In Office

There is always something quite exciting about starting a new job. Preparing what to wear the night before, writing lots of list of priorities and then filling your bag full of thought’s pointless items that move from job to job with you and sit in the bottom your draw till the next time to move.

(A space pen, old cigar, a yoyo and the magic training cards...)

A new day, new job and a world ready for one to conquer. Arriving at the office with letter left by Penny, the previous national secretary. She was wishing me every luck in the job. She had left with the letter the keys to the office, her old phone and some paper work marked in process...

In Process...

Process...

Process...

Process was the first impression of NUS. NUS loves its processes to the point that creating more process is seen as an expectable outcome. We have committees that make decisions for other committees to ratify. The organisation worked with a level of Marxist paranoia, everything has to be signed off, then countersigned and in political positions you play gatekeeper to huge resources but up into empires of process. However great power and influence over process is no substitute for efficiency and focus. I made a commitment to make sure that this year I would work towards outcomes in a “SMART” way, I would be the National Secretary to rid NUS of some beurocracy. I would be the burocrat who hates beurocracy!

NUS is an interesting organisation where on our first day in office we start with a National Executive meeting. Nothing particularly strange about that, it would be a good opportunity to set some planning bit of house keeping. Not the meeting where we have to decide what our campaigns are for the year. No collective planning, brainstorming or ideas development. Just good old submitting of motions, disguised as campaigns, which with much dilution and after deals are all done, we then vote, and they pass into being as the NUS priority campaigns for that year. It is amazing to think the NEC is elected in March and don’t officially meet until July.

However, this year half way through doing this executive meeting, to our joy we were informant the government had finally screwed students and passed the new education bill into Act of government with the Lords passing without a fight. So NUS had failed a campaign that I had been fighting. As a student non-payer of fees, to president of Buck’s Chilterns, to National Executive member selling degrees and on my first day in the leadership of the national union of students we lost the campaign. A final nail in the coffin of the commodification of education I felt sick.

Summer is a great time with convention and training and a chance to get the organisation in shape a bit of reflection and we would be ready for the new academic year. It is meant to be the one time of the year when we are not fire fighting and start to do some quality strategic development work. Well that was the plan.

Convention was great this year; it was the really great introduction the student movement needed to start the year. We really wanted to give a new impression, an impression of a student movement, with NUS at the helm giving it direction and resources, setting the agenda affecting society as a pressure group on the behalf of student. Convention this year had a real campaign focus, our intention was to develop officers that did not just manage their students’ unions but lead them we wanted to develop a thinking union. We launched the campaigns, had interesting panel debates and useful workshops, We even lost the cloak and dagger and were open about the reforms of NUS and driven by the desire to unite the movement to get through these difficult financial times.

The best thing about convention apart from telling Coca Cola where to stick their sponsorship money, was reading ed net people saying that they had enjoyed national convention and not the usual slagging off.

The summer training programme was something I had also been looking forward to. I remember summer training and what it had meant to me when I was an officer. It was the first time when I got really meet people doing the same job as me. When I got to learn about how much I could really do with the role and when I first became interested in the NUS. I wanted now to make sure others to could have equally great memories of the summer training and be the next generation of student activists ready to replace me in my retirement.

As national secretary summer training is a daunting prospect. Six weeks of solid courses two different locations at any time, NEC allocations to these courses and the opportunity every night where some delegate will evoke the wrath of PC world.

But on the whole this years training went well and if this was all that was going on life would have been easy…

We found ourselves at the start of August in a situation where we had no national director only one director and organisation with no money! Our reforms had stalled and we felt like we were going around in circles with increasing weight bearing down on us. On top of which I still had no flat and living at home with my parents and a two-hour commute to and from work daily was beginning to grind.

But the adrenaline was high, the will is strong and some times one has to make a mess before tidying it away. August was hard work with meetings about internal affairs and summer training with 16-hour day but it was great. Summer means sandals and when I am wearing my sandals I am happy!

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