Engaging and representing new and diverse voices
I was reading the Sunday papers last week, when I hit upon a story that caught my interest. I think it should capture your interest too.

The headline was: “last orders for boozy freshers”. Let me just read you the opening paragraph:

"The days of new students being initiated into binge drinking at universities may be numbered. The government is considering plans to clamp down on ‘freshers’ weeks’, where students are encouraged to consume vast quantities of cheap alcohol.”

Just how the government would do this, I don’t know, but what I do know is that the idea is based on a combination of both truth and misconception. The notion that all first year students – or more experienced students for that matter – all go out to get leathered as soon as they have signed the college register is clearly nothing more than a caricature. On the other hand, quite a number of our members do… enjoy a drink, as they say.

Above all, then, this is a problem of perception. The article in the paper does reflect the reality – but it is only a reflection. The substance is much more complex. But the journalist uses a generalisation because it helps to convey her meaning; her readers have a particular image of students in their minds.

I don’t think I will be breaking new ground to suggest that student organisations are often guilty of the same trick. It’s easy to understand why – seeing a narrow image of the student makes it easier for us to do our job.

Consider the circumstances in which we do our work. Sabbaticals are under enormous pressure, mostly self-imposed, to make the most of their three hundred working days in office. They tend themselves to be young full-time undergraduates at the point that they are elected. Money is always tight, and you can’t do everything, for all the people, all the time. Even for staff in students’ unions, time is always short, and results are expected to be swift.

The result is that we tend to focus on those young, full-time undergraduates – those who are often called ‘traditional’ students, because to do otherwise would prevent us from doing anything at all. And that doesn’t mean that we don’t often do some things for other kinds of students, because everyone in this room can think of a gamut of things we do to open up our unions. It also doesn’t mean that other kinds of students don’t ever participate in the same ways as the ‘traditional’ student does – in many cases they absolutely do. It does mean that engaging strategically – from the representative function to the services we provide – with students who deviate from the culturally established norm, is relatively hard.

But it is an area where we must try harder. The policy climate in higher education is becoming ever more demanding in terms of value for public money. Just last week, MPs asked why the eight hundred million pounds spent on retention in the last three years had apparently not made any difference. We need to think carefully about our own activities. We estimate that in the same period which the retention study covered, HE students’ unions received around two hundred million pounds of the HE sector’s money. More than ever, we need to be clear about the public value that money produces.

This means we need to ensure our own work is closely aligned with the overall strategic direction of the sector. So if the sector is working hard to improve the quality of the student experience, and it is, we must be right there contributing to that effort. And given the commitment to widening participation in sectoral strategy, we too must commit, and do our part.

On the first point, we are very definitely fully involved, and we are becoming more involved. We all know the tools of student involvement in quality processes, for example, from student written submissions to participation in internal audit on a continuous basis. But those activities are still often seen as exceptional and peripheral, not built right in to union strategy, made inherent in fulfilling our mission. And on widening participation, it is much more difficult to see where we fit in, and how we are directly making a difference. Our answer to these new challenges must be found in better engaging, and representing, diverse voices.

As you have made the journey to be with us today, I’m going to make the assumption that you agree with that.

So perhaps the best thing for me to do before we get on with the discussions and debates of the next twenty four hours, is set out a few key problems we need to tackle if we’re going to succeed.

1. There isn’t any more money coming in. Right across higher education, belts are getting tighter. Institutions are borrowing more, and their financial future is far from certain. In this climate, unions cannot expect any free lunches – and results really matter. So financially at least, this is not the ideal time to be branching out into new and difficult areas. It’s important to stress that, when it comes to the crunch, most institutions very much want us to concentrate on ‘traditional’ students – it is crucial to competing in the recruitment market. Internally too, there are immense challenges, especially in small unions, to extending your provision. We need truly creative approaches to engaging a more diverse range of students, without having to divert extensive funds from what we already do.
2. It’s obvious on this issue that one size does not fit all. Students are not simply diverse, they are multiply diverse. Consider the very long list of diversifying factors to consider – age, mode of study, level of study, ethnicity, religion, subject choices – the list goes on and on. Very few individual students fit into just one group – in fact, I don’t think it’s possible for any student to be ‘diverse’ in just one or two ways. The concept of ‘self definition’, as it relates to NUS structures, often comes in for some criticism. But here we can see how an extension of that concept really matters. Not every mature student identifies as mature – which is why the wine and cheese evening for mature students is such an obvious cliché. Not every student who practises a faith, practises it in the same way, or necessarily the expected way. We need to ensure that the ways that we respond address not just diversity, but the diversity of diversity.
3. We need students to integrate, but not to assimilate. There are few environments where people of such difference come together in the pursuit of something common, but the institutions of education – especially higher education – do just that. Students’ unions should have a crucial role, through engaging with diverse voices, to support the development of multicultural communities. This means bringing students together to share their learning experience and the interests they have in that experience. It emphatically does not mean expecting them to want the same things, express the same concerns, or participate in the same ways. We must not try to take on the scale of the diversity by attempting to reduce it, or by packaging groups together artificially.
4. The interests of diverse students are not easy to define. There are moments in many of the areas that students’ unions address, where the interests of one group of students do not coincide with the interests of others. In some cases it may take hard work to resolve the incompatibilty; in others, the competing interests may even be irreconcilable. Engaging with diverse voices is not the same thing as delivering for all comers – it is important to say that we can’t always do everything that those diverse voices are calling for, sometimes because our resources are limited, but sometimes also because there might be other voices calling for the opposite things to be done. This means we need to be disciplined, clear about what we mean by engagement, and we need to establish many routes for the expression of different voices.
5. There is a huge battle of perceptions to be fought. At a national level, NUS is trying to reverse the noteriety we have for only caring about those full-time undergraduates, and their concerns. We are now taking steps to significantly improve the way we work with bodies across the HE sector, ensuring that we are recognised as source of many diverse voices. The same is true at a local level – it takes hard work, as many in this room can testify, to convince the institution that you really are interested in the full range of students on the register. We need to continue that hard work, and go further, so that the perception of students’ unions changes radically, not only in the minds of others in the sector, but those outside it too – local authorities, local press, the public themselves.

So those are just some of the things we need to think about at this event, and I don’t have any easy answers to them. What I do believe is that they all suggest something quite clear about our overall approach to the issue. I’m convinced that a centralised strategy is unlikely to work effectively. The combination of such wide and different audiences, the fact that they don’t always make the same demands, the realities of the constraint in our resources – they all direct us to a conclusion that a truly flexible approach is required.

In fact I would say that if we are going to raise our engagement with diverse voices to the next level, we need to think imaginatively about the role of students’ unions. We need to move away from the concept of the ‘providing’ union, and think in terms of the ‘enabling’ union.

Enabling a more diverse range of students to participate.

Enabling them to use their own voices effectively, instead of speaking on their behalf.

Enabling, by doing these things, a deeper and more comprehensive engagement with the learning experience, right across the demographic.

And I think this is wholly consistent with the general direction of travel that students’ unions are moving in. The enabling union has a different type of governance, and a different kind of democracy – designed to involve more people and inspire them to discuss and resolve their interests constructively. The enabling union has a volunteering, activist culture at its heart – designed to ensure students are doing things for each other, not just relying on the centre for support. The enabling union looks past the obvious, takes on the tough challenges, works collectively with others, pushes back the boundaries of possibility, and – in the end – achieves more: and enables students to achieve more for themselves.

I hope you agree with me that this is the direction for students’ unions to continue to take. There’s a lot of work to do, but I’m convinced we have to break through this over the next few years – because it will ensure students’ unions have a vital part to play in the future of higher education, yes, but also because it’s the just right thing to do.

One thing I can guarantee is that NUS will help you get there, and one of the ways we will do that is to enable you to discuss these issues and share both established good practice and exciting new ideas. That’s what this event is all about – so I wish you an inspiring and productive two days.

Thank you.

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