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.