Elections, and NUS Hackery
It's been a while since I last blogged, mainly because I've been comicly busy with not-working. I stood in the CUSU elections to get re-elected as HE-Funding Officer, and unfortunately didn't. In fact, I got thrashed, about 1200 first preferences to 600. There is, however, an important political point that most of my friends, and even some comrades seem to be missing:
On the Ballot paper it read 'STUDENT RESPECT - TROOPS HOME' next to my name. A lot of people think that is why I lost the election, and they're probably right since I was otherwise the more experienced and knowledgeable candidate. However, what this actually means is that 600 people picked up the ballot paper and saw my name and slogan and instead of thinking 'what a cock' or 'I don't want a political union' they chose to vote for me and for what I represent. I don't know if you can call that a victory, but it gives me a lot of hope, considering the prevailing mood of apathy and anti-politics in this university. I've always thought that this was more of a myth than anything else, and this gives me some confidence.
In other news my good friend and comrade Dave Smith was beaten by only 64 votes in the presidential race. Dave is a committed campaigner and socialist and ran a stunning campaign, based on honesty, passion and a lot of political savvy. We have many disagreements, but a CUSU under Dave would have been a CUSU I was proud to be a member of, and the narrow margin of defeat shows again the potential for change in this university.
The silver lining is that I got easily elected to be NUS Conference Delegate, storming past the quota once Dave's surplus went almost entirely to me.
I'm off to London today for NUS Compositing, the most horrible, and unfortunately most important, day of the NUS calendar.
I'll blog soon with details of how to get to the March 18th Demo from Cambridge.
posted by DanS @ 11:21 am
4 comments
4 Comments:
Student elections are shit. Don't worry about it. What's the turnout for these things? Five per cent? That's what it was at Greenwich. You're basically competing for the small number of votes provided by Poli Sci nerds and FT reading Business Studies students. Basically, they're wankers.
I remember when we had student elections, and we basically had a load of tossers pretending to want to improve this or that miniscule condition and Care For People. Good on you for actually saying something distinctive and worth hearing.
must agree with lenin there. biggest lot of shite i have ever seen. espcally after nus conference where the usual shower of shits got elected to the nec. can't remember any of the names but, labour friend of isreal blairite lickspitte won president by 40 votes because fosis would'nt support pav! so now we have a fuckload of right wing zionist blairite/brownite "lets lobby our mps to fight the top up fees" lot.
all i can say is that i am glad that student respect is around and that suzie wyle is there on the nec representing the movement and not the bureacarcy. let's hope that next year is even better for RESPECT and the left.
roll on may 4th!
Yeah they're shit but they matter when it comes to resisting the corporatization of universities, tuition fee hikes and so on. I've just gone through a year of a left-wing student union that was inactive -the results have been disappointing but they would have been qualitatively worse if it was a right-wing student union. Student elections still matter.
I would never agrue otherwise. we must fight on every front and winning from the left is very important. just ask Manchester, Soas and tower hamlets ;)
Post a Comment
<< Home