November

Well wasn’t November a busy month? It kicked off, as November always does with the first set of regional conferences. First off, sorry to everyone in the South west, as I just couldn’t make it for that one. The first term regionals are always the biggest for some reason. Does that have something to do with the fact they elect the NEC observers and the National Councillors? Well I suppose it might. It’s always fun looking around the room and trying to pick out who will be the NEC candidates come April! There was a lot of useful feedback about what NUS could do for further reform, and one thing which seemed to dominate all of the regionals was the issue of having a paid for NUS Card. If you haven’t heard about this, this would be a secondary card, which would have extra discounts on it, NUS is not talking about charging for the ‘real’ NUS card. It’s fair to say the reception has been mixed, with opinion ranging from total support to total opposition, with a big chunk of opinion unsure in the middle. I’ve got to say, I’ve not made my mind up. There is no question NUS has to make more money, the only alternative is massive cutbacks, but this definitely shouldn’t be the only option we are pursuing. There’s no question it could work, but that would be dependent on getting those ‘killer’ discounts.

After the regionals, it was back to London for the fun time that is compositing. For an NUS compositing meeting it was quite fun, as there weren’t that many motions, and therefore that many arguments, and I was well impressed that it was accepted that the Mature Students Officer motion got so high up the order paper. There were attempts to get it as low down the paper as possible, meaning it could fall off altogether, so I was amazed when the argument of ‘If you don’t want it, vote against it at conference, but at least let it get to conference’ won through.

Then it was off to Shared Planet, the annual People and Planet event. Sadly, this day it had been cut from two days to one, but it was still as good as ever, with keynote speakers from the South African AIDS campaign, Michael Meacher and Mark Steele. The left from the NEC were there too, but I felt sorry for James Lloyd, who hadn’t missed one for three years, but was sat at HQ, getting stuff ready fro the emergency conference.

And wasn’t the emergency conference fun? No? Well if that is what you think, you obviously haven’t been to annual conference before! By any standard of NUS conferences it was by far the best one I’ve been to. Not necessarily because of the policies passed, but because the amount of time wasting, point scoring and general unpleasantness was kept to a minimum. While everyone can agree that NUS needs to save or make more money to cover the budget deficit, not everyone, as is always the case in these things agrees with the way it is happening. Though of course there were some parts that seemed odd to say the least. Whilst many argued that changing delegation entitlements from 1 per 1000 to 1 for 1400 students was a cut in democracy, the fact that we now have policy to use the real figures for student numbers from HESA and the LSC, opposed to the totally fabricated and out of date that some affiliation fee-dodging unions use (mentioning no names), could actually mean the size of conference goes up! Not exactly what was planned! Then again will any unions really have the cheek to insist we use the real figures for delegations, insisting we keep accepting the fake figures for affiliation fees and therefore admitting they are swindling NUS out of thousands of quid? Well, we’ll have to wait and see.

But whatever you think about these issues, there were many things that were unarguably good. At every NUS Conference I have been to, there has been a call to make the VP FEUD elected by FE delegates only. Amazingly at this conference, it went through without many people even noticing, basketted together with so many of the other ratifications from the last conference. And of course the campaign to get a mature students officer finally got off the ground, after the motion being composited out of the motions document a couple of times now. It didn’t go through with the necessary 66%, but the fact it got a majority at its first outing was very impressive all round. I’m just hoping it doesn’t take as long to get through as the VP FEUD thing. If you would like to help support this motion again at annual conference, please email me at maturestudents@nus.org.uk

The day after there was a management team meeting to discuss the implications of the conference at Ian Kings place in Stoneleigh. Very handy for me, just two miles from my front door. With Lloyde and Martin being at Warwick Uni the next day, they had the change to sample the delights of a night out in Kenilworth and the wonders of my spare room that night. That brings us up to November 11th, and a Neil Stewart Associates day titled ‘Meeting the needs of Mature Students in HE’

Neil Stewart is a former NUS bod who has made a fair pile of cash out of running one day seminars. This is the first one I have been to, and I’m pretty certain it will be my last. I got the impression that only a couple of the speakers had actually read what the title of the day was. While their contribution was excellent, the rest was more or less completely irrelevant. There was no arguing that lunch was great, but the highlight of the day was seeing Alan Coleman, the man chiefly responsible for the collapse of the Mature Students Union, still passing himself of as their President about eight months after he resigned. Needless to say acting President Margaret Davine who was in the audience was less than impressed. What was clear is that the one day events NUS provides are much better, and looking at what Neil was charging, there could well be a case for opening some of our events to University and College staff and charging them what Neil does.

For the weekend, it was up to Glasgow for the Ordinary General Meeting of the National Postgraduate Committee. As I’d been holding about six boxes of stuff left over from their conference in August, the car was the only option. And as most of the time I spent tidying up stuff from conference and being part of the debates, but the most eventful thing to happen was all about the car. I got up on Sunday morning, Remembrance Sunday, after being told to ‘park anywhere’ to find that there was a Golf shaped patch of dry road where the car should be. Needless to say, that wasn’t what I was expecting, but I had a clue as to what had happened, with the Remembrance Day Parade coming up the street towards me. The Police on the ground hadn’t a clue where it had been moved to, and indeed if they had even moved it, but the station wasn’t far away. They told me where it was, but when I did find it, the Parade had done a u-turn, so agonisingly I could see the car, but had for wait for the Parade to finish to cross the street to get to it. Luckily, NPC are a forgiving bunch and weren’t to worried at me turning up late. It was also interesting being a t a meeting at a non-affiliate, Glasgow University. They have a Students Association, which does all the representation and two unions, which do the rest. The reason is sexual segregation, one union for men, one for women. Women can now join Glasgow Union now, but only if they become ‘honourary gentlemen’. I knew there was a reason they weren’t in NUS!

Next was the fun packed day that was National Council and a couple of meeting at London Met, one about their university decided to raid the learner support fund for mature students to bail out undergrads who hadn’t got their loans yet, which is now all sorted by the way, and a second to sadly inform them they have the worst constitution in the student movement (I’ve been told I have to mention the University of Warwick SU at this point for providing a slightly better version of a constitution to show them just how bad theirs is). Well what do you think would happen when two universities get merged, just after one union has been stripped of all it’s sabbs and the VC decides to write the thing? Don’t worry it’s being sorted.

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