First meeting of the Students’ Representative Council

The Students’ Representative Council (SRC) is the body which represents the views and opinions of St Andrews students to the University, town, Holyrood, and anyone else we feel needs a good talking to. Founded by Act of Parliament (no less) in the late 19th century, it meets every other Tuesday in the Committee Room on the top floor of the Union – and anyone’s welcome to come along.

SRC Logo

Yesterday was the first full meeting of the 2010/2011 SRC, most of whom were elected in March (with four postgraduate members elected each November). There was plenty of enthusiasm on display, as the officers & members outlined their progress so far in their first weeks, and their plans for the year ahead.

The SRC is divided up into ‘teams’ – one each for Accommodation, Education, Sustainability, Equal Opportunities & Welfare, Community Relations, and External Campaigns. Each of these teams is led by an officer, and is populated by the SRC members – some of which are on multiple teams. These then meet as SRC subcommittees weekly or fortnightly, planning their campaigns and other work, and report back to the SRC as a whole at its Tuesday meetings.

An important task of the Sabbaticals each year is to train the SRC into becoming as effective a body as possible – a training process we seek to improve each year. Candidates in the elections produce a lot of ideas for campaigns and policies – most of which we’d like to capture and put into action. That means we need to encourage the SRC members to lay out their plans as a whole with their team, prioritise what they would like to focus their attention on, and flesh out their strategy and plans for the next 12 months.

At the same time, all SRC members need an introduction to the inner workings of the Association, and the organisation they now find themselves a central part of. They’re shown how their task fits into the overall picture – how Accommodation Officer relates to the Mermaids President (not much) or how they are ‘line-managed’ by a Sabbatical Officer. They’re also given brief guides on how to spend their budget, write motions, update the website, chair an effective meeting, run a campaign, and more. Otherwise, the SRC is a body full of people with ideas and enthusiasm – but mostly without the tools and context needed to put them into action.

A lot of issues and potential campaigns or areas of investigation came up yesterday; here’s a taster of what members suggested.

• Investigation of gender discrimination in private residences
• Accommodation scholarships (discussions are underway with Steve Magee, the Vice-Principal for External Relations and Patrick Degg of Development)
• Further work on semester reform consultation
• Library improvements – more plugs, allowing coffee, longer opening hours
• Greater communication from University on library redevelopment
• Preparing for the second year of Teaching Awards
• Class library opening hours
• Supporting students on internships who otherwise couldn’t afford not to earn
• Financial help for already-matriculated students who hit financial difficulty
• Strategic review of our national representation (underway, to be completed by end of summer)
• Continued pressure for Tier IV immigration reform
• Student representation on Community Council
• Reducing waste in Halls at end of year
• Veg boxes from the Union
• Rewriting the Green Guide
• Improving the Inter-Hall Energy Competition
• Hall visits in Freshers’ Week by the First Year Rep (Abigail Lovell)
• Better distribution of rape alarms and safety information in Freshers’ Week
• Ways to make the SRC and Sabbaticals more accountable throughout the year rather than only at election time

Poster for the Sustainability campaign

That may seem like a lot of stuff, but the work is distributed across 20+ members of the SRC and the four Sabbatical Officers, as well as permanent Association staff in the areas of accommodation and education. In other words, it’s just a start – there’ll be many more ideas and campaigns that make themselves known as the year progresses. We’ll also have the annual efforts – How to Leave, How to Rent, plagiarism awareness, condom distribution, individual casework… the list goes on.

The SRC also did its annual ‘carve-ups’ – where it elects some of its own members to represent the SRC on other committees inside and outside the Association, such as Community Council, Societies Committee, Exec, and so on. The new SRC Senior Officer is Chris Dickie, SRC Education Officer – that means he becomes a member of Students’ Association Board (the top of the organisational tree, with only seven student members) and a trustee of the Association as a charity.

Teaching Awards poster

There was also a motion put forward by Emmanuel Michelakakis, the new SRC External Campaigns Officer – responsible for running any major campaigns that reach outside of the Bubble, such as Vote for Students or immigration reform.

This motion asked that the voting patterns of all members be available for anyone to see, alongside minutes. It was passed, as part of an issue that’s growing in importance – being able to hold student officers accountable throughout the year, rather than when it’s too late – something that’s been on my mind and will be part of an upcoming blog post and Association-wide discussion.

But for now, we have a newly-installed SRC going through the training & planning processes, having passed their first motion and held their first meetings – and with no shortage of ideas and initiatives.

And in the spirit of greater communication and accountability, you can expect an update here after every meeting with what was discussed and achieved, and plans for the weeks ahead.

Constitution & Laws

Last year I blogged about the Students’ Association’s annual Budget. In that post, I was trying to give an insight into some of the machinery of the Association – the processes by which the £3m annual turnover of the Association is handled. In particular, I wrote about how the Budget, which is written by permanent staff and sabbatical officers, parcels out money for societies and student activities – and that’s how things like Freshers’ Week, Refet, Diya, Charities, and the 1001 other things the students do, are paid for.

Front cover of the Constitution, featuring the Association coat of arms

There’s another important component of the back-room work that the Association does, which underpins student activity in St Andrews – the Constitution & Laws. High-falutin’ words indeed, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking that they’re ossified rules written on a roll of parchment somewhere, keeping the Association beholden to decades-old edicts. (They used to be like that, though. Without the parchment).

Rather, the Constitution & Laws (which are the President’s responsibility to maintain) are the basic documents which lay out the shape of the Association’s committees and activities. Again, fancy (and soporific) words, but they do have a real effect on students’ lives. Without the Constitution, there would be no Association; without the Laws, there would be no societies, no Charities Campaign, no Mermaids, no Freshers’ Week, no Graduation Ball, no Sabbatical Officers – and many other important parts of the St Andrews social life would just disappear.

First of all, the Constitution. As a registered charity (no. SC019883, dontcha know), we’re obliged by the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) to have a Constitution which “sets out a charity’s purposes, how its income can be spent, how its charity trustees are appointed and how the charity will operate.” While we’ve had a constitution in some form or another for at least 120 years, our latest one (updated to reflect changes in Scottish licensing law) was written in February 2009 and approved by University Court and OSCR soon afterwards. The requirement to have the constitution approved by University Court – the University’s highest governing body – is actually a legal requirement under the 1994 Education Act, and previous legislation. Bet you’re glad you know that now, in case it comes up in a really bad pub quiz.

It’s because of that requirement to seek Court approval for the Constitution, that we also have the Laws. This split between the two is designed to reserve the ability to change our internal practices to the Association itself, without seeking University approval. This is possible because the Laws can be changed by the Students’ Representative Council, Student Services Committee and Students’ Association Board, without any external body checking them.

So what are these Laws all about then? In short, we do lots of things, and the Laws are what we have to officially say in order to do them. As an example, let’s use the Charities Campaign.

Charities Campaign Logo, featuring Rory McLion

Chapter Three of the Laws says that the Student Services Committee shall exist. It says there will be an SSC Charities Officer as on of its members, and that it will have an SSC Charities Subcommittee. It also points the reader towards chapter 11, where more detail can be found.

Already, in a just a few words, the Laws have established that there will be a Charities committee (usually known as the Charities Campaign) and that there will be a student in charge of it. Without those few words, the Campaign – hundreds of active members, £60,000+ raised a year, organisers of Mr St Andrews, RAG Week, Race2Paris, Hitch, Lost and Run with Rory, a central part of St Andrews life for a huge number of students – wouldn’t exist. Not bad for a couple of sentences.

Chapter 11 goes into a little more detail of how the Charities Campaign works. A grand total of 1067 words long, it says what the basic goals of the Campaign are; what positions are on the committee, and when it meets; that there will be an AGM, and how it works; and that’s about it. Simple stuff. There’s no need for it to go into detail, saying ‘There shall be RAG Week’ or ‘There shall be a Race to Paris’ or ‘There shall be a Comedy Lion Outfit in dire need of Dry-Cleaning’. That’s too much detail – and too restrictive on charity volunteers who might want to shake things up and add new events, or drop old ones.

That’s an important point. The Laws don’t exist to codify in mind-numbing detail exactly what the Association does each year (though the temptation has trapped many in the past). Instead, they lay out the basic infrastructure of Association activity, which is a large chunk of the St Andrews student experience – and are purposely silent on the specifics, leaving that to the creativity of our army of student volunteers.

They are also relatively simple to change – which is on purpose. The Constitution is difficult to amend – as it should be, since it defines the basic shape and legal basis of the Association. However, while the Laws do set out a few basic ‘red lines’ that can’t be crossed, it’s important for all student volunteers to know that the Laws can’t hold them hostage. If new ideas or practices outpace a section of the Laws, it must be changeable – a bureaucratic document can’t be allowed to get in the way of letting students do what they want to do.

When I first got to know the inner workings of the Association, back in 2005-6 as Features Editor of the Saint, it seemed to me that a few student officers considered themselves guardians of a hallowed document, to be venerated but never updated. Predictably, this just pissed off people who actually wanted to do new and exciting things. While there’s still a way to go, the record numbers of societies, students taking part in Association activities and the election turnout show that engagement with the Association – in one or more of hundreds of ways – is in the increase. Sabbs, SRC and SSC officers of the future have to make sure that the Laws never get in the way of progress again – but rather, encourage it.

There’s an inherent tension there between maintaining oversight and control of Association activity, particularly the task of ensuring democratic practices throughout the subcommittees, and letting students do what they will to the text. Without the Constitution, we wouldn’t be a registered charity, wouldn’t be permitted to hire staff or operate a bar. Without the Laws, a significant percentage of what students do – the institutions they interact with and rise up through their time here – would disappear. But they’re always open to change now.

The oldest SSC subcommittee (‘super-society’) of the Association is the Union Debating Society, founded in 1794 – decades older than the Association itself. The newest SSC subcommittee, film-makers Rogue Productions, officially became part of the SSC on March 25th 2010. For me, that sums it up: the Laws are always changing, as student activity is always improving. Long may that continue.

The new Laws post-Rogue are undergoing a final spit & polish design-wise before being published, but once they’re done, you’ll be able to find them here.

Election Fever: Part Three

E-DAY

Ballot boxes. I don't know how to rotate this but you get the idea.

Election Day is where it all comes to a head – and while painful experience tells me that it’s nerve-shredding for the candidates, spare a thought for the EOC! The stakes are high for us too – if we mess up ballot papers, break a machine, run out of supplies or make a major slipup, people could be denied their vote, or the whole elections could potentially be invalidated. The Union’s standing amongst the student body would take a beating if we made them go through the major election season twice in close succession – we get enough complaints even when we only do it once a year.

A mere few hours’ sleep after the first run of ballot papers is completed, the troops gather back in the General Office, and get the last-minute preparations done. Ballot boxes are cleared out, assigned a letter, and secured shut – their slot sealed as well. Three piles of voting papers are created, one for each voting station, with election stamps, info books, how-tos for staff, ballot station signs and mountains of pens and blu-tack. The University’s IT Services department comes to each station to install the special card-swiping software, and volunteers are dispatched to the Library and Physics Building. We arrive at 9.20; the most enthusiastic campaign teams have already appeared, and the gauntlets in front of each location begin to intensify. Matthew drove the Union van around town (drawing the short straw as the only eligible Sabb who could drive), and he would barely leave it all day.

The first hurdle comes when we realise that the installation of the new doors at the front of the Union means that the usual internet point used for the swipe machines has… disappeared. Ah. A desperate search for a long ethernet cable commences, and we’re in luck – the swift application of duct tape soon attaches a 10m cable to the roof from the reception area. Just in time. It’s going to be a long day.

Over in my station, the (newly-refurbished and rather swanky) Physics Building, I get the ball rolling and cast the first vote of the entire day – as senior elections officer, I get casting vote. This means I fill in one of each ballot paper – SA, AU, Arts/Divinity, Science/Medicine – ranking each & every candidate in order of preference, with no exceptions. This is put in a sealed envelope, and only opened in the case of a tie. This has actually been needed in the last couple of years – thankfully not to decide who wins a race, but to determine who has come last and gets redistributed first. After more than a few difficult choices, I seal the votes away and hand it to Matthew, who dispatches it to the Elections Office in the Union. I hope to never see it again.

Once Matthew’s left, I settle in for the one-man ‘quiet morning shift’, given to me since a) I can’t drive and b) I was probably driving everyone in the Union mad. An unexpected queue has formed, 10 o’clock swings round, the machines are activated, and the vote counter resets to zero…

Well, that’s what should have happened.

Instead:

“Total Votes: 233”

Uh-oh.

The Postgraduate Elections had been held on Nov 5th, using the same machines – and IT Services hadn’t wiped them. Or something. Rather than a relaxed start to voting, there were queues at all stations, and pandemonium breaking out as unsuspecting students left their 9am lectures and were pounced upon by the campaigners. Frantic phone calls broke out across the EOC as we tried to find out what this 233 meant. Would the machine reject the 233 postgraduate voters from November? Would we be accused of electoral fraud if this came out? Could we trust the machines to tell us who had voted and who hadn’t? (Yes, I went into full-on panic mode.)

Georgina marched into IT Helpdesk in the Library and got a response out of IT Services in what must be a record time for them – turns out while the number of voters hadn’t been reset, the database had – so the PG voters from November could cast their vote this time round as well. All we had to do was subtract 233 from the final vote count, and that would give us an accurate turnout. Excellent – the show could go on after all.

After this was sorted out (phone to ear in right hand while left hand unceasingly stamped and distributed ballot papers to the voters), the queue only expanded. For the first 90 minutes in the physics building – which, I’d been told, was usually the slowest location – the queue never reached zero. The whole seating area around the cafe was taken up by voters poring over candidate booklets, trying to make their way through 96 candidates for 40+ positions. It was even busier at the other locations. I began to perk up – maybe we would beat last year’s turnout of 2289, which was 500 more than the previous year?

Two of the positions up for election – the senate representatives – can only be voted upon by members of the relevant faculty. (Interestingly, these positions, and PG Senate representative in November, aren’t students’ association positions, but University ones governed by ordinances that we run on behalf of College Gate. Actually, no, that wasn’t interesting at all).

This means we need to ask each voter which faculty they’re in, which slows things down considerably. After only about twenty minutes, I’d given up saying to each voter ‘Hello, which faculty are you in please?’ and was just grunting ‘FACULTY’ at them. Eventually, I just said ‘arts or science’. Despite my world-class customer service and friendly demeanour, a remarkable proportion of people had no idea. Answers included:

‘Er, I dunno’

‘Either’

‘Don’t mind really’

‘No thanks’

‘Fourth year’

The machine would actually tell me once the card was swiped, but it was quicker to ask people – though I’m a bit concerned about the number of people that took 10+ seconds to remember which subjects they studied. Even medics.

Handing out ballot papers is repetitive – take card, swipe card, ask faculty, stamp ballot x3, hand over ballot, answer any questions, NEXT PLEASE – and repetition was the hallmark of the day. The only times the routine changed was as piles of ballot papers began to decrease – and our complete underestimate of voter numbers meant this happened regularly. Poor Matthew drove the Union van round St Andrews several times that day – but the sheer number of voters meant that the General Office couldn’t pump out new ballot papers as fast as we needed them, and a few temporary shutdowns of polling stations were inevitable.

Our fear that turnout would drop had evaporated by two o’clock in the afternoon, and had been replaced by indescribable dread at how long the count would take that evening if numbers kept increasing at such a rate. The previous record was smashed at 3.30 in the afternoon, and the queues just kept growing.

Every year, Oli Walker (Design & Marketing officer) runs a pool for guessing the total turnout. Everyone puts in a pound and makes their bet, and the closest wins the pot – and anyone who gets it right on gets double the money. 78 people placed their bet, and most were short by about 500. I didn’t get to make my guess before the 4pm deadline, but I’d said 2350 the day before. I was just as laughably wrong as most other people. (The £78 prize went to Emma Foley, with a pretty impressive guess of 2890 – off by only 2!)

Aside from chronic shortages of ballot papers, mostly saved at the last minute by the sight of Matthew navigating the campaign teams clutching a package to his chest, the day mostly went without trouble. I kept myself entertained by occasionally venturing outside to check on the deteriorating mental state of Sabbatical candidates, and eat some of Sophie’s cakes (Too late to accuse me of taking bribes, haha). They thought the voting was stressful. They hadn’t seen anything yet.

At 5, the Library and AU polling stations closed and all campaign teams converged on the Union. Tourists had been taking photos all day (‘Is this a weekly occurence?’ asked one – imagine what the Community Council would think of that). The car park had been cleared of cars for election day, and the whole area was filled with cardboard installations, banners, flyers, posters, human billboards, musical instruments, groups of singers & dancers, screaming campaigners, harried EOC officers, and candidates with thousand-yard stares. The time ticked closer to six o’clock. The few unsuspecting students who ventured near the Union were attacked by what seemed like a shoal of piranhas – with campaign teams warning each other “A voter! A voter! Over there!”

Posters, just before they were ceremoniously ripped from wall after the close of campaigning

After eight hours of shouting, screaming, chanting, cajoling, arguing, flyering, waving, smiling and panicking, voting was almost over – and with it, campaign week. For a while, the EOC had been discussing the idea of a big finish to voting, with me wielding a megaphone. I liked the idea of that, predictably. Alas, the batteries were dead in our toy-like megaphone, but an early 1920s police whistle was inexplicably produced from the porter’s box. A quick check of the time, an update on the turnout, and it was time for the final countdown.

It was probably audible from the pier. A countdown, and screams of relief. Once I told the crowd that we’d beat the previous record by at least 500, there was uproar. Opponents hugged each other and ripped up their final flyers, and cardboard towers were ceremoniously destroyed in a cathartic frenzy. Everyone knew that the marathon of campaigning was over, and the final vote, of 2,892, cast. However, they had only an hour’s reprieve. The excruciating torture of the count hadn’t even started.

The Count in… Election Fever Part 4!

Dundee, St Andrews and the National Union of Students

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

Election Fever… Part Two

Soon after the first emails go out to the student body, the buzz begins to build in the Union building.

First of all, we need an elections office to take all nomination forms and handle the mountain of paperwork that campaigning week brings. Unfortunately for the Design Team, this means they get unceremoniously evicted from their office (between mine and Georgina’s on the middle floor) and it becomes the Elections HQ (a.k.a. Elections HQ Base Command Centre Bunker Unit, as the lack of proper nutrition begins to affect us in the later stages of election time).

Poster for Owen Wilton, President candidate (and winner)

Piles of nominations forms, Memoranda of Understanding and rule booklets are printed out, along with the wallchart for candidates and samples of coloured paper. Cherry Bakewells, Jaffa cakes and chocolate digestives are bought in industrial amounts and hidden away where only the EOC can find them. Procedures for handling publicity orders, questions and complaints are hurriedly revised. Then, we wait for the opening of nominations.

There are two bursts of nominations: in the first half-hour on Monday morning, and the last half-hour of Friday afternoon, with a steady trickle in between. Candidates who want to publicly and loudly stake their claim to a position early on are queuing up outside the office at 9am, but others are a little cagier, holding their nomination back for maximum impact on their opponents – who are often shocked by who they find themselves up against, affecting campaigning and electioneering strategies.

Sabb positions fill up quickly, followed closely by the SSC; the SRC takes a little more time, particularly as most of the current crop are graduating. A quick email to the student body asking for a ‘new generation’ of student reps brings in a late flood of nomination forms, and by the close, only one out of 42 positions has no candidate (SRC Member for Part-Time Students), and some have up to four or five serious contestants. At this point, the EOC begin to realise that with this many candidates, we might have a bigger job on our hands than we expected.

Poster for Ally Holmes, DoSDA candidate (and winner)

Nominations close at 5.00pm on the Friday (though we tell everyone 4.30 to get them to come in on time) and it’s almost time for campaigning. All that’s left is the Candidates’ Meeting, where we ask all the runners & their managers to keep the spirit of free & fair campaigning, remind them of the rules and some last-minute clarifications, and point out the most important thing – the week is to be enjoyed, not dreaded. They’re not always listening, as they’ve mostly spent the last few hours painting banners in enclosed spaces and the fumes push everyone to an even higher level of excitement. We close the meeting, and with that, we’re off.

The first batches of publicity have been run off the presses since the close of nominations, and the sound of stamping and guillotining soon echoes around the middle floor. (All publicity, even flyers, have to be individually stamped as everything has to be accounted for – otherwise, candidates could just run off thousands of flyers at home and create a budgetary advantage over their opponents). Cars race around town, flooding Hall noticeboards & pigeonholes with posters; the punters leaving the Friday night bop find themselves grasping dozens of flyers as they leave the carpark; banners unfurl across the centre of town.

Within an hour of the meeting, several hundred people put themselves into social-networking hibernation as Saintmail begins to groan under the weight of several thousand Facebook group invitations per day. Painful puns and brilliant slogans spread, campaign videos are premiered, and chalk messages appear everywhere (YES we asked the police well in advance and they said it was completely fine with them, until the Thursday when a certain candidate’s body-outlines began to scare the locals). The five photocopiers in the General Office ran almost non-stop for six days, pumping out thousands of sheets of paper – the only major incident being when a candidate was running off some A3 B&W posters from the IR6000, which promptly caught fire. While no alarm went off (which was itself concerning), this did fill the room with the smell of burning toner. Which is a pretty nice smell actually. Almost like treacle.

While all the campaigning is going on, with dozens of candidates asking for approval of posters & banners, publicity orders, and asking us questions we never anticipated in our wildest expectations, the EOC also needs to get things ready for Election Day itself. All the candidates’ manifestos & declarations of interest need uploaded and put into the Candidates’ Books – one for SRC, one for SSC & Sabbs, one for AU. A ginger-beer fuelled EOC session in the Main Bar on Saturday night dispatched the website in approx six hours, with another six for the booklets the next day.

The format of AU & Senate papers was decided – A4 sheets on coloured paper for AU, A5 sheets on two different colours for Senate, not difficult – and then the big one, the Association voting book. It had to be easy for voters to use; save on paper; be possible to count; be possible for us to print cheaply and quickly; and fit into our ballot boxes. Candidate names were randomised using a high-tech method (we assigned each name a random letter, sent these random letters to Oli’s dad in Huddersfield over Skype, and got him to randomise the order). Soon designed by Oli, a master of each booklet was printed and securely stored (obvious reasons). Two booklets were to be printed at a time, on double-sided A4 sheets to be hand-stapled and cut in half. A lot of cherry bakewells were sacrificed throughout this process.

As it got to Thursday evening and the last publicity orders were processed, we started pumping out the voting books. In our optimism that we would reach last year’s record turnout (2298 votes), we printed 2400 of everything, with 30 of each candidate info booklet. These were locked away and everyone went home for the only good night’s sleep they were going to get for the next few days; we were all to be in at 8am, for preparations for Election Day itself.

More on Election Day… in Part Three.

Election Fever

Experience optional. Imagination essential.

On Friday the 19th March 2010, the University of St Andrews Students’ Association and Athletic Union had their most successful election day ever.

2892 students cast their vote for over 90 candidates in 42 positions. The previous record, 2289 students in March 09, was smashed by over 600 votes – a turnout of almost 40%, an incredible amount for a students’ union election. These elections chose who becomes the Sabbatical Team, Students’ Representative Council, Student Services Committee and Athletic Union Executive for the next twelve months. These are the engine rooms of the St Andrews student experience, the people and institutions responsible for almost everything that goes on in this bubble of ours.

As one of the few unions left that still uses paper ballots rather than online voting, election season is one of the Association’s annual logistical Herculean tasks. I think the entire election process is fascinating – a way to see how the Association staff and sabbaticals manage the organisation of a large and complicated campaign, while this process interacts – often explosively – with the unleashed creativity and imagination of our student body.

Ballot papers, 2007

Elections – So It Begins

First of all, the Sabb team realises in late January/early February or so, with much groaning and soul-searching, that election time is rumbling around again. Prospective candidates are hinting at a run; overtures are being made to campaign managers; people suddenly become interested in the minutiae of a Sabbatical position. Eventually, the thoughts coalesce into a sobering thought for Sabbs, who feel that March was only a few short weeks ago.  It’s time to call a meeting of the election officers’ committee.

At this meeting, the enormity of the task ahead becomes clear – as well as the supreme irony of annual Union elections: all those running the elections, were previously candidates. Fully aware that they’re poachers turned gamekeepers, the Sabbs (and whichever volunteers they have pressganged onto the EOC with promises of pizza) sit with the rules, and go through them one by one. An AU representative is also invited on the EOC – a special role this year as the AU Executive – a new body – decided to adopt the Union’s rules and voting methods. A combined SA/AU EOC was convened, and a Senior Elections Officer chosen.

Election Rules cover, 2010

For years, the elections rules had been a clumsy and disorganised aggregation of clauses, built up one by one as candidates had come up with novel ideas and methods of campaigning – which had been immediately forbidden as the inflexible rules didn’t cover them. This changed in March 2009, when the rules were thoroughly purged by Stacy Lee, James Shield and Philippa Dunn, who wanted to boost turnout and had had enough of the rules restricting creativity, rather than encouraging it. These changes, among others, pushed the turnout from 1900 in ’08 to 2300 in ’09 – and this year, to 2900.

Now, a few key principles underpin our election rules – fairness, for all students rather than just those already involved in the Union; financial limits to prevent the richest candidate winning; limits on early campaigning to prevent those familiar with the Union gaining an unfair advantage; the promotion of good-spiriting and creative campaigning in the name of a free and fair election; the promotion of the elections to all parts of the diverse student body. This can be boiled down to the main election slogan: ‘experience optional, imagination essential’.

With the rules provisionally decided by the EOC, they’re sent round the SRC for comment and approval, and to the Chairman of the Association Board for an external viewpoint. Parallel to this process, the actual organisation of nominations, campaigning, voting and counting begins.

Voting day is usually the third or fourth Friday in March. The Saint are consulted, so their printing dates coincide with the day before; holiday dates are checked; the day decided by approval from the SRC and SSC. Election Day determines the date of opening and closing of nominations. Rooms are booked for counting; for the hecklings; for the debates; the Design Team office is commandeered for the fortnight as Elections HQ. The Union rumour mill cranks into sixth gear. This is just the start.

Nomination forms are redrafted and checked. The Sabbatical Memorandum of Understanding is updated to reflect any changes in employment or charity legislation. Sabbs clear their diaries for elections week; the General Office orders a truckload of paper; the photocopiers begin to quiver in fear.

Sabbatical Candidates poster, 2010

Advertising is ordered from the Design & Marketing Officer (Oli Walker). Slogans and teasers are written for each position; a range of designs presented; a finalist chosen. An important part of our election advertising strategy is to avoid the usual cliches which student unions present – and of which we have been guilty in the past. No-one wants to hear nasal, earnest, context-free phrases like ‘Get Involved!’ (outside of a sports context) or ‘It’s Your Union’ or, God forbid, ‘Make a Difference’. St Andrews students are looking for meaningful activities, for job experience, for real, tangible responsibility – not for fancy titles or meaningless CV points. We believe that the Union can offer this and more – and it’s our job to get that message across.

Once the design is chosen, it’s converted into hundreds of posters to be distributed across town, SubTV adverts, SIPs, postcards, Twitter teasers, and more. A dedicated part of the website, yourunion.net/elections, is reactivated and reskinned. Finally, when all this is done, the first email is sent to the student body – and election season has officially begun.

Nominations & Campaigning weeks… in the next post.

The University & Twitter

Over the course of the past year, the University of St Andrews and its students have been slowly sliding into Twitter, and a nascent group of regular users has appeared – individuals, departments, units, groups, teams, and the University itself. In an attempt to encourage even closer links, I’ll list all that I can think of here, and add more as they come to me – and feel free to suggest people/groups I’ve missed!

The University itself – @univofstandrews

Parts of the University – @stawebteam (the Uni’s website team), @sta_saltire (SALTIRE, the study skills unit), @staffdev (Staff Development), @musa_standrews (MUSA, the University’s museum on the Scores), @modulemsystem (University’s module management system), @steveyorkstone (LEAN Team)

Students’ Association – @standrewsunion, @barrontheatre (our theatre on North Street), @ontherocksfest (On the Rocks, our student arts festival, the largest in Scotland).

Student Sabbaticals – @stapresident, @stadorep, @stadosda, @stadoserv

Athletic Union –@athleticunion

Student groups – @ragweek (Charities Campaign), @airpopuk (student popcorn company), @thesaintonline (The Saint, student newspaper) @stafrenchsoc (French Society), @dontwalkfashion (Don’t Walk Fashion Show), @mermaidstheatre (Mermaids, Performing Arts Society), @standrewsradio (STAR, the radio station), @starnews (STAR’s news, obv.), @standrewsdesign (Association’s Design Team), @rent09 (upcoming production of Rent), @ir_soc (International Relations Society), @lgbtcommittee (LGBT Soc), @halfcutfilmfest (Half Cut, Rogue’s annual student film festival), @inklight (creative writing society)

Misc. – @standrewspartnership, @standrewsagent

As well as these, there are hundreds of students and dozens of staff who have their own personal twitter accounts – and the University, or some part of it, is often the subject of their tweets! I can’t link to them all here, but it’s not hard to find them if you know how to look. People from Physics, Admissions, the Library, Careers Centre, and more, are all avid tweeters, and what they say can be fascinating – have a look!

Postcard Campaign, coming soon…

Community relations is obviously an important part of any Students’ Association’s activities, especially if the students are one third or more of the local population!

What’s tricky, however, is gauging the opinions of non-student residents en masse, rather than just through certain lobbying groups which aren’t necessarily representative of the townsfolk of St Andrews. So in an effort to ask locals straight out what they think of students, we’ll be launching a ‘Postcard Campaign’ (a more imaginative title will come later, hopefully).

In short, the Association will put a postcard inside every copy of St Andrews in Focus (7000 copies distributed to nearly every house in town), addressed to the Association building. On the front, we’ll ask people what they think of the student body (questions, comments, criticism, praise!) and encourage them to either mail it back or drop it off in a box in BESS & other locations around town.

Then, once we’ve looked at all the comments, we’ll write an article for the next St Andrews in Focus describing what people said, what they wanted – and what we did about it.

That’s the plan anyway. Watch this space for more information…

The Three Sides of the Students’ Association

Last December, for the first time ever, a meeting of University Court was held in Venue 2 of the Association building (that’s right, where we have Rocksoc, Sangria Nights and Election hecklings).

We invited Court to hold their meeting here rather than in the swanky Senate Room to show them the facilities in which the Association operates (for obvious reasons) and to encourage them to see more of the University & student body ‘on the ground’ rather than just in distilled reports and minutes of meetings.

After each Court meeting, two ‘units’ of the University give a presentation on their activities & plans for the future – a ‘unit’ being a non-teaching part of the University, such as Careers, Estates, Residential & Business Services, etc. There are 20-something units (compared to 19 schools), and the two giving presentations at this meeting were the Music Centre, and the Students’ Association. (Yeah, we’re not technically a Unit, or even part of the University structure, but for the purposes of these talks we skated over that).

Philippa Dunn (DoSDA last year, now working for the University Press Office) and I gave the talk, and our goal was to demonstrate to Court members that the Association wasn’t just a bar and a bop, but instead a large and diverse organisation that does things ranging from training landlords to running music festivals, and everything in between.

To do this, our Design & Marketing Officer (Oli Walker) had produced what we now call the ‘tube map’ of the Students’ Association, a visual representation of our activities that’s over 3 metres long. It’s divided into four sections: one for each Sabbatical Officer.

That’s because there are three main sides to the Students’ Association; three areas of activity, each with its own dedicated Sabbatical and dozens of student volunteers to help run it. These areas are representation; student development & activities; and events & services. My area as President might as well be called ‘everything else’ – I cover topics that cut right across all areas, such as planning, University & town relations, communications, and so on.

It’s important that we have this overarching structure to the Association as it allows us to arrange our subcommittees and societies, and to create a ‘line manager’ system where all subcomm and soc members report up to at least one Sabbatical, who keeps an eye on all activities in their area. If we didn’t have this structure (and it wasn’t too long ago that we didn’t) things fall between the cracks, ideas and efforts go to the wrong place or through the wrong methods, and responsibility is blurred to the point of uselessness.

The presentation to Court went brilliantly – we picked two subjects from each of the four areas, and gave a breakneck tour of just a few things that the Association does – while emphasising that to describe everything would take hours, rather than the ten minutes we had been allotted.

The four sections of the Tube Map are below – you can see exactly how whatever part of the Association most interests you relates to all the others, and to at least one Sabbatical. And if you’ve ever wondered exactly what it is that the President, DoR, Dosda or Doserv actually do, here’s your answer!

Great news!

Late last week, the Students’ Association got some fantastic news.

The University has committed money to the redevelopment of the Union Building. For three years from 2010/11, there will be £2.1m allocated to redevelopment of the building – with another two years of the same funding ‘anticipated’ after that. That’s £10.5million pounds – for refurbishing the Union.

There’ll be a press release about this very soon – we’ve been discussing where to go and how to progress with redevelopment planning for the last few days (and I’ve been on ‘holiday’ as well!). I’ll put up a full blog post on the background to all of this, but in the meantime, please spread the word – and start thinking about what you want to see in your new Union!