I think I’ll like blogging. Its accessible, enables accountability and gives me a chance to communicate with our membership and the students I represent. But please don’t think accountability stops here. There won’t be the time or room to cover all of my work in this blogs. If you want to get in touch with me, remember you can always drop me an email with any questions – alex.kemp@nus.org.uk

Unlike most members of the NEC, I wasn’t elected at national conference. Liberation officers and special region presidents are elected at autonomous conferences and, as such, my life as NEC-elect began in February at the Disabled Students conference in Blackpool.

So for the last five months, its been a strange time whereby I’ve been not a committee member, not an officer and not a fully-fledged member of the NEC. With all of these things that I’ve not been, it was starting to become a little confusing what I actually was!

Because I’ve spent so long being NEC-elect, I thought it appropriate to begin my first blog looking at the work I’ve undertaken in the past few months.

QAG, GMPTE, DRC, SKILL, MHA etc

In NUS, our love of acronyms seems never ending. I hate them. They are inaccessible, unclear and, most of the time, downright pointless. You’d think that the disability movement, in particular, would be aware of this. But no, we’re even worse.

In the last few months, I’ve sat on the QAG (Quality Assurance Group) for DSA (Disabled Students’ Allowance), began working with GMPTE (Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive) in the consultation aspects of DED (Disability Equality Duty), met with the DRC (Disability Rights Commission) about their work and the potential for change given the movement towards the CEHR (Commission for Equality and Human Rights), met with SKILL (national bureau for students with disabilities – ok not exactly an acronym, but nearly) and the MHA (mental health alliance) about the fallout of independent advocacy from the Mental Health Act amendments.

If you’re confused, imagine how I feel!

The gist of this is that I’ve had some very useful and worthwhile catch ups with important organisations on partnership work this year. Many of them can join with us on our campaigning work and I’ll update you on this as it happens.

And if you ever catch me using acronyms – tell me off!

Disabled Students Conference

Like many NUS events, disabled students conference this year was exciting, worthwhile and dramatic - all at the same time.

We had some fantastic policy debates. I’ll never forget the motion that passed changing our campaign name from the outdated ‘students with disabilities’ to ‘disabled students’ – finally removing the responsibility of disability from us as individuals and placing the responsibility on wider society to become accessible. I know that this is a contentious issue for some people and I have sympathy with the delegates who felt that our status as a ‘student’ should come before our disability. I really understand this – but I firmly believe that we must accept that the concept of disability is not something that we own, its not something that belongs to us. Disability comes about because wider society is inaccessible, discriminatory and places barriers in our way – not because of our individual impairments. Therefore, the term ‘students with disabilities’ made us own our disabilities, gave us responsibility for them and removed the need for society to do anything about our impairments.

I’m not disabled because my ears don’t work in the same way that some people’s do. I’m disabled because people don’t install hearing loops, don’t speak to me in a way that enables me to lip-read and make no effort to be accessible. I might have an impairment, but I am disabled (literally, DIS-abled) by wider society’s refusal to accept any responsibility to make life accessible for me. It therefore makes no sense to say ‘student with a disability’ – the ‘with’ means they own it.

I’m also proud that we confirmed our position on pro-choice policies, both on the issue of abortion and assisted dying. We’re very unusual in the wider disability movement to have such progressive policy. During my time as NEC-elect, I’ve had to defend our policy to almost every disability organisation I’ve met. Its challenging, but something I feel incredibly privileged to do on behalf of our progressive movement of disabled students.

We confirmed our position on education – arguing for a free, fair and funded education system with universal grants for all. We oppose the current NUS position on targeted grants. We know that targeted grants are actually means testing and, as disabled students, we know that means testing has continually let us down. We’ve been slipping through the net on means testing for several years. This is a huge issue – and one of particular relevance to disabled students and, as such, I’ll blog about it more soon.

As disabled students, we stood in solidarity with the womens campaign after the attack on the NUS Wales womens officer. We’d love to have a full time disabled students officer in Wales, but we know that this doesn’t justify the removal of the Welsh Womens officer. As liberation groups we know that an attack on one of us - is an attack on all of us.

Of course, we also held elections. I’m delighted that conference elected me and would like to thank Pam Duncan and Jenny Matheson for their fair and dignified campaigns.

I’ll take this opportunity again to say well done to the committee members that were elected this year. We have a really strong team and are going to have a great year.

International Students Festival

I went along to this event to participate in a workshop being held on the needs of international disabled students – who, in HE, are not entitled to Disability Support Allowance like home students. Unfortunately, due to some typical Manchester weather on the day, the workshop didn’t run but it was useful to meet with a few international students and discuss their needs.

It also gave me chance to catch up with Sian and meet a few members of the mature students committee, who were meeting up to plan for their conference. As disabled students, we know that education is often something that can take place in adult life for us. I’m really disappointed about the potential funding cuts on adult education and hope that the FE, Welfare and Disabled Students campaign can work closely to ensure that we reverse any possibility of adult education cuts.

Annual Conference

I’m sure many of you will have read NEC deliberations, discussions and debates about annual conference this year and, whatever your take on it, I’m sure you’ll agree that it was a worthwhile conference and exciting event.

I was proud to speak on the motion defending the rights of care leavers to enter education and look forward to seeing the work of NUS on this issue this year. Thanks to Jo from De Montford for submitting this.

Disabled Students Committee meeting – Setting our Priority Campaigns!

It was great to meet up with committee and plan our campaigns for this year. We were mandated to work on a number of issues and I’m really pleased to announce that our priority campaigns this year will be

• Our opinions Count

This campaign has come about after the influx of legislation that has affected the lives of disabled students in recent years. From the DDA to the changes in student funding, our lives have changed significantly in recent years. But there have been problems. We’ve not been consulted properly, and when we have our views have often been ignored.

This campaign will fight for our rights to be consulted BEFORE legislation is put through and ask that our voices and heard and considered. We know best about what is right for us!

• Wanted – Disabled Students Allowance in FE

We know that DSA isn’t perfect. We know that the caps are too low and many disabled students fall through the net (like most forms of means testing!). But we also know that life for disabled students in FE can be a nightmare. The systems aren’t strong enough and the financial support is poor. Add this to accessibility difficulties, and its no wonder that disabled students are far less likely to attend college – and if they do, far less likely to progress to university than their non-disabled counterparts.

We’ll be campaigning for the introduction of a fairer DSA in FE. I’m really proud that we will be holding a priority campaign specifically on the needs of students in Further Education.

• Sexual Revolution

This campaign will re-run this year after it was so successful last year. We’ve seen college and university campuses across the country transformed in terms of the access to disabled loos – both in terms of an increase in numbers and, importantly, an increase in the quality of loos. If you’re at a college where you have problems with disabled loos – get in touch!

This year, though, we’ll be concentrating on the need for disabled students to be recognised as sexual beings. Like anyone else, we have the right to (and the right not to!) have relationships of all different kinds. But sexual health provision for disabled students is incredibly poor and the typical attitudes of support staff in relation to disabled sex is worrying.

This campaign will also work on HIV, both in terms of prevention of infection and support of students living with HIV.

We’ll also be working on a mental health campaign (hopefully in conjunction with the welfare team).

I’ll blog more about our campaigns and how they will take shape soon.

Handover

Many of the above meetings came about as a result of my comprehensive and well organised handover from Sian Davies, NUS’s last disabled students officer.

The handover gave me an opportunity to meet with the NUS staff and become acclimatised to NUS and its structures. It can be quite bewildering, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it!

LGBT Conference

LGBT conference never fails to create a space for debate and a place to network. I enjoyed the policy debates, but am concerned about the passing of targeted grants policy. It’s a shame that the order of debate had to be finalised in the middle of the debate (does this amendment add or delete the resolves of the previous amendment? If I vote in favour, what happens to the other stuff? I’ve been around NUS for a few years and I got confused, so I dread to think what first time delegates felt!) It was inaccessible and confusing. Perhaps this attributed to the amount of abstentions.

This aside, though, I’ve no doubt that the new officers and committee will do a great job this year and I wish Claire, Scott and the new committee all the very best. In particular, good luck to Christian Scott, James Sanders and Fran Thorburn – all elected to represent disabled LGBT students on committee.

NEC Training Residential

I’ve no doubt that my colleagues on the NEC will blog about this in detail, so I’ll let you read their comments. I found the training excellent and I really enjoyed working with the NEC as a team. We have a great priority campaign on its way – bring on the demo! (an accessible demo, of course….)

On accessibility, I’d like to thank the NEC for supporting the fact that motions should not be discussed if they are presented in an inaccessible format. It would have been terrible to start the year off on an inaccessible foot, and I hope the NEC will continue to be as supportive of the rights of disabled people to engage in debate in the same way as anyone else.

Our responsibilities were assigned and I’m looking forward to working on the anti-racism/anti-fascism campaign, the welfare campaign and the FE campaign.

I’m just not sure how I’ll fit it all in!

I’m sorry this blog was so long, thanks for reading. If you’ve any questions, do get in touch with me. I promise not to use acronyms!

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