www.the-ripple.co.uk ripple@le.ac.uk @uolripple www.facebook.com/therippleleicester The University of Leicester’s free student newspaper
Issue Two
Semester One
13th October - 26th October
Do Students Care About the Union? With the Union Council elections just around the corner, we look back on last year’s elections and ask whether there is a lack of engagement within the Students’ Union. than 400 people voted in the most popular of these elections, in one case, only 263 people voted in the election for Distance Learning and Part Time Officer. And the votes for Liberation Officers were even lower, with the vote for Women’s Officer achieving just 111 votes. In a University of over 20,000 students where the female population is larger than the male, 111 votes for a Women’s Officer seem inadequate. This double standard for Union elections and referendums is undesirable.
Image from the University of Leicester Students’ Union Facebook page
by Lauren Swain Increasing student engagement has always been a difficult task, but when students do finally get excited, interested and inspired by political topics, they are often left unheard. Last May, the “Stop The Bans” referendum reached hundreds of students and inspired some intelligent, engaging debate, managing to accrue 1006 votes. Despite this being a higher number of votes than those that elected the part time Union officers, the vote failed to pass, due to not achieving enough votes in favour of the Referendum.
Many in the Yes Campaign blamed the timing of the referendum for the lower number of votes, with many students in the middle of exams at the time. Alex Mitchell, a key campaigner for the Yes Campaign, said “The referendum was developed from the feedback after the removal of The Sun from Nourish was passed through the Union Council. It highlighted serious flaws in the engagement processes of our Students’ Union and the lack of representation the council actually gave to students. As one of the head campaigners I saw first-hand how students felt about being told that they could not see, hear,
buy and do certain things within their own space at University. The campaign was incredibly successful, far more than the part time officer elections. The result, however, was not quorate due to a lack of advertising on behalf of the SU, poor timing with it being in the middle of the exam period, and the reluctance of members of the exec to get involved with what can only be described as the most engaging vote that had taken place in the 2013/14 academic year for students. Last year’s exec promised more referendums on key issues in light of this result; I hope they keep to those promises.”
The ‘Stop The Bans’ campaign is an example of how students who genuinely want to engage on their own terms, were failed by the Union. Despite the Yes Campaign winning, with an overwhelming landslide, the vote was just short of the 1128 needed to be passed. In referendums, a simple Yes or No vote isn’t sufficient anymore as 5% of the student population are required to vote otherwise the result is discounted. This requirement isn’t necessary for the part time Union Officers - the people who represent you for the year. In the ‘Student Voice’ Elections, less
It could be mistaken that the only votes the Union cares about and attempts to promote, are the full-time Union Officer elections. The elections for Education, Engagement, and Experience Officers, plus the election for President seem to throw the Union into a frenzy. The lack of engagement led the Union to take action, in what I feel was an attempt to intimidate the student cohort into forcing them to vote. In the days leading up to the election, students were promised cupcakes and ice cream if they voted, most were in it for the free ice-cream. However, the Union also threatened to close the Union if a certain threshold of votes weren’t reached. This created many false votes, with some students openly admitting on social media that they were only voting so they could still get their customary Starbucks the next day. One student said “it was just such a massive inconvenience, like I get they wanted votes, by the
way they went about it and effectively forced it upon people was not right.” Obviously these elections are important, but do they constitute this behaviour? So why is the Union failing to encourage engagement? Many students find politics boring in the first place, “I don’t like any of that [sabbatical elections]. It’s boring, they don’t do anything” but the union needs to do more than give out cake and Ice-cream. The referendum was an example of students voting without any incentives and yet it wasn’t listened to. At the end of last year, the Union Engagement Officer stated that he was “working on a big big push, to engage with much more of the membership” and the Union Exec team as a whole stated on the Union website that “we’re therefore promising that next year, the SU will hold a series of all student votes throughout the year on key issues. We’re going to include them in our annual plan, written this summer, to ensure proper time is given to them and that they don’t clash with events like exams.” The Union Council elections are approaching and are the first indicator of engagement for this year’s students. Last year’s Union Council elections drew the biggest numbers of voters in years. But how will the Union attempt to engage students to vote? Will the Union attempt to actively engage voters in student issues long term? Or are we looking at more free cupcakes and union officers elected with a handful of votes?
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