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.