In case you missed it, the election candidates for the SUSU elections have been announced, and it makes for grim reading.
There are just 16 nominations for the seven Sabbatical Officer positions, with ONLY TWO for the position of President. It is one of the lowest number of nominations for years. But why?
Are people sure what a Sabb actually does? Recently, SUSU has released blogs with updates from our various representatives on what they’ve been up to in their first six months, but if we have to read a blog to find out then clearly they have not been very good at getting their message out.
You can read up on what the Sabbs have been up to this year on the SUSU website
The Sabb positions only make up a tiny proportion of the paid jobs in SUSU, and there are plenty of backroom staff whom they have little control over.
Perhaps the rise in tuition fees has led to students seeking to finish their degree and move straight on to starting a career. It may be that students now go to university to get a 2:1, drink and live the student lifestyle, and don’t care one bit for becoming involved in student politics.
When nobody can be arsed to run a joke campaign in your elections, that’s when you know you’ve got a problem.
Or so said an anonymous commentator to myself only the other day. There were FIVE for President last year.
Maybe the absence of joke candidates legitimises the elections a bit more. Campaigning for the elections is now a month’s long process, and it has discouraged joke candidates, but has that filtered through to real candidates?
There’s not even entertainment like this anymore.
I was in first year for the last election and I didn’t know what a Sabb was. But judging from the comments on this article, it doesn’t seem that many people were pleased with the way the elections went, perhaps putting them off this year.
Surely there is also a problem with legitimacy when under a third of the student body actually bothered to vote – 6,517 people voted, and even then only 4,737 voted for the President position.
Some say that to become a Sabb is to achieve ultimate BNOC status, but it’s probably easier to achieve this by devoting yourself to commenting on every Tell Him/Tell Her post, or spending every night getting in club photos, than winning an election.
You can achieve BNOC status with a hangover. No need to run for election.
The problem for SUSU is not only a low level of nominations for the top positions, there are very few positions up for contention below them: only SEVEN of the Student Positions are contested out of 31, and TEN of those positions have received no nominations at all.
Do you think that SUSU has a problem with encouraging people to get involved in the elections? Let us know in the comments below!
“… if we have to read a blog to find out then clearly they have not been very good at getting their message out.”
Are you fucking serious?
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They don’t have the power to do anything that will really make a difference, so what’s the point in voting? And the only time I have really needed them they did NOTHING and was left to sort it on my own. All the elections do is hassle people who are just trying to go about their business, just an annoyance.
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Completely agree with Another Anon. No one cares; the Union is an absolute farce.
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Having been here for getting-on seven years, and seeing year-in year-out the same bunch of Westminster wannabes spout political pleasantries in the face of adversity or otherwise making terrible decisions, it does jade one’s views of the process.
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Fallen out of love with SUSU? Was anyone ever in love with SUSU? I know a lot of the Sabbs are in love with themselves but that’s not the same thing…
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I think this is absolutely ludicrous, the SUSU campaigns are a vital and thrilling part of the academic year. I certainly will be voting and think it is a disgrace that we don’t all embrace this fantastic celebration of politics in the form of voting for someone to represent us. I would run for a position but I’m a bit of a weirdo and my favourite hobby is ketamine.
GO SUSU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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This was exactly my point though (I get that you posted this before I wrote my piece). It’s vital and thrilling for you as someone who understands what’s going on, but there are plenty of us who don’t. Instead of efforts being made to encourage people positively, the information stream is little more than a trickle and expressions of disillusionment are described as ‘ludicrous’ by those who are not disillusioned, which just puts people off more. I think Brussell Rand used the word ‘clique’, which sums it up well.
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What is this SUSU you speak off??
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The key problem is that SUSU is simply not an attractive establishment to get involved in, as a student or a graduate. Its grey, its characterless, its dull. Sure it’s easy for me to say as a bystander, but SUSU needs to get a grip. Compared with other student unions in the UK, it does very little to cater for it’s students in a way that appeals to them – its needs to focus on its target audience ALOT more. Yes, it provides SOME practical support and has a few facilities – sports clubs, a student housing department, a pub or two and a shop… but so does EVERY student union, thats the bare minimum people!!!
The article says students just come to uni to “get 2:1, drink and live the student life-style”… SHOCK HORROR, well done whichever bloody sherlock worked that out. Frankly they’re paying £9K a year for it, so they should be able to do WTF they like!! The truth is, most students occasionally work hard but mostly want to have FUN while they still can, and this NOT something that SUSU attempts to cater for in any way… FUN!!! SOOO amongst all the fuss about student “politics” (which is frankly the wrong word to use as students already have their civil rights, and we’re not part of NUS anyway) why doesn’t SUSU get down to our level, and put on some new and interesting events that actually appeal to students?! SUSU need to smell the coffee and get the basics right – STUDENTS WANT FUN from their union first and foremost, not more lecturing about politics!!
SUSU needs to take a leaf out of the more successful unions in this country. Take the University of Sheffield Student Union for example. Not the biggest university, but it’s union has been consistently voted the best in the country year on year. Why? Because it is THE HUB of student life at the university, and has more organisations and clubs in it than you can think of. The building itself is actually an attractive place to hang out, with LOADS of places to eat and drink CHEAPLY. Their bars are not a sprawl of mouldy, beer stained carpets and frozen pizza (The Stags), they’re clean, functional and serve great food. There is something for everyone, and its actually run by FUN, ENTHUSIASTIC individuals who know how to approach a student audience. Even their emails are colourful for God’s sake! And all this is reflected in their political standing too – its no coincidence the two go hand in hand. Anyone would think that SUSU is run by a pensioners club, it offers nothing to the average fun-loving student, so its no surprise Southampton students are not willing to get involved in it politically.
To further highlight SUSU’s deficit, Sheffield Union runs its OWN club nights EVERY NIGHT of the week with a different theme each night, and massive names playing each week at the “Tuesday Club”. The union is THE place to go out, whether fresher or PhD student, and people often choose it over going out in town, despite Sheffield’s fantastic nightlife. It actually gives students a tangible reason to be enthused by the union. They even have their own LGBT club night once a month… another area SUSU lacks!!! SUSU has the “Cube” and the infrastructure, so WHY doesn’t it use it??? It would make back the money in a year, big deal. In a town where the choice of nightlife is ABYSMAL, events like that would be a great help to a lot of students. And you never know… a few of them might even fancy giving something back and becoming a Sabb!?!?! Is that too much to ask when they’re paying £9K fees???
As for elections, why would busy people bother to vote when the union as a whole has never offered them anything other than the odd bit of stationary and a branded hoodie??!?! They also make no effort to include medics in their grand “political” schemes, undergraduates who are here the longest of all students – I didn’t even know the bloody elections were happening!
Ultimately, Southampton students appear to have no idea what they are missing in their union; if SUSU wants students to come to them and take an interest in student politics, or any other part of the union, then it needs to give them a reason WHY the union is an establishment worth getting involved with. Enough said.
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Um, SUSU ran multiple club nights for years and years with awful attendance. Even hiring a new events manager and such still saw SUSU hemorrhaging money because we have fantastic external nightlife and it’s hard for a union to compete. After freshers, everyone stops going because the union doesn’t have the economies of scale that Jesters/Sobar/any Bedford establishment you care to name does, so the drinks aren’t cheap enough and people flock elsewhere. Equally, nights spent having a massively empty Cube are nights that union films cannot put on events, so there’s a trade-off. Finally, club nights cost money, and when they aren’t making money, that means things like sports clubs have less money that they can request from SUSU. I’m glad to see that you’re clearly massively keen to attend a SUSU clubnight, but historically that has not been the case!!
Also the £9k fee argument drives me NUTS! The union sees maybe £200 a head in something called ‘the block grant’ – this was increased recently by our ex-VP Education and now President, but the uni is really stingy with increasing it (because obviously they want to keep as much of it as possible!) so it’s not as though your £9k (which by the way means the uni still gets the same amount of money as it did when you were ‘paying’ £3k, it’s just the government made up the other £6k and didn’t charge you for it!) is being given wholesale to the union and they’re just spending it on nothing.
SUSU isn’t some massive Illuminati conspiracy to waste your money and intentionally fail to provide anything that you would call “fun” – if anything, SUSU stopped doing so much stuff that wasn’t getting the numbers, to enable them to have more money to shell out to societies and student groups. This means that despite SUSU perhaps not being credited – they are doing a lot of stuff by funding societies who are putting on events for all types of students, and do know how best to interact with the students who are interested in that society, as opposed to just pissing away money on filling the Cube with BNOCs for 90% of the year.
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Oh, hi, DMW, didn’t see you there.
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Please, I didn’t use anywhere near enough buzzwords to warrant that moniker
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We give you money? I was under the impression SUSU was ‘self-sustaining’?
If that is not the case I would like £200 worth of sandwich discounts please.
The £9K argument above is wrong, but £200 of my £9k a year is still £200 more than I will ever get back from the Union… And about the price of 4 textbooks.
Plus not understanding the end argument, surely you would be ‘pissing away’ money but also rolling in shit loads of it if you actually managed to make the club popular, like the Sheffield example?
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Case in point…Another year’s worth of students without a reason to care about the union.
https://sotontab.co.uk/2014/10/05/freshers-ball-disaster/
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Accountability is a good thing, maybe the highly successful Wessex Scene could do a counter argument for their readership of student leaders and sabbs.
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Honestly, I think the issue is anyone with enough knowledge of how SUSU works to be a Sabb is well aware of how much of a total headache the job would be.
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Word
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Touché SUSU Veteran, touché. The club nights must have been before my time, but the point is that they would NOT just be for BNOCs, they could be for everyone (who would be likely to go out in the first place), with various themes, genres etc. Illuminati conspiracy lol. I appreciate you guys do do your best for us, and who am I to sit on my high-horse as a lay student anyway. I just think more could be done to appeal to the masses, as sadly many, many students make minimum effort to get involved in extracurricular societies, clubs etc.
However, you can’t say that we have “fantastic” external nightlife – I go off the beaten track more than most, and there really is comparatively little variety for a city the size of Southampton. And yes, naturally the remaining £6K isn’t being squandered by the union, but probably is being squandered by the university on yet more plasma TV screens displaying information that no-body needs! We could be great together SUSU Veteran, one day we could rule the campus as far as the eye can see lol.
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They had ‘Twisted’ every week in my first year (which nobody cared about) which was eventually replaced with ‘Nightlife’ which was just as unpopular. Here’s an old page with the stuff they used to do: http://www.susu.org/about/nightlife.html
Basically, SUSU had a reputation for being about as good with nightlife as Saudi Arabia is with human rights, so very few people went. Reputations don’t change overnight, so I’d be surprised if a new regular club night would be instantly successful at SUSU. If SUSU want to have nightlife as a regular thing. the best plan would be to do a few big one-off events, gradually build up a better reputation, then go from there.
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There was vague talk of trying to get a few Wednesday club nights happening again this year to try and revitalize nightlife by hosting AU nights at SUSU (the thought being that people would follow the AU in what they were doing) – no idea what happened to that plan…
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As a non-AU person, what makes you (or anyone else at SUSU) think I’d follow what the AU are doing?
Any regular night is doomed to fail if you jump straight in. To keep enough people coming to make it worthwhile, there has to be a reason why going to SUSU would be better than going to Jesters or Sobar or Bedford Place or Oceana. As you said, you can’t beat Portswood on price. Based on current opinions, you’d probably struggle to beat a night at my granddad’s for atmosphere / student enthusiasm. So what’s the big attraction that’s going to get people coming week in, week out? Being completely honest, there isn’t one, and that’s why things have failed in the past.
There’s not much that can be done about the price issue, but attitudes can change with time. If you can come up with a big one-off night out which has either a big live act or some other novelty, that would attract enough people for that one off to potentially be a success.
If you could get maybe 3 big successful nights out organised in the rest of this semester, that would start to change reputations enough that continuing students might JUST be positive enough about SUSU’s ability to put on good nights that something slightly more regular next year might catch on – but if (and only if) the new first years (with their untainted view of SUSU) can be attracted.
To attract next year’s freshers, you need a core base of older students who also go – if the people who have been here for longer think SUSU is shit, I guarantee that that attitude will be passed down. If you don’t get the first years on board, everything else will fall apart.
tl;dr:
– ~3 big nights in the rest of this semester to begin repairing SUSU’s reputation.
– Keep up the occasional big nights say once a month, build on this with 1 regular night from beginning of next year. Reassess after xmas if there’s a demand for more.
– Assuming you’ve got this far without fucking up (perhaps a big assumption given SUSU’s track record, but we’ll go with it) expand into putting on more things the year after next. By then SUSU nightlife should be pretty self sustaining.
tl;dr of the tl;dr – if you want something that’s actually going to work, it’s going to need something like a 2-year plan. Not a Del Boy style quick fix where you just do a little redecorating then think up a catchy new name for ‘generic night out at the cube.’
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I’m non-AU too – I just have an ear to the rumour mill. The issue with nightlife in general is that we still have a large number of students (including myself) who remember the days of fairly rubbish nightlife with its tendency to slowly collapse 4/5 weeks into term. It always picked back up for Halloween/Christmas, which was a saving grace, but by January/February, it was on its last legs. The concern is that any attempt to reignite nightlife would be met with the pessimism that those students would immediately dole out if they heard anything was happening. That being said, Professor Green seemed to be quite a good event, so maybe there’s hope
I always wondered if SUSU might benefit from having an ents committee made up of ‘normal’ (i.e. non-elected students) who are just keen to ensure that SUSU puts on some solid nights without viewing it as another thing to add to their manifesto when it comes to Sabb time. It seems from this thread, that might actually be a solid idea based on the sudden demand. Might even be one for the AGM this year?
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Literally no one cares because its about boosting these people’s CVs.
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Back when I was in first year, no sooner had I successfully navigated the trials and tribulations of my first semester at university, the campus started to drown (anyone above first year knows this isn’t an exaggeration) in posters and graffiti urging me to vote for people I didn’t know standing for positions I’d never heard of.
I understood the concept of president and vice president, but as a still-nervous first year, how on Earth was I to know what VP engagement means? There was absolutely no explanation of what the sabbs actually do, or even what a sabb is. Our lectures started being delayed by more and more shout-outs, by all manner of candidates standing for all manner of positions. The lack of basic introduction into the whole process meant that I didn’t actually find out how many positions there are until a few months ago, and I’ve since forgotten. The seemingly endless shout-outs and slogans all began to merge into a dense fog of interruption, harassment and flyers being shoved in my face as I went about my business.
Consequently, I didn’t vote in first year. Student democracy is supposed to be for all of us, but the campus environment during campaigning is intimidating to say the least. It looked like a lot of fun, and of course it’s important, to those in the know, but I had no idea how to become in the know, so I just gave up caring. I’m not a Russell Brand anti-voting type, I was just a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing.
In second year, I at least knew what to expect, but still didn’t know where to get any unbiased information, so again I didn’t bother. To their credit, SUSU have this year tried to address this with blogs explaining what the sabbs do (still need to be more layman-friendly imo), but by third year I’ve realised it doesn’t actually matter to me that much, and I have other things to worry about anyway. I may vote this year, but then again I might just forget.
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This person has hit the nail on the head. There are just FAR TOO MANY positions standing for election at the same time.
We both abuot being surveyed too much but honestly I couldn’t give a flying f**k about the Deputy Nightline Social Secretary for Avenue Campus.
Have one set of cross campus elections for the full-time paid positions and that is it. No need for winter elections, spring elections, summer elections, f**ckin midsummer noon time elections. Just once, once a year and people might actually care.
Stop calling them sabs… it means nothing except to the clique in the know… people can stand to be a paid elected student representative. Not a “sab” whatever the f**k that is.
While you are at it can we please stop creating new awards ceremonies every year… frankly I have no idea how any employer would give two hoots about your honourable mention for services to engagement at SUSU.
Finally ban the phrases and words like – engagement, student voice, sustainability, sab and the “your” in your susu, your cafe, your cinema…
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Calm down, son.
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Dear Soton Tab and others I have a question.
I have emailed the SUSU president about an matter important to the functioning of our society, I didn’t get a reply within a week, then got a reply saying Sorry he thought it would be dealt with by the ‘commerical team’ (who hadn’t replied or done anything) and offered to meet up. I replied agreeing to meet up, and he hasn’t replied, again a week later.
My question is, who holds Sabbs accountable if they fail to fulfill the role they are being paid a full time position for? Who can I contact?
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Hi Ben
Here is how you can hold the full time, paid, elected student representatives to account. It’s about time we showed the Union that they work for the students and not other way round
https://www.susu.org/downloads/about/rule-10.pdf
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Thank you for making me aware of this. A few questions thought:
a) How did you find the link?
b) How does one call a Disciplinary Committee?
c) “The Union President shall be responsible for the oversight of the implementation of this Rule, except for the operation of the Disciplinary Committee”. This implies to me it might be difficult to hold the president himself accountable.
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aha, I’ve found the answer to b) and c) in Rule 8, 1.5
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http://www.susu.org/representation/2013/union-council.html
Most Union Councillors are pretty spineless though.
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Hi Ben, there’s a complaints procedure as someone said above, however, I’d be interested to know if you considered contacting the Student Groups Officer – they’re basically responsible for all student groups and societies. Their email is .
You might be better served contacting them over the President, as they’re always a nightmare to contact and pin down.
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with the resources that SUSU has available to them it is utterly farcical that there isnt a night out at the union, when other similarly sized unis have several
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By far the best post SotonTab have done for a long time. There are many things good about the union but there are soo many things wrong with it. Be more edgy and pick up on more bad things. Use your power!!!
1 Food on campus being worse and more expensive than the Style pub (next food review perhaps).
2 The ridiculous printing fees when some uni’s have it free
3 Sports facilities
4 Fruit being 50p. Surely healthy eating should be encouraged?
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Literally only point 1 is actually directly within the control of the union. There’s a comments box on the reception in the SUSU concourse. Have you considered expressing dissatisfaction through channels that the commercial team will actually see?
If you want the rest to change, maybe look at some Sabbatical manifestos in these coming elections, as they can actually change these things. In fact, sports facilities are on several of the VP Sports Development candidate’s manifestos, and printing fees is on the sole VP Education candidate’s manifesto.
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Just cause its on their manifestos doesn’t mean they are going to be able to do anything. Every year the candidates have wildly optimistic views of what they can do. Many things take longer than a year to happen and when you are rotating who is in charge every year nothing worthwhile gets done.
The best candidates for this years positions are our current candidates. It says a lot that most people don’t run again for positions as it must be infuriating to have soo little power compared to the proper SUSU staff who have no idea whats best for us the students.
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The “Sabbs don’t change anything, manifestos are all lies” cliché that becomes more accepted the more its said, but sadly doesn’t reflect the truth.
To give a few wild pledges that came into being:
David Mendoza Wolfson, VP ED/Pres – Promised 24hr Library, got it delivered as a trial during exams within a year, now in place for exams every year
David Gilani, VP Comms/Pres – Promised the ending of unfair fee rises for international students, got int student fees rises within a degree course abolished within a year
Sam Ling, Pres – Promised to solve the appalling prayer facilities, an issue going back 10 years, within a year got the Uni to rebuild and expand them.
Sure, they can’t achieve everything people want, but I’d rather candidates that think big and get at least one big win each a year, than those who would fiddle around the edges for a year.
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The fact still stands that people who get the big things done do the job for more than a year. Both David Gilani and David Wolfson were on the committee for two years. It makes no sense to constantly get new people in each year before they have managed to finish the big thing they had promised.
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Two of those examples were achieved in their first year.
The international fees was settled within a year of David Gilani taking up the campaign.
To be honest, I wouldn’t go singing Sam Ling’s praises. Did nothing but talk for the entire period he was an elected officer and bored the tits off of everyone around him.
Nice guy though, just about as decisive as a lemon
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i literally don’t even know the first name of the union president this year.
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You are so awesome for helping me solve this myrtsey.
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This thread is in fact very important and not surprising. In the past the elected sabs have been brilliant.And I’m going back over 7 years odd.They actually spent time working in the cafe the bar and the shop which is also a small part of susu which most students use everyday.The people who run these departments and work in them are called core staff.They have watched the changes at susu over a very long period. They don’t have a voice they work their arses off day in day out. I can assure you that the majority of them are loaded off and frustrated. We are apparently now a charity lol.We are transparent lol.We are deffo a charity we know by the people who have free food at the food outlets.wink wink.Has anyone noticed the shop was nearly leased off to spar.For some reason they pulled out.Would they have given student prices.The bridge is aimed at university staff not students. These outlets used to belong to the students for the students.Yes I have left susu and am one of the frustrated moaning arse holes who cared about susu values.Probably the only people who will understand and know this only scratches the surface are the core staff who work in susu.I won’t even go into the poor students who are described as support staff who are unsupported and not trained for the role.Cheap exploited Labour.Again only those students who work for susu can comment.I know they bring these points up at their student conferences and are completely ignored.There is apparently no money for training lol.Sorry to have hijacked your post Emily Sheppard and we are talking about different areas within susu but but the bottom line is the same.Don’t listen to the criticism you have got you are right.Don’t blame the sabs the next bunch and the bunch after will be the same unless a lot higher up wake up.Time will tell.A charity doesn’t support egos and vanity.Icing. a cake with no filling is deceptive to say the least.This is only my opinion and I’m entitled to one.
Ents
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i believe sport has improved
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