Georgina, Phil and myself are just back from a sunny afternoon in Dundee, where we were taking a look at the ongoing NUS affiliation referendum that Dundee University Students’ Association are having – their first in 15 years.
Having been phoned by their Deputy President, Rimple Palana, this morning, we decided that a relaxed(ish) afternoon in the sun would be a welcome break from the middle floor of the Union building – particularly as it’s a ghost town here at the moment. We didn’t really want to go for any high-intensity campaigning – aggressive flyering, waving placards, shouting, etc – we’d had enough of that here on the 19th. We also only went when explicitly asked to by DUSA, as we’ve been here long enough to remember the anger provoked by NUS sticking their nose into St Andrews student business uninvited when former President of Iran Mohammad Khatami was given an honorary degree here in 2006. This led to a furore resulting in NUS protests (in ‘the name of St Andrews students’) and death threats to my predecessor as President (not from NUS members, to be clear). Plus, we’d seen from twitter that the presidents of Edinburgh and Aberdeen students’ associations, and probably others, would be there on the pro-NUS side.
DUSA are like us in some ways – have been out of NUS for well over a decade (35 years for us), members of Northern Services buying consortium, only 30 minutes from each other, and they are also ranked amongst the best universities for the ‘student experience’.
Upon arriving, and since we weren’t bedecked in St Andrews clothing, several campaigners approached us to get us to vote. Sensing an opportunity to test out the arguments, Georgina and I listened as a pro-NUS campaigner presented their argument.
Now, before I get into what the arguments were, I’ll say that I’m against NUS membership for St Andrews. We could play the frivolous personal capacity/official capacity game here but blah blah blah, that’s what I think. Thing is, people on either side of the NUS debate are pretty entrenched in their dogma – and to an extent I am as well. Pro-NUS people come from pro-NUS universities, and vice-versa – it’s possible that with a simple change of university applications six years ago, I could have been painting pro-NUS slogans on a banner this morning – and the NUS national president could have been chalking No 2 NUS on the pavement in Dundee. Maybe. But I try my best to move past the preconceptions, and judge the costs and benefits of NUS membership for St Andrews students solely on disinterested merit.
It’s hard to get past the silly arguments to the real facts, though, and that’s one reason that I don’t think the NUS present their case at all convincingly. Some of the arguments put forward today were, well, wrong. One campaigner told me that joining the NUS would mean that our block grant (the money each Uni pays its Union to help it operate) would automatically increase. Er, no. They then said excitedly that the University would cover NUS membership costs – but even on the unlikely event that it does, why wouldn’t the Union just pump that money straight into its societies, events and other activities? No response. Another campaigner said that joining the NUS would mean DUSA would have access to Climate Challenge Fund grants. Again, NUS membership isn’t necessary for this, and the argument that NUS would help is a little patronising – our students (Transition: St Andrews) worked with the University’s Estates department and managed just fine, thank you very much. (The final verdict on funding will come in the second half of April). While these arguments (which were joined by many other such examples) weren’t the bedrock of the NUS case, the lack of accuracy or fair presentation of how things really are was disconcerting, and would have been extremely misleading to students who don’t know (and shouldn’t really have to know) the intricacies of students’ union funding. If NUS – or its volunteers on the ground, anyway – falls back on completely inaccurate arguments to sway unions in their favour, even by accident, there’s something very wrong.
The next strand of the argument is a little trickier to judge. The NUS does indeed make representations to Parliament, in Westminster and Holyrood. Focusing only on NUS Scotland, they did play a major part in recent increases in support for mature and financially-struggling students, as well as HSBC’s dropping of interest charges, amongst other things. St Andrews students benefit from these, as they have benefited from measures assisted by NUS since we left in 1975 or so.
Thing is, St Andrews students have continually voted to stay out of NUS in several referenda, usually by margins of over 90%. An NUS representative once described St Andrews as ‘morally corrupt’ for doing so; we call it the democratically stated wish of our students. Edinburgh voted to join NUS in 2006, if I remember rightly. That doesn’t mean they care more or less about students than we do – they just made different choices. Democratically.
There’s an uneasy tension in the NUS argument there – for all the talk of student democracy and the student movement, it often galls them to see that democracy work against their favour. Our students have voted not to have a say in internal NUS policy making. That’s fine; that’s our prerogative. St Andrews also has some say in national representation – we helped instigate a Holyrood parliamentary discussion in the form of a question from Claire Baker MSP, which was part of the process that has improved the system for tenancy deposit protection in Scotland. Our students answer questions for national surveys, including – yes – NUS ones, when asked. Such surveys include the ‘Overstretched and Overdrawn’ and ‘Still in the Red’ surveys of student hardship, meaning St Andrews students’ views were taken into consideration. We’re not trying to say we have the same impact as the entirety of NUS Scotland – that would be ridiculous. But we interact in national representation in exactly the way that our students have democratically instructed us to, through referenda, elections, and the Students’ Representative Council. The NUS hasn’t convinced our students to do anything differently, and they need to realise that repeatedly citing the ‘student movement’ without any convincing elaboration just won’t change our minds.
The argument that St Andrews/Dundee would have an impact on NUS decision-making also isn’t particularly inspiring. As the proportion of seats allocated to each university is based on relative size, we wouldn’t exactly be the loudest voice. We also don’t have too much faith in the effectiveness or democratic value of the NUS’s systems, which were completely unexplained by the campaign, and their arguments in its favour were contradictory and confusing as we went from one person to the other. Even if I’m completely wrong about NUS organisational effectiveness, their campaigners simply didn’t do anything to clarify – in fact, they made it worse.
Moving away from national representation, what else can the NUS offer us? Training, said the campaigners. Hm. But that costs more over and above the initial affiliation fee (which was £10,500 introductory rate for DUSA, rising to a annual £31,484.91 from 2012 onwards). Plus, we’ve heard anecdotes from other officers about training that shows people ‘how to walk into a room with confidence’ and other such nonsense. Students are generally a pretty accomplished and confident bunch, the ones that I’ve worked with anyway, and what they need is an introduction to the University and Union procedures, a guide to how meetings should work, and campaign training. How can an external trainer inform our students about College Gate or what the Principal’s priorities are, better than us?
We’ll develop your Union and make you more representative, they said next. OK, well, we just beat the national record for student turnout with a rate that many of them would kill for – 38.9% – so good luck with that. (Boasting over, sorry). As a students’ union, we have the most societies per student in the UK – and give out more money than most peers. Our student satisfaction rate is the best of all conventional universities. Surveys by Times Higher Education put us amongst the country’s best for community atmosphere, social life and extra-curricular activities; while the Union isn’t the be-all and end-all of St Andrews student life, it’s responsible for an enormous chunk of it. We’ve been out of the NUS for 35 years, and we’ve developed the capacity to work for our students on our own terms – and believe me, it works well for us. We’d rather constantly build upon the legacy we inherit from the previous generation of St Andrews students to create a strong, active and nationally well-regarded and respected student community – we’ve never needed outside help to do so, and that isn’t going to change any time soon.
So, what do we fall behind other unions on? The quality of the Union building, Library building and sports facilities. Not exactly shocking news to our students. But, projects to replace or drastically redevelop all three are well underway – £10.5m for the Union alone. The NUS can’t help us there, as we’ve done it already. It’ll be a couple of years, but problems with buildings plague almost all universities. We’re in a position to enjoy a strong relationship with our university; they’ve recognised the value we have and the role we play in their long term goals, and they’re helping us improve by putting in some serious cash.
The last argument, the final fallback, was thankfully not deployed in force in Dundee today: the promise of cheap pints. NUS part-owns a buying consortium called NUS Services Ltd. It handles purchasing for most NUS-affiliated bars. But not all. While NUSSL might drive down prices in deals through its purchasing power, the retrospective discounts offered by brewers once sales targets are reached don’t go back to the unions; they pay for the £1.3m+ of NUSSL costs. There was several mentions today of how beer sales in unions has halved in the last decade, and NUS can help unions find alternative funding streams. NUSSL beer sales have halved. Their costs have only grown, and don’t even get me started on the NUS Extra card. In contrast, the consortium we use – Northern Services – had a running cost of only £4000 last year, but supplied us, DUSA, Robert Gordon, Glasgow GUU, Glasgow QMU, and Queen’s University Belfast – not a small number of students, and our prices are competitive against NUSSL unions. Several NUS unions choose not to use NUSSL as they find the alternatives to be better value for money. But again, even if there is a case for NUSSL over alternatives, it wasn’t effectively made today, or any other time I’ve come across the discussion.
In case you hadn’t guessed (and you’ve lasted this far) I remain thoroughly unconvinced. There won’t be an NUS referendum here in St Andrews in my time as president, as there’s only three weeks of term left before I leave office on July 1st. But a referendum can’t be too far off in the future. While I still have the views I held this morning, the trip to Dundee has sharpened – and complicated – them considerably. It’s a big area of discussion, and one that warrants real, substantive debate. We’ve learnt in our elections that slogans are nothing without being backed up by coherent, grounded argument. The general election will show that the public feel the same way about national political issues. If the NUS is to win more affiliation referenda, particularly in unions that aren’t currently members, they need to do some serious work on their message, and not just rely on appeal to the ‘student movement’ or the attraction of cheaper drinks. They also need to show a little more respect for the abilities of non-NUS unions, who have thrived for decades – and are amongst the best in the country – without the ‘perks’ of membership.
The debate is important, and worth more effort and elaboration than it is currently given. Otherwise, uninformed dogma will dominate both sides of the argument – and for hundreds of student unions across the UK, the NUS membership status quo will never change.
Thoughts or comments? Please comment, or email pres(at)st-andrews(dot)ac(dot)uk
Andrew's 'Presidential' Blog 