Regional Conferences, 1-4 November 2004

I’ve just come back from Regional Conferences and I am exhausted! Up until this year, I’ve only ever been a student or a student officer in Wales, so the regional conference system was completely new to me, and it certainly is unique!

I was allocated to the West stream (including London), so over the past four days I have visited Roehampton, Bristol, Wolverhampton and Manchester. We swop over for each set of regional conferences, so I’ll be on the East stream next time around.

On the whole, I’d say this week went really well. The majority of delegates were extremely active, asking lots of questions, making lots of points, and raising the issues facing their own students. A fair amount of the discussions revolved around some controversial issues, but on the whole, the delegates were constructive and appeared to have the interests of the national union at the heart of what they were saying.

I’ll be honest at this point and say that I did meet some delegates who didn’t seem interested in this. All they did was criticise and complain at the most unhelpful times, and yet refused to engage in the discussions when we were asking delegates to raise concerns. A small minority - but one that left a nasty taste in my mouth.

That’s what really bugs me about NUS at times. We’ve got a culture where it’s acceptable to complain and moan with no inducement or responsibility to help find the solutions - though these people are often the very first to start moaning when things don’t happen exactly the way they want.

And no, I’m not having a go at the vast majority of our activists. As I say, it’s a small minority who have an unfortunate habit of dominating the room.

I know that NUS is facing a really tough time, but I feel so much better about it, now that I’ve witnessed the reaction of our members. We’ve got hard decisions to make, but I feel confident that our members want us to succeed and are prepared to help us make those decisions and will help us navigate our way through the difficulties that lie ahead. You really can’t ask for much more than that, so I want to thank everyone who got involved this week - and congratulations to everyone who got elected as National Council reps and NEC observers.

As I said, it’s going to be a tough year, but the future’s looking a lot better now that I know we’re not going through it alone.

See you on Monday for Extraordinary Conference!

Jo Salmon
jo.salmon@nus.org.uk

The Blogs on this site represent the individual views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or practices of the National Union of Students.

All links in blogs will open in a new browser window.

The permanent URL for this specific blog entry is: http://www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/josalmon/270046.aspx