Should the University of Manchester SU remain affiliated to the NUS?

Also published in the Mancunion: Debate: should the Students’ Union remain affiliated with NUS?  

NO: Undemocratic, unrepresentative, and a waste of money; the opinion of many students on the very body that is meant to speak for us on a national level, the NUS. Sadly, these criticisms are not unfounded. The organisation is not acting in the best interest of students; and it’s time we did something about it.

The NUS in its current form isn’t representing students. Currently delegates are elected from each university to attend NUS conference, where policy decisions are made for the next year. Members of SUs can vote for these delegates, and in theory they represent us to the NUS as a whole. The problem is, do you actually have any idea who your NUS delegates are or what they stand for? Do you remember voting for them even? Their barely mandated officers push policies like their “no platform for fascists” on universities. This leads to backlashes such as that seen recently from Leeds Student newspaper, showing that these policies are clearly unpopular with students.

If we left the NUS, our own Sabbatical Officers, who we elect directly, could become our voice on a national scale. Paul Beaumont, the president of Imperial College SU, (who’ve been disaffiliated since 2008) thinks this is a much more powerful way for students to get their voices heard “We feel that, rather than being a ‘one line mention’ in an NUS response, a whole response dedicated to the views of just our students allows us to represent them much more effectively and ‘loudly’.”

Paul says it is fully possible for the union to survive without the funding and subsidies. He stated “the most recent Aldwych conference [a meeting between student union members of Russell Group Universities] was held at Imperial and your Education Officer, Luke noted that our bar prices are the same as yours – even outside of the NUS bulk buying scheme!”. So, Imperial’s drink prices are just as low as ours, without the NUSSL. Imperial has just 13,000 students, Manchester University has almost 40,000. That’s much more buying power. So if Imperial can do it, why can’t we? We could even team up with other disaffiliated Students’ Unions such as Imperial and start our own bulk buying scheme.

Look beyond the 10% Topshop discount; the NUS is unrepresentative, and many of its so called benefits could easily be achieved without it. NUS membership cost our union £52,848.70 this academic year, but it simply isn’t worth the price tag. The decision is simple: we should disaffiliate from the NUS.

The government's new paternity leave policy is a step forward, but not far enough

Also published in The Mancunion: Sweden’s showing us the way with paternity leave

Walking along the streets of Stockholm, the average Brit will see a scene quite alien to them. Groups of men happily wandering around the city’s suburbs, pushing along prams, or with babies strapped to their backs. This is something a Swede will barely bat an eyelid at, but this isn’t a scene you’ll likely to see whilst wandering the streets of Manchester. This may, however, be about to change. The coalition has announced plans to bring in shared maternity and paternity leave by April 2015. So for today’s students, it means that we will be the first generation of Britain’s who will finally have the opportunity of equality in parenting. But disappointingly, it does not go as far as it should, falling far behind Sweden’s system which has been in place since the 1970s. In short, it’s a good start – but not good enough.

Currently the British system gives men just two weeks of paid leave from work following the birth of their child, and they are entitled to no other time off. Women, on the other hand, are given paid leave for up to 39 weeks after birth, and can choose to take up to 52 weeks off in total. Under the coalition’s proposals, mothers will automatically receive 18 weeks’ paid leave, men 6 weeks. The couple will have 32 weeks, of which 16 are paid, to split between them.

So why is this change so important? By giving women so much more paid time off than men, the state has been reinforcing the sexist view of women as primary providers of childcare, with the negative impact this then has on their careers. It isn’t, however, only negative for women. Many men who would love to stay at home with their children don’t because they would have to do so unpaid, which most families cannot afford. Another problem is the general attitudes towards men and childcare. With its parental leave policy, the government had been endorsing the view that men don’t get involved in childcare. It’s seen as emasculating for men to be the ones to stay at home, which puts many men off for fear of how others will perceive them. Under the current system, the government had been effectively endorsing this view.

From 2015, a couple will be able to choose to split leave (pretty much) equally between them, letting them choose for themselves their roles within their own family. Within any partnership, partners must be able to choose between them who would be the best person to look after their children, and that is not a decision in which the genitals that person happens to have should have any bearing. Couples are likely to have more pressing issues on their mind during that decision process, such as the stage each of them is in their career (and so if it’s sensible for either of them to take a large amount of time off), or who would most enjoy spending that time at home with the children.

The problem comes, however, in reserving the first 18 weeks to the woman. It means that the message of women as primary caregivers, though weaker, is still there. The government needs to send the clear message that neither gender is expected to take the majority of childcare. A Swedish friend put it to me perfectly – “I think the biggest theoretical fault with the British system is that it by law says that men and women should be unequal to the law (which I obviously don’t think is acceptable). The biggest practical problem is that it will keep women away from work life and make them a less attractive choice during employment, and they are therefore put in a difficult position when trying to develop successful careers.”

Still a major concern for female students upon graduation is: will a man be chosen for a job over me because of my gender? The story’s a disappointingly familiar one: two candidates, one male, one female, fairly evenly qualified. The employer, (especially so in small businesses) worries that the young woman will start having children within a few years, and doesn’t want to have to bear the cost of the time she’ll likely take off for maternity leave, and so they employ the man instead. The problem with the government’s proposal is that it doesn’t change this perception. If women have so much more time allocated to them, then women will still be seen as a bigger liability. As only 6 weeks is allocated to the man, and stereotypes already favour women looking after children, women will remain disadvantaged.

The Swedish system is a much more sensible model, and what we should be striving for. Parents are given 480 days between them, of which each has 60 reserved for them that the other partner cannot use. This is designed to challenge the stereotype that men aren't involved in childcare by actively encouraging each parent to take time off to get the maximum time between them, and it means that the state does not in any way discriminate against either parent on gender.

The coalition’s proposals are a step forward. They allow couples to split parental leave between them fairly, a massive improvement on the current system. What they do not do, however, is challenge existing stereotypes of women as primary caregivers to children, or stereotypes that men cannot hold that role. It seems right now, we may still be a while off my own personal dream – seeing groups of men wandering through the streets of Manchester, prams and babies in tow.

Should Leeds Student have published its interview with Nick Griffin?

Also published in The Mancunion: Was the Leeds Student right to interview Nick Griffin? 
And Ones to Watch Student Media: Does Nick Griffin have a place in student media?

Leed's student newspaper, the imaginatively named Leeds Student, has come under attack from the NUS after printing an interview with BNP leader Nick Griffin, a move the NUS say violates their "no platform for facists" policy. So, was Leeds Student right to publish the interview? My piece from the Mancunion's yes and no debate:

Yes -  The only effective way to deal with views such as Nick Griffin’s is to question them, have them out in the open, and to criticise. Leeds Student made exactly the right decision by giving Nick Griffin a platform, because by allowing him to voice his opinions, they allowed us to see how ridiculous they are.

A particular favorite quote of mine (for showing just how stupid Mr. Griffin is) came when the interviewer, a gay man, asked him what exactly it is he finds so objectionable about people like himself. Griffin’s reply was to explain that gay people simply need to understand that “a lot of heterosexual people – we don’t want to persecute you – but we find the sight of two men kissing creepy.”

Another absolute gem comes when he moves onto civil partnerships, saying that as it undermines the institution of marriage “children will die over the next few years, because they’ll be brought up in homes which aren’t married.” Students aren’t stupid; the vast majority of them know that opinions like his are not just vile but absolutely ridiculous. They are not about to become BNP recruits anytime soon after seeing this sort of rubbish from him in their student newspaper. Just as the fallout from Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time made us question the standing of the BNP, the more people understand what his views actually, are the less they want to support him.

The NUS have a no platform policy, and have written an open letter to Leeds Student asking them to remove the interview. This policy stops criticism from happening. It is also a policy put in place by a body, who should not be trying to push policies onto member universities. The editor of Leeds Student was elected democratically by the members of her union, and so absolutely had the right to make the decision to publish the interview.

Views need to be heard to be challenged, not hidden away and for us to pretend they don’t exist. People like Nick Griffin exist, students need to know that and need to shout about just how wrong people like him are. This is the only way to fight these views, and so Leeds Student were completely right in their decision to go against the NUS and print the interview.