My thoughts on NUS national conference 2013...

NUS national conference 2013 was my first time at an NUS conference. Overall, I found it an incredibly positive experience; in fact the more I think about it the more I feel invigorated and excited about the student movement and proud to be a part of it.

From working on a better alternative to EMA to raising awareness about mental health to increasing student voter turnout in elections to fighting for proper careers education in schools and against the reforms to GCSEs and A levels, some really excellent motions passed. The quality of the discourse was really high and there were some fantastic speeches from delegates. I really enjoyed the zone reports, which reminded me that for all its faults NUS does some incredible work, and I think the motions we passed at conference put NUS on course to continue doing great work, research and campaigning that helps students on a day to day level.

My biggest disappointment of the conference was that motion 701 fell. I understand all the issues with gender quotas, and I honestly wish we didn’t need them, but we do. Even mainstream political parties use them…even the Tory party uses them! NUS should stop fantasising that all we need to do is encourage more women to get involved. Frankly, it was really patronising to hear delegates stand up and say that delegates should be elected “on merit”. The fact that only about 30% of delegates to conference are, on average, women, despite women making up the majority of students is not because of merit, it’s because of our societal structures which disadvantages woman. I’m angry that a floor made up of mostly men voted against this motion, but I’m also angry at the women who voted against. To get elected as a woman is awesome, but it doesn’t mean you can leave other women behind. The main losers from this motion falling were the women who should have been at conference but, because of the way of society is structured, weren’t. Oh, and to all the delegates who didn’t get out of bed in time to vote for the motion; what the hell?!

Rant over.

In better women related news, I’m thrilled NUS elected a woman as its president (and also thrilled her main opponent was a woman…go women!). Toni Pearce is quite simply fantastic in every way, and will be an incredible president. That she is NUS’s first president from FE is as wonderful as it is shocking; the majority of NUS’s membership is FE students, and it shouldn’t have taken us this long to get here. But at least we have now. The number of FE delegates at this conference (many of whom I had the pleasure of hanging out with) is a tribute to the work Toni and Vice Presidents have done before her to engage FE students with NUS.

I’m also thrilled that Joe Vinson was elected Vice President Further Education, Dom Anderson Vice President Society and Citizenship, Rachael Mattey Vice President Union Affairs, Colum McGuire Vice President Welfare and that Rachel Wenstone was reelected as Vice President Higher Education. They are going to make a fantastic team.

I still think NUS needs to do a far better job at reaching out to ordinary students. As a delegate, I did my best to consult students about the motions I was voting on, but it’s difficult to create that engagement, especially when what you’re sending them is a god knows how many page document. I can’t pretend I have all the answers, but it starts with NUS being more present on our campuses. NUS needs to go to students because students aren’t going to go to them. I was really pleased to see full time students like Rhiannon Durrans and Ben Dilks standing for Block of 15; it’s good to have someone other than sabbs (nothing against sabbs, but…) standing, and I hope to see more of this in future.

NUS is very factional, and I don’t think this is a completely bad thing. I agree with what Liam Burns said in his leaving speech; factions are about students coming together and organising around shared beliefs to put those beliefs into practice and that’s a good and admirable thing to do. But though I do think factions are a force for good, there needs to be a way into NUS for students who don’t ascribe to this factions or that faction.

There were also some quite serious access problems at this conference; most notably the length of the days. It was hard for me to maintain concentration but for students with certain disabilities it would have been close to impossible. Additionally, with issues such as whooping and clapping in the middle of speeches, the importance of not doing things like this should have been outlined clearly at the beginning. The chairs (who all did a fantastic job, by the way) did keep reminding people throughout, but as they hadn’t been told properly in the first place I can sympathise with delegates who were confused and didn’t fully understand why they were being told not to clap and cheer.

None the less, it was fascinating to final see the sovereign body of NUS in action, and I would defiantly encourage anyone who wants to to run to be a delegate. Sitting through slightly more procedural motions than you would like (to note I think the Democratic Procedural Committee did an excellent job, and I certainly do not envy them!) is worth it to get to be part of setting the direction of the student movement. 

My motion to Labour Students National Conference 2013, on democratically electing the Chair of Steering.

Labour Students notes:

- Currently, the constitution states that the Chair of Steering will be nominated by and from among the democratically elected three members of the steering committee.

- The constitution is unclear as to how this decision should be made.

- Although the Chair of Steering does not have voting rights on the committee, they none the less perform a very important function, requiring an in depth understanding of democratic process. They are also a very high profile position, as they chair debates at democratic events.

Labour Students believes:

- The current process is unclear and confusing, especially for those on the steering committee who are required to make the decision as to who the Chair of Steering should be.

- The current process is not transparent, and means that the Chair of Steering is not directly accountable to Labour Students members.

- All positions on the Labour Students national committee, whether or not they have voting right, should be elected in a way that is clear, open and transparent.

Labour Students resolves:

- That the Chair of Steering should be directly elected by the Labour Students membership at Labour Students National Conference.

- That a steering committee of three should still be elected at council, and the Chair of Steering be elected from among them.

- A person may still stand for steering committee but then choose not to put themselves forward to be Chair of Steering.

- When standing for steering committee, candidates should declare their interests in running to be Chair of Steering to ensure transparency.

- The Chair of Steering should be elected by club delegates, until such point as One Member One Vote is introduced, and then they should be elected by One Member One Vote.

(motion was passed and will go to National Council, where if passed a second time it will become constitutional)

My motion to Labour Students National Council 2013, about postgraduate funding...

Labour Students notes:

- Relative to its undergraduate equivalent, postgraduate provision has suffered neglect from successive Governments.

- Even before the recession, the number of UK students taking up postgraduate degrees increased only marginally between 2002 and 2008.

- The removal of over 80% of teaching funding to universities by the government in the comprehensive spending review will hit postgraduates particularly hard as they are not eligible for fee loans.

- The proposals for increased scrutiny of international students is likely to put many off, choking off this source of funding for universities; which risks universities raising further their already high postgraduate fees.

- This combination means many are excluded from postgraduate education all together, while many are partly funding their course through ‘highly unstable’ sources such as overdrafts or credit cards and many others have to work such long hours it hurts their studies.

Labour Students believes:

- The UK’s future growth, both economically and socially, rests on a highly skilled population and we cannot rely upon attracting international talent to provide this base for the future; we must therefore seek to encourage more students to take up postgraduate study by working to remove financial barriers.

- No one should be unable to take up postgraduate study because of their financial circumstances.

Labour Students resolves:

- To work towards an NUS policy of lobbying for a system of low interest Government loans, as are available to undergrads, for up to £10,000 of postgraduate fees; not to be paid back until the graduate is earning over £21,000.

- To work towards an NUS policy of lobbying for better terms for Personal and Career Development Loans (PCDLs) and to make these more widely available.

- To encourage NUS to lobby and work with universities to encourage them provide better and more widely available bursaries, targeted at students from lower income backgrounds.

- To encourage NUS to lobby and work with industry to encourage them to sponsor postgraduate provision; and efforts must be made to encourage employer sponsorship of individual students.

Sources:

http://www.1994group.ac.uk/documents/120215_PostgraduateCrisis.pdf

http://www.nus.org.uk/PageFiles/12238/Broke.pdf

http://www.centreforum.org/assets/pubs/mastering-postgraduate-funding.pdf

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/227102/fair-access.pdf

http://www.independent.co.uk/student/postgraduate/postgraduate-study/facing-up-to-the-funding-crisis-8315920.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jan/17/postgraduates-funding-cuts

(motion was passed)

"What do you want to do when you grow up?" is the wrong question.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”; it’s the question that we’re asked from about as early as we can conceive of what growing up and having some sort of job means. And for many of us, the question keeps getting asked, again and again, maybe in slightly more sophisticated ways that involve paths into industries or quizzes that probably tell us nothing we didn’t already know, but it’s essentially the same question. Of course, careers education varies greatly from school to school, but for too many students the approach to careers education is still far too linear and far too simplistic.

Careers education is still too often based upon an increasingly outdated view of education, of jobs and of careers. It's based on the idea that you go through education, get a job and stick with that job. And therefore your decisions in education are to be made with this career goal in mind. But increasingly, people aren’t staying in one career or even one industry for most of their lives. People are increasingly likely to do one job for a while, and then move into a whole other sector. And so people don’t so much need to know a lot about one field, but instead be well equipped to take on a wide variety of roles. And so our careers education needs to shift away from the idea of a single career path, and towards teaching students to be flexible and to be creative in their approach to the job market and equipped them with the broad range of skills they will need for this.

Work experience should be compulsory for all secondary school children; even doing just a week of good work experience can be really beneficial. But schools should be taking this a step further by encouraging and facilitating students to do volunteering, or run clubs, or just get part time jobs. Working in retail in Saturdays will teach you a tonne of skills that will be useful when you need to get a full time job. University is a great chance for those who go to do things like volunteer, get involved in societies or work part time but, especially for those who don’t go to university, schools should be ensuring their pupils have the same kind of experiences and opportunities.

And this should be part of a shift in focus from choosing your career path to taking the opportunities available to you, making good decisions in the present for your development, building skills and exploring the big old mess that is the world of work. We should be ncouraging students to make decisions in the present that will be valuable experiences, rather than focusing on charting a course for the future; instead of asking “what do you want to do when you grow up”, we should be asking what students want to do, want to experience and what they want to get involved with now.

Additionally, careers education can still be far too focused on “this is what a job will involve if you get it”. Schools should be better at equipping pupils with tools to get into those jobs in the first place, from CV writing to approaching employers to creating a good online presence (and actually how to create a visible and strong presence; not just “keep your facebook as private as possible and make yourself entirely invisible because sometimes you’re noticeably drunk”).

Careers education should be a central part of secondary school, especially post-14, not just something on the side. It should be comprehensive and it should be about what students can do to grow and develop right now, not just what they might want to do one day. Not only is this view increasingly out of sync with people’s career paths, it puts an unnecessary amount of pressure on young people to make the “right” choices now; because if it’s leading you down a path that will end at a job for life…that’s terrifying! Easing that pressure by focusing on doing a lot of things and building a broad skills base, and emphasising that jobs need not be for life would not just improve careers education but would ease this pressure on students, making the transition from education to work that little bit easier and maybe even make the whole thing a bit more fun!

Speaking up about mental health.

This is quite a different blog post from what I normally write, and I did think about putting it on my personal blog, but it is a political issue, just as much as issues related to my gender or sexuality are political issues. I’m talking about my mental health. Well, more, why I don’t feel comfortable talking about issues related to mental health anymore. I used to. But since coming to university I’ve become increasingly unwilling to be just…be open about the whole thing.

I’ll preface this by saying I have depression and I have anxiety. I first remember being properly depressed when I was nine…the worst it has ever been was when I was fourteen, which was in large parts because I just didn’t know how to deal with it or, more importantly, have any real desire to. I’ve had plenty of depressive periods since then, but none that bad. I’ve self-harmed, although I don’t think I’d describe myself as a self-harmer…more a depressive who…dabbled. I have really rare panic attacks, and I have bouts of social anxiety when being around people just…freaks me out; and this can be strangers or my best friends. This isn’t most of the time, by any means, and depression especially I am for the most part really pretty decent and coping with. But it’s still something I suffer from and that’s probably not going away, well, ever.

Before I came to university I was fairly fine with being like “yeah, I have this thing…” if the issue arose; and I suppose one of the key reasons I'm not anymore is just that when you meet new people, you're hesitant to bring it up too early on...but then they become your friends and you still haven’t brought it up and then so much time as passed and it just feels weird to suddenly insert it into conversation.

But there are a lot of other reasons why I think I feel very uncomfortable talking about this stuff. And I know that that’s bad and that I should be open about it because mental health is still something with this huge stigma attached and people speaking out is helpful…so I wanted to write a post about why I don't feel comfortable speaking out about it anymore.

I worry about people not believing me because I seem fine. And, for the most part, I am fine and I can see why the idea I’d be depressed, let alone the idea I have episodes of social anxiety, would be surprising to a lot of people. And so I do feel like people just won’t…take the idea that these are actually problems I suffer from seriously.

Then, there’s this feeling that I can’t say I have mental health issues because they’re not nearly as bad as other peoples. And they’re really not; there are so many people who suffer from mental health problems a million times worse than mine. But on the other hand I’m more than happy to speak out about issues related to being bisexual, but I’ve never experienced  hate crime, I have a supportive family etc…my experience of this hasn’t been anywhere near as hard as a lot of other people’s.

And it’s good to speak up about milder mental illnesses…because that helps challenge the idea of a binary mentally ill or mentally well state of being....right?

I guess the other big thing is that wonderful world of jobs and careers that university makes you really, really aware of…which is a good thing, but when you’re conscious of presenting yourself in an employable way you, or at least I, tend to not want to mention the bit where you’re so sad you just don’t want to get out of bed. Which is silly on two levels; for me, personally, depression etc has never stopped me doing anything I had to do. It’s made it a whole lot less fun and it’s stopped me doing things I’d like to do, but with school and work I’ve kept going, albeit unenthusiastically.

But more importantly if someone wasn’t prepared to hire me because of these issues, that would be really wrong of them. I shouldn’t hide this because some people might be horrible about it.

We do need to, as a society, be more open about mental health and mental illness, and I know that. But it can be tough, you know?

Leeds Mind Matters society is running an excellent campaign called the elephant in the room, which inspired this post...it is important that we all find the strength and are given the freedom and the safety to speak up about mental health problems; because a whole lot of people have them, and the sooner we can start accepting them as normal, the better.

The elephant in the room facebook page; http://www.facebook.com/LUUElephant

Her name was Reeva Steenkamp.

Written for Her Campus Leeds.

In the UK, one in seven female students are victims of sexual assault or physical abuse.

Around the world, 1/3 of women are physically or sexually abused.

On the 14^th February, women and men all over the world took part in the One Billion Rising campaign, aiming to raise awareness of and help tackle violence against women and girls. From flashmobs to dance shows to plays, to lobbying elected officials to elected officials putting forward legislation, across the globe activists played their part in this incredible movement.

I went down to London to take part in a flashmob outside Parliament and a dance show at the South Bank, and also went to see Yvette Cooper and Stella Creasy speak about legislation they’d been helping get through Parliament that day, calling for compulsory sex ed in schools, with a focus on non-violence and consent. Although the support from some MPs wasn’t as strong as would have been liked (I’m looking at you Michael Gove…), most were incredibly supportive and this legislation will be a huge step in changing our culture of violence towards women.

The event was truly one of the most inspirational things I have ever taken part in.

And if anyone was left in any doubt as to why movements like this are necessary, The Sun provided a handy reminder that evening, with their front page about recently deceased model, human rights activist and law graduate Reeva Steenkamp.

Except, if you’d just read The Sun’s front page, you wouldn’t know why was any of these things. You wouldn’t even know her name.

 To eroticise and dehumanise Reeva’s death in this way isn’t just sexist it’s completely without any kind of human decency. People calling The Sun to complain were told that, as she was a model, this is just a picture of her working. Just because a picture was appropriate when advertising swimwear does not make it an appropriate picture to use when talking about a woman’s death.

That so often women who suffer from violence and abuse are not looked at properly as real, complex people is part of the problem that One Billion Rising aimed to tackle.

Leeds University Unions’s femsoc recently launched an “I need feminism because…” campaign, which got students from across the university discussing why they need feminism. Feminism so often dismissed now as old fashioned or unnecessary in an era where women are legally equal to men (which is rather UK-centric, since many women around the world still face legal inequalities). But we all still need feminism. I need feminism because her name was Reeva Steenkamp, and she was more than just beautiful and she was more than just someone’s lover. And that even after her death large parts of society don’t seem able to see that is why feminism is still as relevant as it ever was today.