism – Does Direct Action Achieve Its Aims starts at 8:15pm in Hall 2.

Motion of censure to be discussed at 9am tomorrow morning There was an announcement in Conference Hall to say that an NEC member will face a motion of censure tomorrow morning. Twitter rumours sug-gest that the censure is against Mark Bergfeld but at the time of going to print this was un-confirmed.

actual drug war wages on around the world, within the communities of the inner cities of the UK, the streets of Juarez in Mexico and as far afield as the plains of Afghanistan. For the last few decades, the governments of the world have sought to wage a war on their citizens in the name of reducing the harm of drug use. Since then the world over has witnessed an unprecedented explosion in organised crime - the system of criminalising drug supply and use has abdi-cated the control of markets in dangerous substances to people who make them more danger-ous. Drug prohibition does not just harm the user who risks criminalisation or poisoning through contaminated drugs cut by unscrupulous deal-ers aiming for higher profit

THE DELEGATE13th April 2011 Evening Edition

The gloves are off

Motion of censure to be discussed

COMMENT: Take Drug Policy Seriously

BLOCK OF 15: THE CANDIDATES

margins. Pushing users under ground also encourages unsafe practises such as the sharing of needles, for example, the Rus-sian Federation has very few needle exchanges and virtually no methadone provisions, they have in the region of 1 million injecting drug users living with HIV/AIDS yet for ideological reasons the Kremlin has no desire to open up better harm reduction services which would save countless lives. If caring about the hu-man rights of society’s most vulnerable members, wanting to improve the lives of people caught up in the violence of the underground drugs trade, protecting patients who use cannabis from prosecution or wanting to reduce the spread of HIV means we are irresponsi-ble radicals then we are guilty as charged.

Mark Bergfeld would fight for another national demonstration and support strikes against cuts. Bergfeld has been prominent in the recent student fees protests and helped found the Education Activist Network.

Nes Cazimoglu wants to get students more directly involved with NUS. The VP for Campaigns and Democracy at Reading Univer-sity would set up regional training events to coach students in activism.

Michael Chessum would fight for a living wage for all staff in education and defend part-time stu-dents. The former Vice President of UCLU also co-founded the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts.

Christopher Clark promises to continue development of Student Unions Awards schemes and cam-paign for effective use of National Student Survey.

Daniel Cooper is a “grassroots activist, anti-cuts campaigner and socialist” who is opposed to a gradu-ate tax and in favour of a living grant for all students.

Lauren Crowley would link up HE and FE activists through regional training events and provide more focus on supporting unions to fight against local cuts.

Matt East would fight for a more accountable NUS and better repre-sent the diverse membership of the union. He vows to visit unions in his region at least once a term.

Lee Gavin believes that NUS is guilty of ignoring small specialist HE and FE institutions.

Charlotte Gerada would like to see a campaigning, participatory and democratic NUS. Charlotte was instrumental in negotiations with LSE’s Director to return the £300,000 donation from the Gadd-afi foundation.

Ruby Hirsch is a FE activist who promises to be an authentic voice for FE students on the NEC.

Taylor Kane wants to facilitate FE institutions to network within their local communities. Examples of Taylor’s experience are having re-written MKCSU constitution and doubled the unions block grant.

Aaron Kiley is campaigning on issues of challenging racism and bigotry, international peace and justice and anti-fees and cuts. Joshua Mckenzie aims to get more FE students involved in NUS libera-tion campaigns. He is a also presi-dent of Harrow College Students Union.

Joe Oliver believes that the cur-rent block system does not work and would radically review its raison d’etre. Joe would also work on NUS’ public relations profile with his “mandelsonic” abilities.

Ian Pattison would fight to reinstate EMA, ALG and other incentives to learn, including grants to university students He would also bring all private degree-awarding institutions under public ownership.

Surya Prakash Bhatta, who is running under the slogan ‘Unity first, politics later’, believes colleges don’t want strong student associa-tions.

Mary Prescott promises to be a strong voice for regions and help increase knowledge of how regional NUS operates in the nations.

Liam Preston promises to fight for Sports Sabbaticals across the country and for uni’s publish full costs of studying.

David Radford wants NUS to sponsor a web based remote repre-sentation project which FE unions could deploy.

Zahid Raja wants the NUS to protect part-time officers, cham-pion liberation and participate in evidence based activism.

Sophie Richardson focuses on Post-Grad students, widening par-ticipation, feedback and assessment and a more accessible NUS.

Josh Rowlands wants to create active links between universities and their partner colleges.

Mo Saqib will fight for better aca-demic representation, supporting the widening participation agenda and protection humanities subjects.

Daniel Stevens is campaigning on a strong International ticket. He wants to help unions understand how to engage with international students.

Rachel Wenstone focuses on fighting racism and fascism, provid-ing more support for individual Students’ Unions and fighting to protect SU funding.

Stevie Wise focuses on fighting education cuts, widening access and transparency for International and Postgraduate fees.

Lori Wheatman pledges to cam-paign on education funding, student activities and student charters.

Rahul Sahni pledges to fight cuts, support liberation campaigns, hold NUS to account and fight for other minority groups.

SAM CREIGHTONSTUART HEWITT

How can students campaigning for drug legalisation expect to be taken seriously? Students are already renowned for their reckless binge drinking - why on earth would students waste their time campaigning on such an issue? Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK was formed in response to the com-plete lack of representation on drug issues within the NUS. The purpose of drug policy is and always has been to protect society and the individual from the harms associated with drug use. Somewhere along the an-nals of history we lost our way - while the Daily Mail reading parents of middle England continue to get into paranoid hysterics over drug use among their privileged children; an

ASHLEY BULLARD

Every count we have on confer-ence floor wastes around 25 minutes. We have had 4 count votes so far, taking around one and half hours away from debating motions. An elec-tronic voting system would cost around 11k. Surely this is a price worth paying for accurate democratic debate that saves time. I hope to see a motion to this effect brought to the next National Conference.

The need for electronic voting

COMMENT:

RYAN WAIN

FE and HE Proposals

301 Passed301a Passed301b Passed301c Passed301d Falls301e Falls301f Falls301g Passed202 Passed203 Passed203a Passed303 Passed204 Passed304 Passed205 Passed305 Passed206 Falls306 Passed207 Passed307 Passed208 Passed

Union Development

501 Passed502 Passed503 Passed504 Passed505 Passed

Welfare

601 Passed601a Passed602 Passed603 Passed603a Passed604 Passed604a Passed604b Passed605 Passed605a Passed605b Passed606 Passed607 Passed608 Passed

Motions Rundown

churchoflabour: The Trot finder General has been summond, Accused: One M. Bergfeld. Charge: Blasphe-my, Agitation, TROTSKYISM. One word: PURGE.#nusnc1112 minutes ago

markBANTERfeld: Emergen-cy motion for a NUS Banter Zone! #LAD #nusnc1112 minutes ago

THE DELEGATE

With Ed Marsh and Usman Ali both returned to their positions, the next academic year sees only three new faces join the ranks of NUS VPs. Pete Mercer (elected VP Welfare), Dannie ‘Gruffalo’ Grufferty (elected VP Society & Citizenship) and Toni Pearce (elected VP Further Education) all seemed tired yet happy this lunchtime. Despite being fresh to the Officer Team, all three have been heavily involved with NUS, yet feel there is a lot more to be done. Dannie is a proud Labour student yet feels she has more to achieve. “I haven’t achieved what I want to achieve in how students can have an impact on their communities and how we can influence the wider debate on the purpose and importance of education.” Pete similarly wants to see more action. “I want to bring a new direction to NUS. I was an ‘average’ student, not really en-

gaged politically, but I wanted to see a tangible change. I’ve loved every second of working as a Sabbatical, loved being on block and this seemed like a natural progression.” Toni has worked closely with current VP FE, Shane Chowen for a few years now. “I’ve seen how you really can make a dif-ference, so me running for this position is my way of making a change I guess.” All three have individual goals for the next year, yet seem to be strongly united in creating a new atmosphere around their roles. Rather than NUS being dominated by egos, they heartily endorse presenting a united front to students. Dannie is keen for members to recognise NUS Officers as normal students. “NUS Officers shouldn’t take themselves too se-riously. People have done that in the past, but one person should never be bigger than NUS. We need to talk, communicate. Our relationship is really important.”

Pete and Toni nod enthusiasti-cally in agreement. Toni saw Vice Presidents as “rubbish politicians. They don’t come across as ‘normal’ students. We three know what it’s like to be a student. We know it can be rubbish.” For Pete, this means being “as honest and as transpar-ent in our politics as possible.”Pete seems to sum up the feeling amongst the three successful candidates. “There’s no doubt in my mind that we’re all stars in our own right and I know we share a lot of the same vision.” Dannie and Toni stress the need for all Officers to be working together across the board. After a year which has seen factional divisions at the fore of media focus on NUS, it appears that delegates and the Officers Elect want to see a unity that many have deemed to be lacking. The vision for the future is in-deed one of a united front, and if this brief interview was anything to go by, it would seem these three have no problem there.

THE NEW FACES OF NUS


ESTHER BEADLE



@NSJSN

#NUSNC11

Izaakson: @markBANTER-feld I’m not only in the SWP, I’m also affliated with the LASHtional Front. We’re pretty militant. #bants #nusnc1112 minutes ago

rebeccaschapira: #ladon-tour “the only bombs i care about are mixed with jaeger” – sam pinner, the ledge! #nusnc1112 minutes ago

Tommy_tp: @Josh_Atkins the image that your putting out of me is making it increasingly hard for me to find a wife. The real reason I’m at #nusnc1112 minutes ago

kthelastman: Just watched nus give up the fight on tuition fees at #nusnc11 get me a desert scarf and call me tarquin I’m joining the broad left12 minutes ago

The Times Higher Education called the twitter control of conference a “laptopcracy” The Delegate calls it a “Lolocracy”, we’ve gathered the funni-est tweets of last night.


THE GREAT DEBATE

As we come to the end of our time here, let us pause and reflect. We have elected Liam Burns as the new NUS presi-dent, a president elected by 446 votes to represent seven million students. Seven million students! He is the one the vast ma-jority 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. Yes, we as NUS Delegates 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 as far as to allow us

system ostracizes those stu-dents who are already politi-cally active and have little time to spare for its complexities. The NUS President is not 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 NEC 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 hope to accurately represent the views of our stu-dents when we don’t trust them to make the most important decision of all? We seek to rep-resent 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.

to choose their leader? No! Of course it doesn’t. No other so-called democratic body refuses to allow its own members to choose their president. Full elections would be easy to run - we already have live 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 stu-dents? It’s no wonder students tell me they are feeling disenchant-ed 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 direc-tion. Further (and bizarrely) the inaccessibility of the NUS

A motion of censure against unsuccessful presidential candidate Mark Bergfeld was heard at Conference today. The motion alleged that Bergfeld is “alienating” and not representative of all students. The speaker said that Bergfeld is “inciting a militant attitude,” adding that students from different political backgrounds are being “shut out”. “NUS is supposed to be open to all students,” he said. Bergfeld defended himself saying that it’s correct that “political officers have political opinions.” He also questioned whether Aaron Porter repre-sented every student in the NUS? Aaron Porter spoke against the motion saying that if it passed it would be a “slap in the face” for someone who had worked “tirelessly” to oppose the cuts. The motion fell by a large margin.

Motion of censure heard

Claims of Russell Group domi-nation of NUS have once again been substantiated with a third of Block candidates and half of the new full-time officers coming from Russell Group institutions. The Russell Group represents the top 20 research institutions in the country and their unions are represented through the Aldwych mission group. Most of the candidates ran on WP platforms, hopefully meaning they will make change where it matters most.

Russell Group Autocracy

The National Student Journalism Support Network (NSJSN) is a new initiative spearheaded by student journalists from London to Scotland. Over the past few days we have created the first co-ordinated student media presence ever to be seen at conference. This is optimised by the twice daily print publication The Delegate, produced for everyone at conference. NSJSN would like to thank every student media outlet that got involved. We would also like to thank every other individual contributor who helped produce The Delegate. Finally, NSJSN would like to give great thanks to NUS for facilitating our aim and for allowing us to remain independent throughout. We hope you enjoyed our coverage. Look out for us over the forthcoming year and at the next NUS National Conference.

The name “National Union of Students” is a comfortably mis-leading fallacy. It gives us more clout with government and the media, who see us as a trade union for students, but it is still a pleasant fiction. In reality, the less sexy “National Confed-eration of Students’ Unions” is much more accurate: we do not have NUS branches on campus, we have local students’ unions with their own focus, their own budgets and their own policies. And so we should! University campuses are hugely different, as are their student bodies. Each Students’ Union should be different in order to accurately reflect the priorities and issues of their students – I’m pretty sure that Xaverian College, just down the

the already over-dominant influence of factions. The argu-ment is the same as for larger unions: candidates with fac-tional backing would have the resources to travel to unions, to have campus-based advo-cates and to run flashy cam-paigns. Those without would be even more disadvantaged than at present, meaning that a direct election would make the chances of a “normal student” ever winning the Presidency even more infinitesimal than at present. The current system of del-egated democracy isn’t perfect, but it is far superior to direct democracy. Conference floor is carefully weighted to ensure that large HE unions do not have quite the voting weight that they would under direct democracy, and that small and FE unions are guaranteed a voice regardless of their size. There’s still a way to go, but you can be sure that a move to directly electing the NUS Presi-dent would be a regressive step for NUS representation.

road from my own University of Manchester, has a radically different Students’ Union to my own (and if they didn’t, one of us would be doing something wrong). This local diversity needs to be represented equitably at a national level. Unfortunately, as simple as it seems, direct elections to NUS from all of Britain’s 7 million students is not the way to do it. HE unions are already massively over-represented within NUS, and direct elections would only exacerbate this. Large HE un-ions have the resources to drive higher turnout in elections, as well as having the advantage of a much larger student body to begin with. Direct elec-tions would marginalise small unions, apolitical unions and those without resource: the very voices who most need to be listened to by their national union. Further, direct elections to the NUS NEC would increase

KATE LITTLE

PAULDUNNE

NO

Does NUS Democracy Work?

YES

NUS came under fire yesterday after announcing the results for Vice President Society and Citizenship and Vice President Welfare on Twitter without informing the candidates first. Anant Naik, VP Communi-cations and Engagement at Roehampton, and brother of unsuccessful candidate for Soc and Cit Aakash Naik, took to Twitter to voice his outrage at this decision, branding it “incredibly insensitive”.

VP Results Announced on Twitter

THANK YOU!

THE DELEGATETo get involved in the Delegate or the Live Blog next year, email the team at

[email protected]

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