Student politics is broken!

I have been "involved" in student politics for 3 years now, 'involved' is in quotation marks because for the most part I did little more than read agendas for meetings I didn't bother attending, or at which I said nothing. Yesterday I attended the final University-wide student union meeting which demonstrated perfectly why student politics (and I would argue politics more generally) is a complete and utter failure.

First lets look at what was on the Agenda for this meeting and I challenge the reader to guess which motions were subject to the most discussion:

1) Changes to OUSU Bye-Laws
2) Issues to take to the National Union of Students (NUS) conference:
i) Boycotting Israel
ii) Lobbying to changing the 1994 Education act (which is the legal framework recognizing student unions)
iii) Supporting open-access journals
iv) Supporting democratic student unions & their protest activities
3) Having a referendum moving the OUSU Elections
4) Having a referendum to remove the requirement for wearing sub-fusc at exams
5) Lobbying for Reading Weeks
6) Approving a paper about Continuing Education
7) ensuring access to college nurses
8) adding post-graduate funding to the OUSU election manifesto

Points to everyone to guessed 2.i!

In fact 2.i was so important at least two thirds of the people attending the meeting only showed up to debate & vote on that issue and left immediately after the final vote on that motion was taken. Indeed the only comments or questions I got about the meeting were with respect to that motion as well. This is all despite the fact that voting either direction on that motion would have essentially no effect on anything -> because even if the most extreme policy was adopted by OUSU and NUS little would change because most speakers at Oxford are not invited by OUSU, they are invited by individual academic departments, the Oxford Union (which is independent of OUSU) and various clubs/societies with loose connections to the University. The first two of which are not subject to OUSU/NUS policy and the third could probably get around the policy by disaffiliating from OUSU. Making the policy essentially symbolic.

Now despite the fact that this is a symbolic vote, not only was >90% of the discussion on issues with wording and clarity and timing but a large number of complaints about the motion involved the fact that the discussion that was held in the respective common room before the meeting (each common room gets 1-4 voting members at the meeting) hinged on technical details of the motion rather than the underlying principle thus any modification of the motion meant they didn't know how to vote to represent the wishes of their common room.

Just take a moment to let that sink in. A motion that is hugely controversial purely on its symbolic value was largely discussed on the level of what each individual word meant. That is a sad sad statement on the state of student politics. It took considerable effort to resist standing up and criticizing those common room leaders for failing to discuss the issue effectively with their common room. The elected representatives who were going to the NUS conference were no better with two of them arguing they wouldn't be able to interpret the motion so it should be voted down (but somehow they don't have a problem interpreting the wishes of the student body without any motion).

In contrast, policies whose details could effect the lives of students and the running of the student union were largely brushed over by the remaining less than a third of people who didn't leave immediately following the vote on 2.i. The only discussion on changes to the Bye-Laws was to describe them as "better" for them to be passed unopposed. Likewise each of the referendums were discussed for 5-10minutes each mainly just questions about why bother & how much cost/inconvenience it would entail.

Perhaps the most telling though is extreme lack of representation for graduates & ignorance of graduate issues. I was the only one to ask about the effect of Reading Weeks on graduates (a question to which no-one had an answer) as well as the interesting observation that all the other motions dealing with the OUSU election manifesto were dealt with a the previous meeting (none of which had anything to do with graduates) where as support for post-graduate funding was not thought of until this meeting and even then was left to the last motion on the agenda. This is despite the fact that graduates are roughly equal in number as undergraduate students and are present at the university far more, yet they go almost completely unrepresented at any official OUSU meeting (Indeed at least one of the official graduate representatives has spent more time as an undergrad at Oxford than as a graduate student).

Thus much like 'real' politics student politics is dominated by an elite club of people more interested in technicalities than in principles, symbolic gestures rather than making real progress (Oxford continues to have a grading system known to be flawed and biased yet OUSU shows no interest in trying to challenge that - indeed the sub-fusc referendum was instigated by Examiners not wanted to wear sub-fusc not by OUSU trying to effect change) and who generally fail to represent >50% of the electorate. These things may be in reality just as intertwined as I suggest since one of the people at the meeting explicitly told everyone he wants to become a professional politician in the future (FYI he left prior to the vote of BDS motion never to return).