America Decides

 

We were fortunate to be given a presentation on the forthcoming mid-term elections by Jeff Karp, who is the University’s Senior Lecturer in Electoral Politics.

Jeff kindly volunteered to fill a spot vacated by Labour leadership contender John McDonnell, who sent his apologies for his absence due to an urgent constituency matter, and gave us a riveting talk on the history of mid-term elections, the races to watch and the prospects for the future.

We hope to put Jeff’s presentation on the website for everyone to view shortly. In the meantime, there are several websites where you could read about the mid-terms. All the latest opinion polls are available at Pollster.com, whilst the New York Times has the best commentary and a clickable electoral map. For a more quirky look at the elections, you could check out Daily Kos or Politics1.com.

Putting out the fires

We held our first event of the term at the University this evening. Initially, it was meant to be a night with our local MP, Ben Bradshaw, but suddenly he was required in London on departmental business. We weren’t too disappointed, though, because we got Cllr. Roy Slack, the Leader of the City Council, and Cllr. Connel Boyle, one of Labour’s three representatives in the neighbouring Exwick ward, to come and talk about the students’ concerns.

One of the key issues that has recently been exercising students, especially on our smaller campuses, is an email that has been sent out by Steve Smith asking for the views of students and staff on the future of St. Luke’s. The very fact that our Vice-Chancellor is consultating with the students at all is progress and testamount to the hard work of students like Alain Desmier, who led the protests when the University decided to scale back the teaching in Music, Chemistry and Italian without so much as a word of warning.

Still, it was pleasing to hear both Councillors, despite being constrained by what they could say given their roles within the University, speaking about their determination to ensure that we get the best deal for the students. The current Guild Executive have launched an excellent campaign – Save St. Lukes – and

Getting squashed

The Freshers’ Squash is always manic. As a first-year, I remember going and having bits of paper thrust into my hands everywhere I went as well as walking around several different buildings bewildered by the number of stalls, students and crowds. This year, as chair of a Society, it was a little different, but just as crazy.

We were delighted to be joined by the local MP, Ben Bradshaw, for an hour or so. In my experience, Ben has always been a diligent constituency MP and responded to a couple of my concerns with a helpful letter and a swift response. He was also a tremendous asset to have talking to students both at our stall and at others as I introduced him to some of the other societies that make such a contribution to student life on campus.

The Guild were concerned about his arrival and I volunteered to follow Ben around, but I did have to wonder about some of the health and safety issues. There was no water offered to people who operated a stall for six hours from 11am-5pm – that’s not counting the time you need to set-up and pack things away. You can do nothing about the sheer volume of students crowding around stalls, but I thought the actions of the Hunting Society (who, to my mind) aren’t members of our Guild Societies Association, were a little extreme to say the least.

Not only did they send some delightful people up to deface some of literature and signs, which merely advertised our presence, but they also stuck some ‘Fight the Ban’ stickers all over my clothes. Having already ripped up Liberal Democrat literature which was provocatively left at our stall before we arrived, I was determined to be nice to our political opponents. I asked them to leave our stall, was met with a torrent of abuse, before a few concerned students intervened to usher the delightful individuals away.

Other than that, we had a whale of a time. We signed up plenty of new members, which will give both the student society and the party a real boost ahead of next year’s local elections, and got plenty of signatures on our petition to ‘Make Child Poverty History’. It looks like this year will be very exciting, indeed.

Thanks to all those who helped out at the stall, especially Ben, Catherine, Natalie and Andy.