Time for Change

It’s Time NUS goes for change.

Yes as you can guess this blog is about the governance. And it is time for NUS to change.

NUS for the past decade has been meandering towards failure, through out dated democratic structures and the ability of certain groups to shout out their concerns above the average student. The governance review is about that, putting students first and not allowing groups to shout loudly and drown out the average student. The reason why ‘The Hard Left’the left believe they represent the average student is because they are shouting too loudly to hear what the average student actually thinks!

I want to point several things out about this year’s NEC, firstly we are the most politically diverse NEC that has been for in years, and to most normal students that means Tories and Lib Dems, not just the factions to the far left such as Alliance for Workers Liberty (or Education Not for Sale, depending on who you talk to), and Student Respect who just want to keep to status quo to preserve their positions.

The main aims of the governance review is to put the student at the heart of the decision making bodies with in NUS, to make the elected officers more accountable to students and to make NUS a more effective organisation so we can achieve in stopping the lifting of the cap in 2009. This year’s NEC has got more ordinary students than ever before; I myself have never been a sabbatical officer only ever holding part time positions. I was elected as a full time MA student. I may be labelled as ‘the harbinger of the right’ but I believe that students should come first in their own National Union! rather than being able to shout loudly. The white paper is not a factional stitch up - it’s backed by the vast majority of the NEC from all political persuasions be it Labour Students, Lib Dems Youth and Students or Conservative Future! The white paper takes the power out of the national executive committee and back into the hands of the student, which for too long has been ignored by the hard left.

I am also fed up with the personal attacks and the mis-information that the left Hard Left are dishing out to people on the ground,. Oover the past few weeks I have been to many student unions and all of them have said they are beingfeeling attacked by the hard left who are telling them that they are ‘ending democracy’ just because they believe that the students should come first. The senate will be the NEC of the future and not the board, and to address one point in the video that has been produced (with a script that was completely fictional and comes from Student Respect), at the moment legal and financial liability the legality of the National Union comes down to one person, the Nnational President!

It is time for NUS to change and change for the better. As a member of a political party with the word democrat in it I would not support a governance review if I believed it was undemocratic. This is the change we need and a change ordinary students want to happen. Choose change!,

Tom Stubbs

Tom.stubbs@nus.org.uk

NUS Governance

Firstly well done to all the unions who are calling for change. Together we shall do this.

Secondly, as you might guess, I feel that it's time for NUS to Change and change for the better.

Over the past couple of weeks I have spoken to many student officers who have contacted me with their concerns and thoughts on the governance review. These were decent concerns based upon their working knowledge of the National Union. I shared many of these concerns when we had the first NEC meeting on governance in October. But I can safely say I am 100% behind what we are planning to do, and hopefully what you, the membership want us to do as well.

NUS has for far to long been an organisation where if you shout loudly and invade the platform you get what you want. Motions would be chopped and changed in compositing, and students have never felt like the NUS did anything for them.

What this review aims to do, is to put the student and student ownership of our National Union into the very center of what we aim to do. The zone conferences will make your representatives more accountable, the senate will make things happen and the board will make sure the NUS can survive in the modern world.

The Revolutionary Left dislike this review. Why? Because their little shouty club wont work any more. Power will be taken away from the NEC and given to more people, making members of the senate more accountable and allowing things to actually happen. Students and student officers will be able to make the issues relevant to students. We've been calling for change for years, lets make it happen in 2007!

Nothing to do with NUS

I just want to say that I'm quite hyper about the Rugby World Cup Final tonight.

It's going to be awesome

Blog Part 3

Blog Mark Three

Hello everybody!!!

I know I haven’t blogged for ages so I’ll just give you a quick run down of what I have been up too. And unusually for me something fairly party political!

Any way since the last blog I have been busy! I went to Lib Dem conference in the beginning of September and I was proud to support a motion that made campaigning for an equal minimum wage for everyone party policy. Secondly LDYS (Liberal Democrat Youth and Students) put forward an emergency motion on the protection of Darfur this was not only the best motion of the whole conference but the Darfuri asylum seeker who had a longer standing ovation than any other person who spoke on any motion.

Also while at Lib Dem conference I went to the policy commission on Higher and further education and made a case for universal grants and a funding system that takes into account of non traditional undergraduate students such as mature and part time students.

Also in relation to Houses of Multiple occupancy I lobbied various councillors about their views and said the idea of any quota is entirely illiberal. One final point, I am proud to say that the Lib Dems are still the only major party which has policy for maintaining free education.

Moving on, I also have been to a few fresher’s fairs over the past month, including Plymouth University Student Union, Swansea Uni Student Union (my old union), Portsmouth and also UBU, all of which we had a fabulous uptake of everything. We got tonnes of people interested in being part of the Course Reps body in Swansea, Student media in Portsmouth, Parliament in Plymouth and finally housing in Bristol. It was awesome to see so many interested faces and reminded me of my first year when I first got involved.

I also attended the Campaigns convention, which was good to meet people out side of my region and have discussions on the education supermarket and the block of tills.

Also been to NEC meetings and the HE and FE joint meeting looking at HE in FE, which is one of the fastest growing sectors in education right now and something that exists in Cornwall due to the roll of partner colleges with Exeter, Plymouth and Falmouth all franchising courses to FE institutions!

A blog on Governance that will come soon!!!

Any way that’s all from me, again phone me on 07973566325 or drop me an email at tom.stubbs@nus.org.uk I would love to here from you!

The Past Couple of weeks

Hello, again! Firstly thanks for all the feedback from my first blog, I’ve also set up another blog where I can get comments on everything I do. Feel free to look at it here.

This week’s blog is going to be on what I have been up too recently in the form of the National Postgraduate Committee Conference, the Higher Education Committee meeting, the Strong and Active Unions Committee meeting, and finally my most favourite of all meetings, NEC.

One of the first things I did when I was elected to the National Executive was to try and get more Postgraduate representation with in student unions, having been a former Post Graduate officer at Swansea University Student Union. With this in mind I asked to be the NPC liaison on the Higher Education Committee. So having been to the Conference just over a week ago it was a very useful training event. The term postgraduate is one of the broadest terms that can be used in the Higher Education Sector. Post Grads themselves stem from PGCEs to PhDs with different levels of funding and teaching methods more varied than the amount of post grad qualifications that exist. So how was it? Well I heard it can be a circus but this year I think was incredibly useful for both Education officers and also post grad officers. The training that was on offer was very good, and allowed people to understand the enormous issues that face postgraduates today. Unfortunately I had to go back to Cornwall on the Friday night so I did not attend the AGM but I would like to say good luck to Duncan who is the new General Secretary of the National Post Graduate Committee, and hopefully we can work together to achieve for post graduates. I’ve also approached the NPC to jointly write a briefing on postgraduate representation in Higher Education institutions.

Moving on to something completely different, on Monday 13^th of August we had a Strong and Active union committee meeting. Which was good, Stephen just really used it to brief the committee on what issues are going to be ahead of us in the next year. And yup you guessed it Governance was a major part.

Then we had NEC in the Afternoon, the first two motions we discussed seemed to have some relevance to campaigns that we should be a part off. These were on Age of Majority and also on the campaign of organ donation.

Then we discussed the motion called “Support Our Postal Workers,” which I whole heartily agree with although I am not a great fan of strikes. They have to be done when there is significant threat to their livelihood and profession. Also as students, I feel that the privatisation of post office is also something that could reflect our whole society, because the post office is the bastion of the community, and can be seen in any campus post office in the country!

Moving on to one of the more interesting motions and quite frankly a contentious one, many of you will remember my “No to NUS Foreign Policy” stickers, because I can just see many officers up and down the country saying “What has the NEC done now?” it’s not that I disagree with the motion its that I don’t feel that it proves relevant any more, further on, how can we justify it to the membership. I know it stems from the internationalism work that NUS has traditionally prided itself on but I know that many people just see affiliating to Stop the War as pointless. And I just want to clear something up, it only claims to be one of the largest student mobilising campaigns in the country and has more press stories than any other mass movement campaign, but a little research into came up with that this was in 2003. And has since got less and less people turning up to any of its meetings/demonstrations which just proves a further thing, demonstrations every year are not an effective way of motivating the membership!

I along with Alex Kemp also submitted a motion to allow the NEC to be able to discuss the discounts shown on the NUS Xtra card. This was in the Context of McDonalds being on the card, as well as Lloyds bank. But it didn’t get discussed due to time restraints.

Finally; Higher Education Committee, well what can I say, it was one of the most productive meeting’s I’ve been too from having a presentation from SPARQS (I’ve forgotten what it stands for) to the form of campaign we are going to take this year, we had a good group dynamic going on, and I did come up with the worst pun ever “block of tills” but you have to come to the campaigns convention to understand that.

Any way sorry about the length, I should really start referencing them and provide a word count. But I wont, I have my dissertation where I can do that.

As always email me on tom.stubbs@nus.org.uk or give me a call; 07973566325.

Thanks for reading