Archive for the ‘Writers’ Category
Worst jobs
Fiona McCoss urges us to eat some humble pie
I ATE a very large slice of humble pie recently on a night out when my conscience and human empathy got the better of me. I, guiltily, gave a pound to a toilet attendant whose mundane job it was to sit amongst various beauty products and toiletries aimed to refresh drunken punters. But despite sitting tolerantly from 10pm-3am, observing (probably with contempt) the carefree, job-free students who were enjoying themselves merrily, she was not getting any business or pleasure out of it whatsoever. What a rubbish job, I thought to myself (hence the donation). Now, I cringe ashamedly at myself for giving her just the £1. What is a pound really to a student with an overdraft? It is nothing, one hundred copper pennies, in fact. As the protagonist of Sex and the City would say; ‘I couldn’t help but wonder…’ about all the other really rubbish jobs that people do which us, as students, take for granted.
Big Issue sellers are another classic example, and I will use the poor woman who pleads unsuccessfully outside Aldi to further my point. Who has ever bought a Big Issue off of her? I don’t know anyone that has, I admit that I haven’t. Come rain or shine, even snow, this lady, in her skirt and sandals, day after day, sits in vain hope that someone will humour her and buy just one. No wonder she gets a bit moody and shouts at the occasional passerby or disconcertingly eyes up our arms full of shopping enviously. But wouldn’t you? How would you like to be sitting numb from the cold in your own boredom, trying to sell a magazine fruitlessly?
Enviable?
What about the early Monday morning bin and recycling collections around Selly Oak that wakes up those in their much needed slumber. Do we actually stop and think or appreciate the ‘bin men’ (to put it crudely) who have been up far earlier than us, and whose job it actually is to do our dirty work? No, I didn’t think so. Instead of irritably tossing and turning in bed, waiting for the loud drone of the lorry’s engine to turn onto another street to disturb someone else, we should be grateful that we can actually afford to be staying in bed, and not picking up other people’s rubbish at 6am.
Binging for charity
Ross Fisher wonders how Charity and debauchery can coincide
- 12 pints later
RED Nose Day has come around once again, and thousands of people have put time and effort into raising millions for Comic Relief. Leading this effort as always was the BBC, with a broad blanket of programs across every license fee-funded medium. Perhaps the most interesting show was the as-yet unexploded bomb that was the BBC Three special.
BBC Three was launched in 2003, and in the evening borrows the terrestrial bandwidth that is CBBC during the day. It barely received government approval in the first place, and has frequently come under fire from people such as The Times’ Camilla Cavendish.
The special program featured the cast of its mainstay shows Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and Coming of Age – the sixth form sitcom – along with a motley crew of other BBC Three stars. The majority of the show took place in a pub where, even though references were made to the sixth formers’ ages, they were not questioned.
The focus of the show revolved around a contest between the three groups mentioned above. This contest required the teams to put forward members to take part in three challenges: a ‘bitch off’, a ‘drink off’ and a ‘flirt off’. The ‘bitch off’ ended with bullying and tears, the ‘drink off’ ended with the winner collapsing, and the ‘flirt off’ ended with a young girl asking Will Mellor’s character ‘Shall we go outside, and you can put your dick in me?’ She was awarded 10 out of 10. After a winner had been declared, the show closed with a musical number whose main lyric was ‘stop thinking, start drinking.’
I personally am not keen on hunting for witches, and I can certainly see the funny side of the show. However, I cannot help but wonder who it was that thought that this would be a good idea for a charity broadcast, even more so who pitched it to the BBC editorial body, and even more so what was going through the mind of said editors when they brought back a smiling ‘yes’ verdict.
The BBC should have been wary of releasing a show like this. After all it hasn’t been all too long since comedian Russell Brand and talk-show host Jonathon Ross found themselves on the wrong end of a media storm. Other high visibility broadcasters such as DJ Chris Moyles and the hosts of Top Gear (a life-size cardboard cut out of Jeremy Clarkson appears frequently in ‘Coming of age’) have regularly come under fire for inappropriate comments, and all this is in a context where the BBC has been accused of ‘dumbing down’.
It might be true to say that they are appealing more to their target demographic, and even to say that such an open-minded approach to potentially insulting material is refreshing in an age that seems to be preoccupied with protocol and political correctness. Nonetheless, the question remains whether this is the appropriate message for the BBC to be sending out as a charity special. I’m sure we’ll find out one way the other soon enough.
Barbie’s birthday
Jo Lumb pays homage to one of the great ladies of our time
9 MARCH 2009 marked the fiftieth birthday of a very special lady: Barbara Millicent Roberts. More commonly known as Barbie, this is a woman who boasts a résumé of 100 different careers, a two times candidacy for president of the United States, and a yearly wealth of approximately $1.5 billion. And all this without a grey hair in sight.
Still looking good for 50!
Barbie was born to American toy manufacturers Elliot and Ruth Handler. She was conceived after seeing their daughter Barbara (hence the name) playing with infant paper dolls and giving them adult roles. The initial concept was to produce a plastic doll with a womanly figure that would help children ‘realize their dreams and goals through play.’ Despite the fact that my own Barbies may not have helped me plan my lifelong ambitions, I will readily admit that they are a prominent feature when reminiscing upon my many fond childhood memories.
Amid a vast array of swanky birthday celebrations, reaching the half-century milestone also allowed a perfect opportunity for people to reflect on the plastic phenomenon. Barbie has not only influenced children’s playtimes, but also adult lives. While images of Katie Price’s wedding day spring to my mind on combining the words ‘adult’ and ‘Barbie’, at the launch of the Barbie Dream Beetle Convertible car (one of her many lavish gifts) Laura Soave, the Manager of Marketing at Volkswagen of America, said: ‘Barbie has made a remarkable impact on pop culture history, and still remains a cultural icon today.’
When thinking of her many successes it would seem that there is actually a lot to be learnt from Barbie, who has marketed herself as one of the most successful business women of all time. From working as a McDonalds cashier to serving as a Navy Officer, she has undoubtedly cemented herself as a respectable pillar of society, all the while doing so with a dazzling Hollywood smile on her face. And better yet, there are most definitely brains behind the beauty, she has both a medical and veterinarian degrees under her size quadruple-zero belt.
Although her outfits may leave little to the imagination, there is no doubting Barbie’s decorum. After a 43 year romance (yes, she started early) Barbie left boyfriend Ken to embrace life as independent woman. Any celebrity who manages a four decade romance with no surface of a sex tape is a very classy lady in my eye.
It seems that the only criticisms she faces are those related to her unrealistic body proportions. If Barbie were to be human, and of an average height of 5 ft 6 ins, then her relative waist size would be 20 ins (this is three inches less than Victoria Beckham, although not unheard of), her bust 27 ins and hips 29 ins. It is fair to say that Barbie’s BMI would fall below the minimum healthy 17 per cent, but let’s be honest, it’s not realistic that she would be an astronaut and a Spice Girl in the same lifetime, so I think we can cut her some slack. My only personal concern is that ex-boyfriend Ken was named so after Elliot and Ruth’s son. Technically Barbie and Ken are therefore siblings, and thus their relationship is a little incestual for my liking. But I suppose choice is somewhat limited when you’re a plastic doll.
Sadly, Barbie’s market share has suffered since the Bratz Dolls were introduced in 2001. However, after reading an article, ‘Bratz Begets Brats’, which branded the dolls as tarty-party girls, I feel confident that the Barbie role model will forever reign, and rightly so. As her website boldly states: ‘It’s Barbie’s world. We just play in it.’
Sex or music?
Andy Lo takes a look at the evolving music industry in comparison to say, oh i don’t know, SEX!
Would you rather this?
Would you rather go without music or sex for a week? Astonishingly over 60 per cent of young people would rather go without the horizontal action. Amongst 16 – 19 year olds the figure rises to 70 per cent. The compelling results were uncovered by Marrakesh Records and Human Capital who conducted the survey on 1,000 15-24 year-olds. The study, designed to find out the importance of music to young people and their changing attitudes towards paying for it, also found that 70 per cent did not feel guilty for illegally downloading music. In addition 61 per cent also felt they should not have to pay for the music they listen to.
The findings are remarkable. I know for a fact that if I was asked to give up either music or sex I would most definitely choose the former rather than the latter. Yet the findings also highlight just how important the role of music still is in the lives of youths. Friendships are formed over music, nights out revolve around it, and careers are started because of it.
The methods in which people gratify their need for music has changed over the years and is still constantly evolving; the buying of physical mediums such as the CD is declining as music is increasingly being bought and downloaded online. It seems likely that in the not too distant future physical copies will cease to exist all together and all music will be available and bought online – a virtual jukebox if you will.
Of course, along with this, illegal downloading through file sharing networks has also been rife and has been for a number of years. I, myself, am guilty of having downloaded tracks in the past without paying for them and I am sure a good majority of people will raise their hands when asked the same question. Illegal music downloading costs music companies millions every year and the UK government has attempted to tackle this ever-present modern problem. Recently a friend of mine received a letter from Sky Broadband warning him that his internet could be cut off if he continued to download pirated music from an unnamed website.
Or this?
The constantly evolving nature of the music industry has raised questions on the value of music. In the survey, the average price that respondents thought was fair to pay for a CD album was just £6.58. For a download album the average fell to £3.91 and for a download single the average was 39p – this was almost half the price of a track on iTunes. But perhaps music should not even cost anything. The ‘commodification’ of music has only really existed since companies began catching on to the idea that selling physical copies of recordings was profitable. Before then music was treated as art form – simply an expression of human of creativity that was available to all and not a money making product that could be bought and sold. It seems to me that the selling of music these days is simply serving to line the pockets of the suits in the music industry, many of whom have no real understanding of music.
Record companies, in my opinion, are being rendered obsolete by technology. Many artists are increasingly turning to the internet to distribute their music (often for free) with many choosing only to make money off other methods such as gigging. In 2007 Radiohead released their album In Rainbows as a free download citing that it was up to fans to decide whether they should pay not. In addition websites such as Myspace have proved incredibly useful for many unsigned bands to gain popularity. The Arctic Monkeys achieved a phenomenally huge fan base through the internet before they were even signed.
The music industry is constantly progressing and I expect we will see more major developments in the next few years. As for sex; let’s hope that will survive for at least a few more years.
Goody raises profile of cervical cancer
Jade Goody has been diagnosed with cervical cancer
Abi Gill discusses the impact of Jade Goody’s cancer diagnosis
CERVICAL cancer usually occurs in women aged over 35, yet Goody is a relatively young victim at just 27. With this in mind, I wondered whether this story had increased anxiety in female students. Alison Rowbotham, 21, explained, ‘since I heard that Jade Goody was going to die it hit me how serious it is, so now I do worry.’ While it affects over 2,800 women every year, killing around a thousand, it is often overshadowed by Breast cancer. Second year student Amy Chatwood confessed, ‘I don’t know specific details about cervical cancer, just that it’s another form of cancer which affects women.’
Many cases are attributed to exposure to the Human Papilloma Virus, usually transmitted during unprotected sexual contact. Though around three quarters of us will come into contact with this virus during our lifetime, some strains of the virus are of higher risk and may lead to cancer. As of last summer, year 8 pupils were vaccinated against strains of the virus as it is thought inoculating prior to being sexually active will reduce the likelihood of contracting the cancer. Women of university age have not received this and must instead wait for their routine smear test, which, according to the NHS cancer-screening programme, are offered to women aged 25, depending on local primary care trusts. Student Mary Oswald expressed her view; ‘I think 20-21 would be a better age. I know in Wales you have it at that age for free but here you have to pay until you are 25. I see no harm in making it earlier.’ According to the NHS, it can take many years for cancer to develop prior to contact with the papilloma virus which is why the test is not offered to younger women. Goody famously received her diagnosis whilst taking part in the Indian Big Brother show last year, though it had apparently been misdiagnosed for three years prior to this. Doctors initially believed they had caught the cancer ‘just in the nick of time’, though later revealed that it had spread beyond her womb into her muscle tissue. February saw the revelation that Ms Goody’s cancer had spread even further, to her liver, bowel and groin and would prove incurable. She told the Sun newspaper ‘I am devastated, frightened and angry. I don’t want to die, I have so much to live for.’
Though the awareness raised can only be a positive consequence, contracting the illness at this young age is incredibly rare, whilst death due to it is even rarer. The Independent reported a 20 per cent increase in smear test attendance during the weeks that followed Goody’s initial diagnosis. Yet the bizarre media spectacle of Goody’s final months has been condemned by some as a money making scheme. However, sociology student Melissa Bradford sums up the views of many as she explains, ‘the reason why she is making her death so public is to earn money for her two sons. At the end of the day if thats her best way of financially securing her sons lives after she has passed away I support her.’
Racy Virgin causes problems
Andy Lo thinks people should lighten up
SEX sells. The advertising companies know it, we the consumers know it. Yet somehow the new enthralling Virgin Atlantic advertising campaign, which marks the airline’s 25th anniversary, has managed to garner 29 complaints. The advert, set in 1984, opens with a newspaper vendor selling the story of a miner’s strike whilst a Yuppie carrying a brick mobile phone converses with a business partner. As the young businessman enters the airport he is stopped short by the dazzling sight of an entourage of gorgeous airhostesses dressed in vivid red accompanying a pilot. They walk through a dull coloured airport to the soundtrack of Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and seemingly amass the attention of all males in the crowd. One man, eating a burger, accidently manages to drop ketchup all over himself whilst watching the parade. As it draws to a close one businessman says to his colleague ‘I need to change my job’ whilst the other replies ‘I need to change my ticket’. The advert finally signs off with the line ’25 Years Still Red Hot’.
The majority of the complaints that the ASA received stated that the advert objectified women and presented a stereotypical view of the genders. The ASA has already ruled in favor of Virgin Atlantic who stated, ‘we considered that most viewers would understand that the ad presented exaggerated stereotypical views of the early 1980s and played upon perceived attitudes of that time in a humorous way.’
I am in accordance with the ASA ruling. It is apparent to me, and the majority of people who watched the advert, that Virgin’s objective was to parody a bygone era using hyperbolized stereotypes in an amusing and entertaining fashion. Its nature was very clearly tongue-in-cheek and so I believe that those that complained have missed the point and need to lighten up.
Yet even if the advert had been set in the present day I would have still taken a dim view of those that contacted the ASA. Using attractive men and women to sell products and services is nothing new. It is a marketing tool that has worked extremely well for some companies and I feel as long as it stays within the confines of good taste I do not see any cause for concern. I for one, will remember this advert a lot longer than I will remember any of the British Airways commercials.
If we are to question the apparently sexist attitudes of using attractive women in advertising then perhaps we should also query the similar methods in which men are sometimes portrayed. The well-known Diet Coke advert, for example, features a hunky lift engineer being ogled by a group of excited office women; whilst a recent commercial for Aero showed a half naked Jason Lewis (from Sex and the City) strutting around eating a chocolate seductively. I wonder how many complaints of sexism were registered in those cases. In addition the Virgin Atlantic advert also included a handsome male pilot, who exchanges glances with a woman in the airport crowd. This seemed to be completely ignored by those who complained.
When compared to European advert culture, where racy commercialism is the norm, the Virgin Atlantic campaign appears pale in comparison. The 29 people who complained to the ASA would probably have a heart attack if they watched continental television. I recently viewed a Danish advert for Siemens on the Internet, which showed hundreds of naked women skydiving out of a plane. It was selling washing machines. Whilst I am not insinuating that we become as permissive as Europe when it comes to showing sex and nudity on television, I believe the overly politically correct disposition that a few individuals possess needs to be dropped and a more liberal attitude adopted.
I just think that Virgin Atlantic’s advert is, like the airhostesses, a golden ray of light in this dark, gloomy time of economic recession. It is just a shame that air travel as no longer as glamorous or as exciting as it was depicted.
In the line of fire
Jude Hill gets in line to discuss the entry policies of clubs around Birmingham
I FOR one have never had a problem getting into clubs in Birmingham. I have never been turned away and been told that I was not wearing the right clothes. This may be because I have a good dress sense or that the majority of places that I go to are full of people who dress as badly as me. Who knows. Most clubs in Birmingham have to have a certain degree of leniency towards students as we, as a group, could arrive at a club in anything from shirts and chinos to a Mr. Motivator costume.
Deciding on 'cool' since 2008
This is not the case when we turn up to regular nights at many of the clubs on Friday or Saturday nights. My friend experienced the difficulty in getting into a club last Saturday in Gatecrasher when he attempted to go and see Hed Kandi. Despite having a ticket, he and many of his friends were denied entry. When he asked the manager why he was not allowed to enter the club he was told that they didn’t need to give him a reason.
When I began investigating the issue I looked at it from several different angles. I knew that my friend was sober and smartly dressed, and so I could not think of the reason that he was refused entry. The reason became clear when I spoke to the head of the clubs public relations. She told me that the reason that my friend wasn’t let in was probably because one or more of his party, despite being smartly dressed, probably didn’t look ‘cool’ enough.
The official dress code for the night on the Gatecrasher website reads ‘It’s not what you wear but how you wear it.’ (http://www.gatecrasher.com/birmingham/dresscode) This is a very ambiguous statement, and the way that I had it explained to me was that gatecrasher needed to convey a certain image and so they reserved the right to not allow entrance if somebody did not conform to the look that they wanted in their club. Although I can understand this, it was worrying for a few reasons.
Firstly it leaves the decision of admittance down to one person. If somebody on the door considers one look to be ‘cool’ it doesn’t mean that everybody else does. For instance I don’t like wearing shirts to a club, some people do, so who would be classed as cool in that situation: me with a good t-shirt or somebody else with a dodgy shirt?
Also, is it cruel to be kind? Although I understand that the bouncers could not spend the time giving a breakdown of why what somebody is wearing isn’t cool, this causes people to get angry because they aren’t given an explanation. For instance, I have found testimonials on blogs saying that Gatecrasher is racist, when in reality it is your dress sense, not the colour of your skin. In what ways can this be dealt with where people aren’t going to go home disappointed and angry to put 2 and 2 together to make 5?
The problem is also that you can buy tickets in advance. This is what happened to my friend, and is one of his main points of contention. Despite Gatecrasher being fair in offering a refund for the ticket, they do not offer a refund for the time you spend standing in the queue, getting ready and paying taxis to get there. One of his group had actually come down from Warwick in order to be at his friend’s birthday, when he didn’t get in Gatecrasher can refund the £5 for his ticket, but not the £40 for his train ticket?
Should tickets be sold in advance if the ultimate decision on who is going to get in is down to the preference of one person’s views of ‘what is cool’? After all, as Eddie Izzard mentions, the difference between being cool and looking like a dick-head is often very small.
Male suicide on the rise
Alex Bailey reviews the rising trend of young male suicide
- Sid Vicious was 21 when he committed suicide by heroin overdose.
A BIRMINGHAM University student was discovered dead in a lecture hall in the second week of this term, after being found to have hanged himself. The body of Mohammed Abdelmohsin Omer, aged 29 was encountered in the Gisbert Kapp building on campus by fellow students arriving for an early lecture on Monday 19th of January. A student at the scene horrified by such ‘waste of a life’ believes that ‘he did it in the lecture room so that he could be found by those he was studying with’; a cry for help realised too late. Such chilling news has undoubtedly appalled the student population nationwide, yet the unnerving proximity is a shock that hits home particularly to us here at Birmingham.
However, the prevalence of suicide in young males under the age of 35 is astonishingly out of control. According to recent research, steadily rising statistics over the last 30 years reveal that suicide is now the second most common way to die for a man between 15 and 34, beaten only slightly by road deaths. Accounting for the deaths of over 900 young men each year in the UK alone, if suicide is the second most serious public health issue for young men – exactly why don’t we know about it? Considering the constant wave of media attention that continually places young men at the cause of society’s problems, perhaps those comprising the same category most likely to commit knife and gun crime are simply just not recognised as needing help. Society’s easy stereotype simply does not want to know.
Labeled the ‘silent epidemic’ by the BBC, other reasons thought to account for the surging numbers of suicidal death in young men include the fact that ‘they don’t seek help when they have problems’. Professor Appleby, part of the team that launched the National Suicide Prevention Strategy (NSPS) in 2002, goes on to say that despite plans to make mental health services more readily available, young men ‘often don’t conceptualise their problems as problems of a medical kind’. Therefore, the only obvious solution which is to dramatically improve mental health services is unlikely to make an impact. Instead, the NSPS’ only suggestion is to remove items such as shower cubicles and curtain tracks that provide a ‘ligature point’ from which institutional inmates can strangle themselves. The introduction of ‘anti-ligature’ furniture in institutions such as prisons and hospitals has shown to have reduced levels of young men’s suicide in previous years. However, such basic and minimal methodology totally fails to tackle suicidal intentions at their roots.
Additionally, it is obvious that recognition of suicide in ordinary members of society has been severely neglected. The NSPS’ focus on the suicides of criminals and psychiatric patients does nothing to remove the stigma attached to mental health, and appallingly fails to acknowledge the increasing quantity of those suicides that are unpredictably committed in silent despair. According to Professor Appleby, the two main groups of young men driven to suicide are those with mental illness and those who ‘have lost their ties to society, work, family and friends’. It is astonishing that in this second category, the student community is nowhere identified as the sector perhaps most susceptible to ‘losing ties’. Not only does the high proportion of young men comprising University population indicate a large risk owing to probability alone, but as a new and potentially intimidating occupation may unwittingly alienate the individual. The desperate need to increase awareness of this widespread danger specifically in the student body is an issue crucially emphasised by our own establishment’s latest victim.
Apostropheasible?
Leyla Williams gets possessive on apostrophes
GREENGROCERS’ apostrophes are apostrophes used incorrectly to form plurals. Or is that greengrocers apostrophe’s? For that matter, why not greengrocer’s apostrophes’
I got it right the first time. But given Birmingham City Council’s decree that possessive apostrophes no longer need appear on street signs, who really cares? Not Martin Mullaney, chairman of the transportation scrutiny committee, that’s for sure. The man behind the imminent death of Birmingham’s apostrophes puts forth his case in writing with linguistic perfection. Mullaney asked residents on his blog on January 2nd for their views on whether or not Kings Heath should have an apostrophe, since he needed to let the Transportation Department know if it should be included or not by January 7th.
The process that followed was, thankfully, highly democratic. Not only did Mullaney make it clear that he only wanted the views of residents who had a ‘far greater understanding of apostrophes’ than him (because apparently the average Joe must not only be able to use apostrophes correctly, but have a deeper knowledge of them in order to have an input). It also followed that it didn’t really matter what the Eating and Shooting residents of Birmingham thought anyway. Despite constant demand from neighbourhoods across the city to give them back their punctuation, on January 28th Mullaney dropped the bomb that future use of possessive apostrophes in place names simply ‘would not be re-introduced’.
His case? Chiefly, we contemporary beings are just plain ‘confused’ by the apostrophe, especially in the West Midlands. So much so, that even when we do a little grammatical research and ask for our punctuation back, we’re probably more baffled than ever. Better to deal with ever-irrational residents by ignoring them and appealing to their hearts instead by arguing that it would be ‘tragic if the ambulance couldn’t find your street, if you forgot to include the possessive apostrophe when calling 999.’
Good point, Martin – because in this day and age, the emergency services are incapable of getting around such problems. The main mapping agency providing data for emergency services, Ordnance Survey, told the Associated Press that they’d ‘never heard of any confusion arising from their (apostrophes’) existence’, and that their data is simply updated if a change to a place name is made.
So much for a bamboozled Birmingham. The only thing more nonsensical than stripping Birmingham of correct punctuation is turning a deaf ear to the voices of its residents.
In a NUS shell
Ruth Prior asks what students really know about the NUS, the role it should play and the role that it does.
IN recent weeks there have been sweeping reforms made in the National Union of Students (NUS). The union, which is the largest representative student body in the UK, voted through what the current NUS President called ‘the biggest shake up of NUS’s democracy and status in its history.’ Sounds momentous and it probably is, but there’s only one snag: do we know enough about what NUS is and does for us to know whether the reforms will be truly beneficial? Arguably not. Considering NUS is run by students for students and considering its campaigning potential, it should mean more than just a discount card. There is more to NUS than you could fit in your wallet but this message doesn’t appear to be reaching students at a grass roots level.
NUS is a voluntary membership organisation which claims to make a real difference to the lives of students in the UK. You don’t have to read far into NUS literature to uncover their three cores values as an organisation: equality, democracy and collectivism. At first glance this rhetoric seems overtly political, and it is. Equal opportunities, diversity, democracy, unity etc. are buzzwords that would seem at home in a party political speech. NUS may not be in government but as the largest representative student body we have it follows that their values have a distinctly political edge.
That given, NUS wield enormous potential power to, as they say, make a difference to students lives through unity. A mantra that can be found on the NUS website says ‘unity is our strength’. By joining forces locally, nationally and internationally issues affecting students should be given a voice with enormous weight behind it.
Enough should haves and could haves. For an organisation that stresses unity and democracy above all, a large part of what NUS does seems to have bypassed the attention of your average student. If they are campaigning on our behalf, about issues that directly affect us we certainly don’t know about it. When asked what NUS meant to them, the stock answer from the majority of students was ‘a discount card’. Whilst offering hugely beneficial discounts on everything from coffee to theatre tickets is an important part of what NUS does, the negotiation of discount is just one of many things that NUS strives to do on behalf of students.
To have condensed the role of NUS down to a piece of plastic seems a waste of an important resource. Even more of a waste is the fact that an NUS extra card is to a large extent superfluous. One student rightly pointed out to me that a normal uni card is accepted almost everywhere (I myself successfully flashed a University of Birmingham card at a receptionist in Prague over Christmas). Even if a company will only accept NUS extra no one tends to look hard enough at the date to warrant buying a new one every year. Student apathy is often blamed for NUS being seen in such blinkered terms. Student apathy is an issue but not the key one here.
One student told me that to her NUS was just another organisation, amongst all the other societies at the Fresher’s Fair asking to her to part with money in her first week at university. For this student at least, the significance of NUS relative to the raft of purely commercial offers promoted during fresher’s week didn’t register. Offering something tangible (i.e. student discount) is a tried and tested way of getting students to sign-up to things. Think about the success the ‘be sure, be tested’ campaign has had since they started offering anything from a free t-shirt to the chance to win a holiday in return for getting tested for Chlamydia. The problem with using a similar tactic to encourage freshers to join NUS is that from the off students aren’t told about the more important, more influential elements of the union.
Current NUS delegate James Williams told me that whilst NUS is a potentially fantastic organisation he believes it is a long way off doing what it needs to in terms of campaigning for student rights. When asked about the recent reforms, he said that whilst the changes to NUS’s constitution should affect normal students he ‘doesn’t hold the highest hopes’. Surely there is a contradiction here. How can an organisation claim to be truly democratic when so many students have little idea what they are doing on their behalf?
Another of this year’s NUS delegates, Sam Harrow, told me that NUS is currently fighting to keep the cap on tuition fees as low as possible ahead of an official review this year. This is an issue of huge concern to the whole student population as the review could see changes to student funding and associated issues. An easy consensus was reached amongst the students I asked that this was a good thing. You would, after all, be hard pushed to find a student that wants tuition fees to go up. In this case NUS are campaigning on our behalf. The bizarre thing is that we don’t know about it.
It seems that NUS have missed a trick here. The lack of communication between the union and students at a grass-roots level means that some of their best work goes largely unnoticed. NUS has been accused of being run by a ‘clique of politicos’. Whether this is true or not it can’t be denied that their net of involvement doesn’t extend far. It sounds simple, but if your average student knew more about NUS there would be much to be gained on both sides. Students are never going to actively participate in something they know nothing about. The more they know the more they will care and the NUS could benefit immeasurably from the increased input and support.
Redbrick Features 