The reason we can say that “NUS is the voice of students’ unions and students” is because the work we do is led by our members. It is led by our annual national conference. It is led by consultations on every major project we do, constant feedback, and input from member unions and students. And, it’s led by elected student officers from across the UK.
NUS holds 13 democratic conferences across the year, an average of more than one a month. That’s 13 separate opportunities to get involved in discussion and to debate policy. Those conferences look to support the diversity of students’ in the UK – from college students, through to postgrad-research students, international, mature students. Our membership is vast, and this is reflected in our work.
Students directly elect over a thousand delegates to represent them at national conference and those delegates decide the policy that forms the bulk of NUS’ work for the year ahead. They also elect 48 representatives to sit on a national council that, again, steers the work of NUS between conferences. And all that doesn’t include the students you elect to zone committees, or that volunteer for NUS Services.
Through our member students' unions, NUS represents the interests of more than seven million students.
But NUS will never please everyone – it’s impossible.
We’re proud that our democracy creates a constant challenge to our policies and our work. Internally – and by internal we mean students’ unions, NUS and students that get involved in our democracy – we know that we’ll always argue about specifics of how best to achieve our aims. That’s what keeps our movement up-to-date, what makes us proactive, what allows us to work in the interests of some of the most disenfranchised learners in the UK.
But there is a point at which this criticism creates a more fundamental threat. Members of the public generally don’t make the distinction between NUS, the wider student movement, students’ unions and students. When NUS is attacked publicly, it doesn’t matter what it’s about, it makes the student movement look divided.
It is easier for external organisations and influences to attack students when the national movement looks like it spends more time arguing with itself than others.
In the latest article by the Huffington Post you can see the divided opinions of our critics – one person quoted says that NUS doesn’t demonstrate enough, while another quote says that NUS demonstrates too much. NUS can’t win when it comes to making everyone happy. We’re OK with that.
Often the press, and more importantly politicians, don’t distinguish between criticisms of our policy and work, and criticisms of the legitimacy or even our right to exist. This can have dire consequences; universities and college management ignoring course reps, ignoring students’ union involvement in access work, cutting students’ services, and in the extreme cases, refusing to fund students’ unions. You only have to look to Australia, where there was a decline in participation, intervention by university administrations, and the end of compulsory membership arrangements, to see the damage that constant delegitimising did to the student movement.
We aren’t saying that questions and criticism should stop – channel it into our debates, vote on motions you think are important, talk to other students or get involved in your students’ union.
We genuinely believe that we represent the feelings of as many students as we can, and when we ask people, they back us up.
We get a number of journalists enquiring about complaints against NUS and we reply with this information:
- Last year NUS was voted the 2nd most popular third-sector brand amongst 18-24 year olds.
- In 2012, six existing NUS-affiliated unions voted to stay in NUS – one non-affiliate joined! Yes, students at Southampton didn’t vote to join – but the campaign to join was incredible. And the evidence suggests that students who are already part of NUS don’t want to leave. We know that they don’t agree with everything NUS does, but they recognise the importance of a strong national movement with a unified voice.
- The research to support the new NUS group brand (which is coming this summer) showed that the awareness of each activity among students ranged between 62 and 98 per cent.
- We get our focus through our democratic processes, and we had a demonstration in 2012 and 2010 because that’s what our membership voted for. Everyone recognises that we can’t rely on outdated tactics and we all have individual opinions on how effective demonstrations are.
We have an opportunity now to stop debating who was right and who was wrong on past events and strengthen our national movement joined by a unified by aim and vision, which will really influence the outcome of the next general election.
Ahead of National Conference this is a great opportunity for you tell us what you think. What would you like NUS to focus on? What’s important to you? What are we doing right that you want us to do more? What are we doing wrong that we should stop?
We can talk, debate, and argue about all of that here, or on Facebook or Twitter or at National Conference next week. Contact the elected officers. Ask your students’ union to hold an open meeting with NUS reps. Debate and challenge our work, the work of our movement. But the unity of vision and our values, that’s our strength.