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

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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 Aaron Porter has played down an incident earlier in conference where he was heckled during a speech. Mr Porter was heckled from the conference floor during his opening conference speech with a call of “you’re a scum-bag”. Porter nonchalantly brushed off the incident. “I’ve long since stopped caring about one or two people which it seemed to be. I took great heart from the fact that there was pretty much a standing ovation at the end.” “I think my speech was received quite well and I tried deliberately to strike a concili-atory tone in what has been an impressive year for NUS.” Reflecting on the decision by council 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”