Mobile Phones the decline of the students’ union and the de-politicisation of students… A theory!

This is one of those analogies that I have banded around the student movement for a number of years. It often leads to people looking at me as if I am nuts, “Is this person really proposing that technology leading to the improvement of communication could really have a negative effect, who is he some kind of Luddite?” I feel that it maybe an appropriate time with my fast approaching departure from the student movement that I feel it is appropriate to put this theory on to paper and float it in to the realm of debate, I will also use this opportunity to explore students politics role in society in general.

Firstly to set the record strait, I am sad to be leaving the student movement, every dog has its day I suppose. There is a love that I will always hold for the student movement and the potential it holds for a force for change in society. I also hold the burden of great sadness that I hold in my heart, a sadness of a potential wasted and forgotten power now unrealised and eroded by a whole generation of students. The actions of many generations of scared student leaders my self included now longer being able to agitate those they represent, and in some cases not believing that is there role either.

I have spent many of my best years of my life as a student, and then a student leader. Politically I have risen to the heights of the office of the National Secretary of the National Union of Students. I have recently become increasingly cynical about the direction of the student movement its lack of collective vision, belief and identity. The national union of student’s claims to speak on behalf of 5,300,000 students members, it has also facing its own problem of a disconnected membership rampant commercialism and service agenda that can’t be met by a large collective beast. The one thing that I bare witness to is the de-politicisation of students, the loss of real world politics and strong political idolism having being replaced with a culture of idolism around the rhetoric of political correctness without understanding, and that is its leadership. We see the effects of Thatcher’s children everywhere, Individualism but with little voice and no identity leading to huge insecurity and fear of the unknown.

So what has all of this got to do with Mobile Phone?

The mobile phone has in my time as a student since 1994 when entering my sixth form college, leaving the safety and controlled realms of school behind, getting my first NUS card and not one student had one. I will not claim that we were the most politically aware group of young people studying based in Reigate a small market town in surrey. However, I was suddenly learning rapidly about the world around me including social equality or lack of it, the environment, music, sex, alcohol, drugs and the law!

Criminal Justice bill was going on and we had the right to party, we would go anywhere and talk to anyone, groups of friends were huge and stretched over the whole of the south of England. But one thing I also remember about being sixteen was waiting. Waiting for Parents to pick me up, Waiting for friends to meet me, waiting for things to start. I don’t think I was on of those kids to hand out at bus stops but there was a lot of waiting in my life. And if I was not I was looking. Looking for Parents, looking for friends looking for parties looking for things in general. The thing I found about waiting and looking was that I was often on my own for long periods of time with no body to talk to all I did was to contemplate, read and talk to strangers. I used to love talking to strangers; from strangers I found out about new places new experiences and made new friends. Occasionally I would meet the odd wanker but on the whole the aquatences were rewarding and beneficial, they helped the time go by and started my love of society. People also seemed to not be in fear that myself as a stranger, would want to talk to them for no reason.

In 1998 I entered university having an extended gap years working, travelling and being carefree. I had my first mobile in those years in between but it was a tool to work self-employed and use was infrequent and nobody texted. Starting at university most people still had no phone all armed with phone cards and queues for the weekly phone call home. We did not need mobiles as all our friends and life existed within quarter of a mile radius of halls the bus ride to campus and short walk to the students’ union. My life area had become much smaller, yet at the same time it had been hugely enriched by so many different people from so many different backgrounds. We were all united as students. Being a student was a social identity, an educational identity and political identity. Hollyoaks even had students for the first time!

We used to go to lectures and go out in the evening together, it was a community where we knew everybody, our friends from halls our friends of our course and friends of other friends and their courses. It was brilliant but I also still remember waiting. Students are pretty tribal and like routine. We used to go out in large groups down the union together, ten of us at a time we would meet other group equally big in the Union and others would come and join us. But coordinating such large amounts of people would mean planning like saying lets meet down the union about half seven or eight! It was that simple. You would say it in lectures and say it to people you met. In those times it was common practice to just hear off down to a friends flat, just turn up call them out. Sometimes you would have to wait or go on ahead.

The Students’ union bar usually just called the union, was a great place something was always going on, it was a place for just students, it was safe, comfortable there was always someone you knew it the bar. If you were ever board and wanted fun you could go down the union. If you were waiting with nothing to do you could always wait in the union. People held meeting in the union, when you would wait you would listen and have chance meetings with interesting people who had opinion different to yours. Now thousands of chance meetings happening everyday to every student all over the country are the key! People meeting and interacting is the key to all politics and opinion debate, feeling energy and expression. Chance meetings and time to reflect is what makes student special. That was our richness!

Now to the point of this wax, is I feel that the decline of the students’ union bar and students’ unions and the politics with in the student movement is for a number of reasons. This decline in student political consistence could have a further and much more frightening effect on the rest of society. I my role as a student representative I have spent much of my time observing students, trying to understand them, their behaviour, their views, what makes them kick. I call it my anthropology of students. As in any other group studied by anthropologists it is important to spot changes and the catalysts and interventions that cause them. This is my mobile phone point in that as the ownership and use of mobile phone has spread through out the student movement, it has caused a number of serious and not understood side effects. These mainly involve around the efficiency that people can now conduct their lives what has been lost is the inefficiency of waiting and fuzzy thinking time.

Mobile phones have meant that instead of a chance dropping around a friends flat you now phone to see if they are want to go out. When they do go out you phone to see if they are ready so no waiting unnecessary. Both these two actions have a lead to a fall in the chance of meeting with friend’s flat mates and their interesting friends. Next instead of using a students’ union bar as a meeting point as it is a safe and interesting place to meet people, you meet out side a venue, pub or club as co ordination of meeting is more precise and you don’t have to fear waiting a long time. If you have time free in the daytime you don’t just drop in the students’ union looking for a chance meeting of friends, you phone a friend and arrange to meet in a café in town or talk on your phone.

The problem of this is that for places to have a value of chance meeting places is necessary to have a critical mass of people needs to be using them for this purpose. With mobile phones people do not need to wait, as co ordination of people is easier when you are alone, rather than step outside your comfort zone and chat to a stranger or a part aquataince. You can now text or talk to your friend never feeling alone. What we are seeing as a consequence of this already is that students are socialising in smaller cliques of friends. Coupled with increased student debt students are going out less. Students having less interaction with different people of different opinion mean a de-politicisation. Hanging out with a group that self reinforces ones own view and leads to political ignorance and lack of understanding of a wider society. Students feel this ignorance of lack of understanding and it dis-empowers them, disempowerment means people are less prepared to speak out and so further de-politicises students the cycle continues…

Now if we support the argument that apathy does not exist and it is just used as an excuse for failure by those who are trying to get other to do something. The problem is the efficiencies of modern society lost some of the space where people could think discuss and act. The need to place economic value on everything has failed to recognise the very important value of time wasting, waiting and subsequent reflection. Chance has been left behind to quantifiable action. But have we really achieved more? Does society benefit from this further organisation?

Oh stop me now!!!

The End…

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