Joe's Blog: NUS Conference 2017
By Joe Cox, Vice President Art & Design and Media & Performing Arts
This is Joe’s recap on this year’s National Union of Students’ (NUS) National Conference. Middlesex Students’ Union is affiliated with the NUS, which represents all 7 million students in the UK. The NUS National Conference gives students from across the country the chance to discuss and vote on NUS policy, as well as the opportunity to elect the NUS President and Vice Presidents for the next year.
Read on to find out more about the motions which were passed – affecting all students NUS represents – and which students were elected to lead NUS next year, including one of our very own Vice Presidents!
On the 23rd April 2017, hundreds of delegates from hundreds of Students’ Unions across the country descended on Brighton to talk about policy, elect new leaders and engage in the democracy of NUS.
I was lucky enough to be one of fiveNUS Delegates representing MDXSU, and here is what I got up to that week!
The first day of conference opened with a welcome speech from the current NUS President Malia Bouattia, and then with keynote speeches from a number of people, including Prentis Hemphill from the Black Lives Matter campaign who gave a moving and emotional speech about the terrible issues facing the black community both in America and across the world. We also had a fantastic speech from Ahmad Al-Rashid, a Syrian refugee and film producer who spoke passionately about his journey to the UK, which was really important to hear.
Over the next few days we voted on so many different motions from so many different areas, and while I would love to be able to talk about all of them I get the feeling that you would all stop reading, so here are some of my favourites.
Voting on national policy
One of the motions that really stood out to me in the Education Zone, and one that I feel the need to talk about, is Motion 204: Partnership is (Almost) Dead, Long Live Student Power. This motion claimed that Students’ Unions who work in partnership with their Universities have no benefit from doing so, and called for NUS to stop supporting partnership work.
The partnership between MDXSU and the University this year has given us so much. When Chartwells tried to raise the price of coffee it was us working with the university that stopped this from happening, not us working against them. When the university was considering raising your tuition fees it was our ability to sit in boardrooms and to speak in meetings that stopped it from happening, and if all we’d been able to do was stand in the quad and hand out leaflets I am certain that the decision would have gone a different way. Our partnership in the last year has delivered a free bike scheme for students, development of a sector-leading policy on sexual harassment, and the delivery of two graduations a year, to name a few. I was so proud to be able to represent Middlesex students in voting against this motion, which did not pass.
Another motion that I felt really passionately about was Motion 412: It’s Time To Combat Anti-Semitism. We've heard a lot about Anti-Semitism withinthe student movementover the last year, and I have made no secret of the fact that it needs to end. For this, for our Jewish students, for our local community and for every Jewish student in the UK, I proudly put my hand in the air to vote for this motion, and I proudly voted against theamendment that would have removed the right of Jewish students to define their own oppression.
I also presented two motions myself, both of which passed! The first was a motion on housing, in which I spoke about issues that Middlesex students had been facing with their landlords and the need to tackle it nationally. The second was a motion on Students’ Unions working with their local communities, and I highlighted some of the fantastic work that we at MDXSU have done with our local community, specifically our fight to resettle 50 Syrian Refugees in the Borough of Barnet.
Electing the leadership of NUS
Another important part of National Conference is to elect the leadership team of NUS for the next year, and I think that the team we elected has the potential to be one of the best the NUS has ever seen. The fantastic Shakira Martin became our President, becoming only the second NUS President ever to come from Further Education. Amatey Doku was elected our Vice-President Higher Education, Emily Chapman got elected as VP Further Education, Izzy Lenga became our VP Welfare, Robbiie Young was re-elected as VP Society and Citizenship, and Ali Milani was elected as the Vice-President of Union Development.
As well as electing the next full-time President and Vice-Presidents, we also voted for some of the student members of the NUS National Executive Council, or NEC. This committee discusses policy and scrutinises the work of the full-time leadership.
I’m excited to announce that I stood for a position on the NEC through the Block of 15 – fifteen students who are elected to the council at conference. I ran on a platform of unity: I felt that the NUS spends far too much of it’s time talking about issues on which we are divided, and that we should really be talking about the many issues on which we all agree. I’m happy to say that I won this election, and as such will be sitting on the NUS National Executive Council for the next year. Don’t worry though, it’s a part time position that will run alongside my job as Vice President at Middlesex Students’ Union, so you’re not rid of me yet.
I’d like to finish by saying thank you to all of you who voted for me to be one of your NUS Delegates back in December last year. It was an honour to represent you all at National Conference. Here’s to a great year for the National Union of Students!
