Prompted by the Education Guardian article, complete with catalogue pose photo, of the new President of the National Union of Students, Wes Streeting; I have decided to put down my thoughts about the way forward for NUS Governance.
As I bloged in my Conference Report in April; the first attempt at passing the review was narrowly defeated at NUS Annual Conference, but a motion to scrap the proposals all together and start from scratch was clearly defeated.
The reforms themselves are, in my opinion, correct and necessary. What is required are some sweeteners for the doubters in the membership of NUS.
Firstly, whoever decided to change the name of conference to congress needs to be shot! If the event wasn't changing then why give the opposition ammunition to say that it was?
Are these reforms going to make affiliation fees less in years to come? They probably should do, and if they do then tell people that!
Stop trying to convince the hard left over the review, they're never going to accept it while it contains capitalist ideas like a board of trustees. Better to find concessions at the margins where pseudo-left delegates are; the swing voters.
But overall, make sure that normal students know about the review. If they're not interested then so be it, but at least they know about it. Put a spiel about it in the NUS Extra booklet and on the front page of the NUS website, not hid away on officer online (the union networking site and intranet of NUS). Make an effort!
Timing of the extraordinary conference for the first reading of the reforms needs to be before Christmas. Whether there should be a second extraordinary or ratification should be done at Annual Conference like it was attempted last time out, is something I'm indifferent about.
Of course, whatever happens, it needs to pass!
JR
0 comments:
Post a Comment