Did you hear that?

Guild election candidates answer questions.

At 1pm today there was another candidate hustings. This was a chance for students to hear candidate’s policies and to ask them any questions. The Sports candidates were asked about initiations, Welfare candidates asked about safety provisions for students such as the nightbus and the Community candidate was asked about student profiles within selly oak and the local community and what could be done to improve the student image.

It must be a nerve racking experience for the candidates with plenty of people looking to get their questions answered before they decide which candidates to vote for. For those of you that have not voted yet the hustings would have been a good opportunity to sound out the candidates on their polices. However their manifestos are available to view here.

Any candidates that you may have questions to would love to have them submitted via their websites, facebook or in person if you catch them on campus – it is important to find out what their plans are for the Guild so that you can make an informed choice.

The hustings have been being filmed by GTV so im sure a copy will be made available soon for people to watch, that way you can check on all the questions asked and the answers given – also all candidate interviews are here.

 

As ever drop us any questions you might have – redfeatures(at)gmail.com or a comment and feel free to use the links on the right to subscribe.

Have you cast yours?

Have you voted?

So being the ‘keeno’ i am, i voted this morning, voting has now been open approaching 12 hours and the candidates are out in full force – i was accosted several times on campus today. You must be lucky if you have been on campus and been able to avoid noticing anything about the elections.

But what is it all about, – well we are voting to elect the team of students who will run our Guild for the next year, this includes sabbatical and non-sabbatical officers. The seven sabbatical positions are President, VP Democracy and Resources, VP Education and Access,  VP Housing and Community, VP Welfare VP Student activities and development and VP Sport.

The people in these positions are responsible for helping to fulfill and implement policy decided on at Guild council, represent students to the University, fight and lobby on our behalf and make sure that the Guild is supporting all students. So it is imperative that all students take this opportunity to express their opinion about how we are run and how will be represented for the coming year.

The electronic voting system also includes an option to ‘spoil’ the ballot meaning that you can express your dissatisfaction with the choice of candidates and their policies if you feel that the candidates are not suitable. – This is a means to stay engaged with the system without feeling like you have to make a choice that you don’t believe in.

Drop any questions you might have into the comments and remember to use the links on the left to subscribe to the blog so you can stay up to date.

Universities monitoring student internet

James Bass exposes how universities are putting surveillance on our internet activity

ITS 1984, or so the government wishes. Their new ‘Orwellian’ initiative to uncover extremism in Universities by monitoring students’ internet activity is just another screw in the coffin containing our freedom of thought. It seems to me that they have found a perfect excuse to intrude even further into our already invigilated lives, using the threat of terrorism as the scapegoat. Yes we all know that university provides an environment which has the potential to breed extremism, but why should we all have to suffer for the acts of a few? It’s simply outrageous.

University lecture room 1

In a country which has been tarred with the surveillance brush, (now deemed the ‘surveillance society’), it is becoming ever more difficult to lead your life without Big Brother peering over your shoulder. Let’s just say for example, I need to find out how a bomb is made for a Physics project – does this automatically make me a terrorist, or am I just exercising the natural human right of inquisition? Am I wrong in thinking that at Universities around the country in the last few years, individuals have been arrested under suspicion of extremism? Moreover they were discovered without having to monitor ALL students. That strategy seemed to work, why the sudden need for change?

The worst part is that you can understand the government’s simplistic, yet subtly intrusive, strategy: more monitoring, less terrorism. That’s the long and short of it. But when does this quest for the preservation of human kind stop? How far are they willing to delve into people’s privacy for the cause of the ‘greater good’? I can already see this surveillance situation getting out of hand, and no doubt the government will pull out the extremism card when challenged on it. Soon I won’t be able to leave my house without a government official escorting me to do my mid week shop at Tesco. The sad fact of today’s society is that the truth has become a rare commodity. Banking systems collapsed due to devious, greed mongering bankers and it seems that the true ulterior motive behind the new government initiative is cloaked by the hot topic of the modern day: terrorism. And I for one don’t see that changing anytime soon.

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.

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.

Censorship: The ins and outs

Nick Petrie wonders where discretion stops and censorship starts

All views welcome?

WE are in trouble. If a newspaper cannot print the stories it deems relevant and the opinions it considers insightful then the truth is being withheld. The importance of free speech cannot be underestimated. The Government cannot stop a newspaper from printing a story; its only recourse is that of a DA notice (Defence Advisory) when it feels that withholding information will be beneficial for security operations. However, these advisory notices are just that: advice.

Editors must use their own judgement to decide whether to cover a story or not. All media suffers some form of censorship, even the decisions on what to cover mean that some stories receive less or no attention; this is censorship of one form or another. In the issue of Redbrick that came out on 23rd January we were asked to alter an article by the Guild. Redbrick was made to tone down the sentiment exressed in a contraversial piece and required to place a disclaimer regarding the opinion expressed within the article.

 I don’t believe that anyone is under the impression that Redbrick is a paper that spouts Guild rhetoric upon the student masses. Yet I am well aware that some people feel that in recent times Redbrick has lacked the grit and failed to challenge the Guild and the University as perhaps a student paper should. However, until this issue, this was not because the Guild was interfering with stories. I am very angry with ths, because the Guild is supposed to facilitate and protect students and our rights, including our right to free speech. By dictating what can or cannot be covered by the newspaper they impinge on our right to free speech and underminine the integrity of the paper as well as our ability to hold the University to account.

 I want to be clear; they have to have a legal overview of the paper to ensure that we are not in danger of defamation, slander or libel, in which case they would be responsible for the legal representation of Redbrick in such a situation. If content does not fall within this remit then it is the editorial team’s discretion as to what is published. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are considered a central part of our democracy; it is how we hold the government to account. We only have to look to the recent Times investigation into Lords taking cash for legislation to have this highlighted.

I ask myself this question: how far does our student union fail to protect us? Although I was not involved in the recent student protest over Israel’s occupation of Gaza, where a group of students occupied a lecture room in the Arts building, I understand that the University’s response to this peaceful protest was overblown and heavy-handed with a number of police being called in to marshal the situation. One student pointed out that situations like this are what University security is for, not the police.

While the Guild has pointed out that it did ensure punishment of those involved was not overly harsh, this was simply not communicated to the student population. It must also be noted that at unversities such as LSE and Warwick occupations lasted around a week, not just an afternoon. So was the University of Birmingham too heavy handed or did the Guild just not argue enough for our rights? It disturbs me to think that in the future not only might the Guild fail to protect its students, but that perhaps it might attempt to stop Redbrick from reporting on this.

I am well aware that many newspapers and news outlets omit information or play down reports due to pressure from their holding companies, and this is no different than the Guild stepping in to interfere. Sky, for instance, is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the News of the World, The Sun and The Times, so all the publications suffer editorial decisions imposed on them by Murdoch. Newspapers are bound by advertisers’ demands about the content and comments that their articles cover. Yet these instances should be separated, with full editorial control held by the editors, and owners left to run the business side of things. However, I feel compelled to ask: if the Guild feels it can dictate to us on this occasion, then what is to stop it from happening again?