By Joe Rukin
Senior NUS National Executive Committee (NEC) members have been formally accused of promoting institutionalised racism by the unions own Black Students Committee (BSC). In a unanimous motion passed by the committee at Black Students Conference, they accuse National President Mandy Telford and National Secretary Penny Hollings of "Denying Benson Osawe his basic student rights and promoting institutionalised racism within the National Union.", when Mr Osawe, an officer of the BSC, National Postgraduate Committee and the Council for International Students was barred from observing an NEC meeting four months ago.
At that meeting, members of the National Executive raised a number of issues regarding Benson Osawe's attendance as an observer and made a number of allegations with regard to his conduct at other forums within the student movement, however, despite numerous attempts to have the allegations put to Osawe and dealt with, none have been formally raised or substantiated. The BSC claims "Osawe has been the victim of the injustice of being excluded from observing NEC meetings, denied the due process of a fair trial, and been presumed to be guilty until proven innocent."
At the last NEC meeting in November which Osawe was again asked not to attend, Mandy Telford confirmed she would visit Osawe, but according to him she has so far cancelled twice, clearly hoping the issue would be swept under the carpet, but with a certain annual gathering in Blackpool approaching, the gloves are now off and BSC has mandated their representative on NUS National Council to propose a censure on Telford and Hollings.
A more innocent victim of a pre-election slur is Dervish Merctan. Merctan received a vote of censure at National council in November for 'Allowing NUSSL to promote vulgar sexism'. Less than ten working days after taking office, a mailout was sent out to Student Unions with an Aftershock promotional advert featuring pole-dancing. Despite this being arranged by the previous administration, it was argued that Merctan was 'Politically Responsible' and he received a vote of censure at council, with only five NEC members not voting against him, three from the liberation campaigns. He said "As soon as I knew this had gone out, I sent out a joint statement with Mandy warning unions and encouraging them not to take on the promotion. I'd never seen it beforehand, and I apologised straight away, so I don't know what else I could do. Of course now we can look forward to me being labelled a sexist bigot."
There is no debate that blatant electioneering via portfolio-building and 'networking' has been going on at Birkbeck SU after President, Imran Khan was turfed out on his ear after receiving a vote of no confidence at Union Council. Council was of the opinion that Khan, the Union's only Sabbatical Officer, was 'failing in a serious way to carry out the role of full-time sabbatical officer and to fulfil his contract of employment.", spending more of his time on external polticial matters, such as his role as one of London's Regional Representatives on NUS National Council. An election for a new President will be held in the New Year.
The mad panic caused by the death of ITM Activate, NUS's online partner has abated, at least for now. NUS had entered into a 30-day exclusive negotiation period with dabs.com, a firm which sells computers. However, after an original offer was made, the totals kept dropping and as NUS were becoming concerned about cultural differences which might hinder the deal, both parties walked away just halfway through negotiations. Now the union has realised that just banging the box at their end is enough to keep it's site on line, it is taking a more relaxed approach to finding an online solution, hopefully this way not repeating the mistakes of the past. How of course this will affect unions which were in the ITM deal and have now gone elsewhere waiting for their money is still up in the air.
John Dux, CEO of SU webhosting specialists oncampusuk.co.uk hoped NUS would take this time to reflect;
"When the ITM deal was launched, the original stated intention form Owain James was for an 'online revolution'. I hope that whatever decision NUS makes it takes into account the bigger picture. There are more and more student unions that are not involved in its internet solution, a number have walked out and become our clients, so I suppose students would have the right to ask has the original policy strategy changed, because that definitely isn't what they got before, lets hope they get it right this time."
There was agreement all around at the LGB Winter conference in Hull as almost everything in the four motions which got debated; An Active and Inclusive Campaign, Health, Our Campaign and NUS, and Government got passed, with only an amendment allowing hetrosexuals on conference floor falling, along with a motion that would have introduced guaranteed representation for women in delegations. This motion took four recounts and a revote, with both delivering a majority of 1 against. It was a mixed time for CFE members as Carli Harper-Penman was commended, but job-sharer Daniel Murphy was censured.
Around twenty years ago, the SU at Salford University not only had no platform policies against Nazis, but Zionists too. Whilst the union is still committed to combating extremist in all forms, the university now 'boasts' the headquarters of the B NP youth. Tony Wentworth, a first year Politics student at Salford University, has been appointed head of the Youth British National Party by party chairman Nick Griffin. Wentworth has announced his intention to launch a "massive recruitment campaign" for YB NP, which claims to
"Bring young people into politics, offering a radical political, social and cultural alternative to the multi-culti politically correct nonsense forced on them at school, college and through the youth targeted sectors of the media."
The NUS Students with Disabilities (SWD) campaign is to throw it's weight behind a campaign to get British Sign Language adopted as an official language by the Westminster and Brussels governments. Currently 70,000 people use BSL, more than speak Gaelic, Cornish of Welsh. Despite the EU passing resolutions in both '88 & '98 for countries to recognise their individual sign languages as official languages, only four countries have so far. Both the Scottish and Welsh Assemblies have backed moves, but not Westminster. At the moment, the failure to recognise BSL and give it full language status in The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages means deaf people are still waiting for fuller access to public services and information, education, social and economic life, the justice system, broadcasting and cultural life.
NUS LGB
Student Direct, Manchester Student Leads BNP Youth
