A new campaign has sprung up for the Spring Elections: is a new Facebook page. One that reflects the sentiments of many students. We spoke to the creator of the page Emily Shepherd, a Third year studying Computer Science, to talk about why she started the campaign.
What is the RON vote?
RON is a voting option which is rarely publicised – it stands for Re-Open-Nominations and it’s your way of saying “I don’t like any of these candidates”. In an election, “RON” is treated as a real candidate in that they can be voted for and win. The difference is that when RON wins, the election is essentially completely thrown out, and people are given another chance to nominate themselves.
RON?
How would it help?
You may have heard of the term “SUSU clique” which is used to describe the group of people that are active within the Union – unfortunately it’s not always easy for outsiders to get involved and bring their ideas to the table. This is because the Union does not actively try to educate and engage freshers in the political side of the Union. Voting RON does more than rerun the election – it sends a message that we aren’t happy with the job the Union is doing.
SUSU has a £7 million annual turnover and its Sabbs sit on important committees – it has the potential to effect incredible positive change for the students but sadly year after year we are let down by candidates not making good on their election promises.
It’s not the candidates fault though, they still have valid campaigns?
Rerunning the elections doesn’t hurt the candidates – the positions begin in July so they could easily rerun before then. If their campaigns are good then there’s no reason to suggest they’d do any worse than they would now. This isn’t a campaign against them, it’s simply an attempt to get more people involved.
What if the new candidates are even worse?
Well, that’s the nature of democracy, isn’t it? But what really counts as a bad candidate? Whoever wins the election is the person that the most people wanted. We can trust the student body to vote for sensible people if SUSU makes an effort to tell them what’s going on. With 23,000 students at the University, I find it hard to believe we couldn’t find even one or two that aren’t at least equally as good as the current candidates.
What would you suggest to get more involved?
Much of the elections advertising comes from the candidates themselves – which means everything you see is politically charged or unstructured. SUSU itself should do a better job of publicising its democratic processes throughout the year, not just when an election is happening.
The problem at the moment is people who aren’t involved with SUSU will hear nothing of the election all year then be bombarded with semi-meaningless slogans and phrases. It’s very hard to know who to vote for DCI, for instance, if you don’t know what that stands for (it’s Democracy and Creative Industries), what the job entails, how SUSU democracy works or what the “Creative Industries” are. For instance nobody ever advertises the Union Council, which any student is welcome to go to and vote on important decisions, but does any regular student even know what it does?
Why didn’t you run, isn’t that the best way to solve the issues?
Perhaps I should have run for DCI but then again it would be unfair on the “Creative Industries” I don’t have any idea on how to support them. As much as I’d love to do it for the democracy side of the job, and the tasty £20,000 salary, I’m not the perfect candidate. I’m not claiming to be. But people should call on SUSU to find the candidate that is, for every position.
What are some of the things you think need to be immediately addressed?
First impressions. Everyone knows they are important and that they stick, and SUSU does a good job at putting on nights out for freshers but they focus solely on it. They even rebranded their Facebook page to make themselves look like a club promoter. We should make better use of our JCRs and Course Reps, who do great work, and getting them talking about what SUSU is all about and how to get involved from the beginning.
If we were to rerun the election this year, the first thing SUSU has to do is put its hands up and be sincere – I think people would react positively to the Union saying, “OK, we haven’t done very well at this. We recognise that and we’re going to improve” and then jump straight into a proper campaign to educate as many people into the workings of SUSU as possible.
Will you be voting RON? Is it SUSU’s fault that people are disconnected from the elections? Let us know in the comments below!
How is it controversial if only 14 people like it?!
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59 now 😛 And it appears to be the second most commented on article in the SotonTab at the moment. 😛 x
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Most of the comments are yours Emily.
Give it up. This is nothing but disgusting bitter hatred. Nice to know a welfare student leader (if you still count as that) has candidates welfare in mind.
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Actually, if you take out all of my comments it’s still the second most discussed – nice try though
I haven’t attacked any of the candidates, so I disagree with your implication that I don’t have their welfare in mind. :-* x
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“Discussed” is a strong word for the majority of commenters dismissing this as the harebrained idea it is.
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Why don’t you engage in a discussion then?
If it’s a bad idea, wouldn’t it be more satisfying to prove it to me, rather than just hurl insults around the place?
If you’re confident you’re right, be brave and argue your point with me – I’ve given my arguments, publicly, not-anonymously, for all to see – where are yours?
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There are certainly a good deal of comments Emily – but just take a read to see how few actually support your campaign – which can be described as juvenile at best.
Also, of the forty odd comments, at least 10 are yours. So more than 20% of the discussion is coming from a single person.
Since the second most commented article has 43 votes, you were blatantly lying when you said “Actually, if you take out all of my comments it’s still the second most discussed – nice try though” …
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Yes, so if you took out my comments, that article would be the most commented, and this one would be the second most commented… That’s how ordering things works?
Currently:
1st place: *This article* (52 comments)
2nd place: Something about Nightclubs (43 comments)
3rd place: Israel Conference (27 comments)
If we remove 10 comments from this one:
1st place: Something about Nightclubs (43 comments)
2nd place: *This article* (42 comments)
3rd place: Israel Conference (27 comments)
Thanks for playing.
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Emily, you say that you’ve given your arguments publicly and not anonymously. Didn’t you initially distribute your Facebook page using a fake profile with a fake profile pic? Aside from being really creepy, I wouldn’t really call that being public and not anonymous…
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didnt you also delete the thread full of criticisms and your responses? so much for transparency and reasoned discussion
Aww, that’s right – attack me, not my campaign – that’s easier for you, isn’t it? It’s hard debating like adults, it really is.
Anyway, it wasn’t my account and I didn’t delete it – I’m not sure why it got deleted. When I saw the post, I responded to any criticisms and arguments from my account.
I can’t help but notice you guys are *still* posting anonymously – brave stuff there
So, I’ve responded to your silly ad hominems – keep ’em coming, if you whine at me long enough, maybe you’ll eventually come up with a properly reasoned argument 
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Not attacking you, Emily, I just had an issue with you saying that you were making your arguments publicly… x
There are now more comments made about this campaign than people who actually support it. Good job engaging the unengaged Shep – not as easy as it sounds is it?
not that it matters at this stage but somebody should really teach you the difference between adhominem attacks and criticizing the way you choose to have a discussion
its also worth pointing out there are several criticisms on this article that you failed to reply to at all
oh look emily shepherd is angry about something at susu
again
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To be fair the stuff emily has done to improve rights for transgender students and get more unisex bathrooms is the only thing in ages anyone in susu has done that is actually useful to its students.
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Hey tripleOG,
Thanks for saying that – it means a lot to hear my efforts were appreciated. Just so you know, the bathroom policy wasn’t mine (although I did speak for it at the AGM) – the policy I brought was to make council more trans-inclusive, and I lobbied the university to broaden the options for “Gender” to more than just “Male” and “Female” on any UoS approved survey.
Thanks again for your support
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someone doesn’t know how to proofread.
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So this is a clique within the clique saying No to the clique?
Business as usual then.
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Then run! Don’t know much about creative industries? That hasn’t stopped Chris.
Complaining about people – the “SUSU clique” – who know about how SUSU works running for important positions within SUSU is idiotic. Outsiders who don’t know about the zone only cause the exact stagnancy thatcampaign thalaining about. A number of this year’s sabbs – Ellie and Anjit spring to mind – were relative outsiders to their zones and have been completely ineffective.
The problem isn’t with the current sabb candidates but a lack of engagement from day 1 – something which Emily identifies. This won’t be solved by penalising students who take time out of their degrees, in their final year (not to mention their friends who do the same to support them) to campaign by forcing them to do it again. Emily, you’ve been a critic of a lack of engagement with students from SUSU and I’m yet to see you ever suggest any sort of real solution. This whole thing reeks of cynical pettiness and I sincerely hope it gets nowhere.
I’d love to hear a response…
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Bang on. Well said.
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Surely the problem is that the students quite rightly give a fuck about all of the ridiculous bureaucracy in SUSU, none of the candidates have addressed this point. They have only said they would like to improve engagement but failed to say how they would achieve this. It is surely just going to be more of the same that is making students disengaged. By voting RON you are challenging candidates to come up with real policies that you care about.
Also anyone who will get a good job when they graduate would be crazy to become a sabb, what would employers think if you pissed around bickering with students rather than working in your field. The only people who would do so are people on track for a 2:2 in geography and will just end up stacking shelves.
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As a counterpoint, us candidates, since we’re mostly student leaders, have to work around the bureaucracy every day we do our jobs. Some of it is there because while you may see things one way, other students will see the complete opposite. Some of it is a right pain.
All of us are very aware of the lack of engagement in SUSU and that most students don’t care, both Engagement candidates go on about it, and both DCI candidates, myself and Kerry, say in our manifestos lots of things we’d do to change this: Kerry talks about launching an investigation into how students want democracy handled, and putting together a clear guide to how democracy at SUSU works and pushing it to students so they understand how to make change. I talk about overhauling Union Council, replacing it with a jury style system, and speeding up policy creation so a more diverse range of students make policy.
I think I can speak for the other candidates by saying we are running for our roles because we really care, perhaps a little too much sometimes, about SUSU but especially about how it works for students and we want to make a difference and make it work better for students and we think it can be better.
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Wasn’t Emily Anjit’s campaign manager last year? #Awkward
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“stagnancy thatcampaign thalaining about”
Wrote this on my phone – that was supposed to say “that you’re complaining about”
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Well this is the first I’ve heard about being completely ineffective. I’d like to know why you think this. Let’s meet up. Please email me at with your availability.
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Hey Millicent,
Chris was the Student Groups Officer this year – while the remit of that position is not directly related to Creative Industries, it will definitely have given a lot of experience working with CI and seeing the kind of problems CI groups face, including how to solve them:
+ The position requires close work with the Vice President Democracy and Creative Industries – I find it hard to believe a year of that won’t have given him experience with CI issues
+ He sits on, and chairs, the Student Groups Committee. Other members of that committee include the CI Student Groups Rep, the Performing Arts Officer, a representative for the Media Groups and the VP DCI herself.
+ Part of his job directly involves working with the staff and societies within the Creative Industries Zone, many of whom will have similar issues to the CI Union Groups, I imagine.
I don’t think it’s fair to say, therefore, that he has no experience. Another point I’d make is that I’m not *interested* in Creative Industries – that’s not to say I don’t appreciate the stuff they do, it’s just not something I’m interested in, or particularly apt at, doing. I’m not running this campaign to massage my own ego – I want *the best* candidate for the job. Am I the best candidate for VP DCI? No. Does that mean we shouldn’t strive for the best candidate? NO!
I agree that naive candidates don’t help the situation 100% – I don’t like the idea of someone coming in with no prior interest or knowledge at all – that’s not what I’m asking for. I’m asking for SUSU to educate and include the wider student body. More people should understand how the zones structure works, more people should know where our funding comes from, more people should know how SUSU gets things done. Perhaps a better way of saying it is: I want to expand the SUSU clique, to include the entire student population if they are interested. Is that more clear?
I can see that it would be a bit annoying for people to have to rerun their campaigns, but I disagree with you that it is a penalty – if it *is* a penalty, surely that’s as good an indicator as anything that we aren’t doing elections properly? Elections shouldn’t be a burden! They should be a celebration of democracy!
I have made some suggestions, some in this article, some on the facebook campaign page, and some in other conversations, so I won’t go over all of them here (this post is already pretty long – sorry!), but here are a few:
Including more details on the freshers magazine and a better focus on the union side of SUSU as a whole over freshers
+ Making better use of Facebook to advertise council sessions and general meetings, for example by changing the profile picture / creating dedicated pages and events as they did for the freshers’ events advertising.
+ JCRs and coursereps could be given broader training, so they can be the first port of call for anyone interested in volunteering for anything within SUSU
I’d love to hear your thoughts on those ideas, and feel free to ask if I haven’t been clear about anything
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Course reps as information centres? Do you not understand how difficult it is to get people to engage with the 2/3 hours a week that the role requires now? And that has a DIRECT and MEASURABLE outcome for their course. I’m sure course reps are going to be lining up for this nebulous plan which will magically re-engage students who just want to get through their 3 years here without student politics…
The more you posit this as being as “great leap forward”, the more I cringe at your lack of understanding of anything you seem to be an “expert” on. Misguided and ridiculous. I’d rather vote RON on this concept.
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Glad you’re thinking of voting RON 😉
And I don’t think I’ve ever claimed to be an “expert” on any of this stuff – I’ve done a lot with the union, so I think I have some context for what I say, but “expert” is not how I’d describe myself – I’m just a keen volunteer, like anyone else.
I’ll have to disagree with you there – I think if people are given appropriate respect and support it won’t be hard for them to rise to it – I’m not suggesting massively widening their job descriptions, just letting them know some sort of barebones information about SUSU (I know some that don’t even know course reps are part of SUSU!) so they can signpost people if and when required.
I have never used the term “great leap forward” – I’d rather you didn’t make up quotes to make my argument look silly, why not just argue against the point properly if you don’t like it, rather than make stuff up?
Anyway – I wouldn’t say it’s a great leap forward, no. But it is something… and dare I say it, it’s more than you’re doing, anonymous hater. So shit on me all you like, all I know is that engagement within SUSU is appalling, and as far as I can see it’s getting worse. If this campaign gets only a few people who would have said “Gah SUSU doesn’t do anything for me – I won’t vote” to at least vote RON then that’s fine with me. A vote is a vote, and it’s a few more people making their voices heard, and it’s a few more people I may have engaged in some way. I’ll count that as a win. I might as well try to engage people with this campaign than sit back and let SUSU fade into irrelevance, don’t you think?
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It sounds like your information regarding what course reps do and know is somewhat stale and outdated. In fact, this sentiment applies to most of what you’re saying: outdated, poorly thought through, and out of touch.
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It’d be great if you could elaborate on that? Perhaps describe your experience with course reps, or which points I’ve raised you disagree with?
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I love that all the supporters of this are the typical inane people who prioritize process and rules over people and feelings. Oh, and it’s led by a student leader who hasn’t actually done their job for the past 5 months. Screaming “oh it’s democracy!” at everything is fine until you realise another election would happen in late April/May. I certainly don’t want my revision lectures disrupted by another round of candidates trying to get me to vote.
Guy above who said about it being a subset of the clique who hates the clique hit the nail right on the fucking head.
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why do we need susu anyway, all we really need is one university bureaucrat to hand out some cash to societies
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I was unaware of the union council and have been at the Uni for two years…
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my favourite part is that the Tab (or this writer) can’t bring themselves, in the lead paragraph) to call Emily ‘she’, and chooses a singular ‘they’ instead.
Lol
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more casual everyday tansphobia
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I would like to say that I know absolutely nothing about Emily – I don’t know her. At the time of writing this I didn’t actually know I was talking to Emily at the time (long story) and I wrote this paragraph without the knowledge of who I was actually talking to which is why I used “they”. Please don’t accuse me of transphobia again based on your own assumptions. Peace x
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Im sorry probably leapt to conclusions too quickly then. all the best, love x
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Its so sad that you feel the need to be so hateful
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This comments needs to be removed immediately. It is vile, as is every single person that voted it with a thumbs up. What year is this?
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The comment has been deleted now, sorry for the delay.
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JIDF, you disgust me.
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Completely agree that this comment needs to be removed!
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The comment has been deleted now, sorry for the delay.
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What did it say?
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Can’t remember the exact wording, but it was just hateful and unnecessary.
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Gilani out
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What does this even mean?
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“Rerunning the elections doesn’t hurt the candidates”
yeah I guess it wouldn’t hurt to drag ourselves and the unfortunate handful of friends on our campaign team through all the stress of elections only to be told we have to do it all over again because some whining chode made a facebook page that galvanised the childish FUCK SUSU brigade into actually doing something with their time, albeit something pointless
it wouldn’t hurt to have to take another fortnight off while we all have degrees to get on with
it wouldn’t hurt students to have to suffer through the entire elections process shout-outs and all 2 times in 1 year, the 2nd of which while confronting imminent deadlines and exams
what an idiot
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Hey Anon,
Don’t you think the fact you view rerunning the election as a potencial burden as a sign that we’re doing elections wrong? Elections should be a positive thing – a celebration of democracy. Candidates should get more support from SUSU if you feel it’s too stressful, maybe there should be more structure in place to help you to get your campaign messages out there, rather than leaving it up to you to run around and manage it 100% yourself onto of all your University work?
You refer to students “suffer[ing] through the entire elections process” – this is exactly the point I’m trying to make with this campaign. Students are appathetic to SUSU because they hate teh way elections are done – they aren’t interested because they haven’t been engaged *prior* to the elections, so the sudden jolt of electioneering feels too forced.
That’s what we need to address! I’d love to hear your thoughts
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emily you’re either incredibly naive or a halfwit if you think a campaign titled “vote no to susu” will somehow encourage engagement
you’re also extremely out of touch with the average student who is uninterested in elections if you believe they feel that way because they just don’t get it because susu hasn’t explained it to them well enough. please… credit them with being smarter than that. you’re not as enlightened as you think you are and you obviously have a large chip on your shoulder regarding large organisations like the union
believe it or not, a lot of students simply don’t give a shit because they’re not here long enough to benefit from any changes. all we can do as candidates is encourage them regardless and do our best to make a lasting impression
this kind of bullshit while possibly well intentioned really only results in difficulty and hard work for us and many others and serves only to disillusion students who will dismiss it as childish infighting
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all this being said i have to concede that there must be something wrong with susu if someone who thinks like you is part of a team handling democracy
as a commenter below pointed out i don’t see anything democratic about a plan that guarantees low voter turnout in real terms
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I’d suggest that there’s a problem when we have people saying “there must be something wrong with susu if someone who thinks like you is part of a team…” – someone that disagrees with you shouldn’t be part of the team? I haven’t attacked any candidates – feel free to disagree with my ideas, but is there a reason you’re attacking me personally? x
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yes if you quote people out of context you can make any argument about the result
several people have explained to you why this would result in an undemocratic conclusion to the election if it went through (a point you haven’t actually addressed)
that someone with such an obviously poor grasp of what constitutes good democracy has been trusted with it at the union is a travesty
it’s not a personal attack it’s stating a fact about your campaign and by proxy your attitude then extrapolating from that
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There’s a general election coming up. I can’t stand the thought of SUSU detracting from that with a second round of their own little popularity pissing match.
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don’t think we have to worry about national voter turnout levels being hit too drastically by a student union by-election tbh
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I’d much rather see the union focused on getting its members to the polls for real life over promoting round 2 susu elections boogalo
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SUSU is useless, they have no power to do anything and don’t act when you ask them to help. Makes no difference if it’s some undergrad or RON who wins, this isn’t the way to get the union as a whole to change. I understand and share their frustration, but something more fundamental needs to change in order to make it a worthwhile position and not just an addition to someone’s CV.
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Hey Another,
SUSU is somewhat useless, yes (they do some good things, but you’re right that they massively fall down in the main areas such as representation, which is what a union is for!). Unfortunately it *will* carry on being useless if you don’t vote – it will continue to encourage CV fillers and people interested in an easy £20,000.
But we *can* change that. It’s SUSU’s fault that you’re apathetic, and it’s SUSU’s fault that you don’t want to vote – it was their responsibility to do a good and engage you and they haven’t. Boo to them. But I’m suggesting we don’t allow that, I’ve done a lot of work within SUSU and I can see the potencial that has to be good: it has a £7 million pound annual turnover (much of that money coming *from the students* either by charging them in their commercial outlets or via grants from the university).
If you don’t like the candidates, vote against them. Not voting will let them win – that’s not what we want, vote RON to say you aren’t happy.
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I didn’t say I didn’t vote, I always exercise my right to vote and to that end I have always voted RON for every position (I’ve been here a long time too – undergrad and postgrad, mostly part time!). Perhaps I should have made that clearer.
However, I never expected that to make them realise we need more fundamental changes in the SU, particularly not when there’s such a low turn out. I’ve never held much faith in the SU, but the one time I really needed support in a dispute they couldn’t be bothered to do anything. That’s when I really stopped caring.
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Oh, and for anyone who is going to start moaning at me about my decision to vote for RON – when none of the candidates represent my view or do anything I feel is worthwhile, that’s my right to do so. That’s the way it’s always been!
And some suggests are just down right stupid, such as the Nick Clegg wannabe who one year hoped he’d get voted in by promising free Uni-link buses passes for everyone. Seriously, offer us something which will be useful but is actually also achievable!
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Running a second round of elections pretty much guarantees a worse turnout giving the so called clique greater voting power. Literally the opposite of democratic but it wouldn’t surprise me if that was the real intent.
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Voter turnout as of this evening apparently double what it was last year. So much for poor engagement.
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Shame we’ve only got word of mouth to go on with that, cause on the stats page we’ve only got the total number of votes (not voters), where we’ve been consistently doing worse than last year.
https://www.susu.org/elections/stats/ – bottom of the Timeline section
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Any comments on this Miss Shepherd – perhaps you’re under the impression it was completely as a result of your terribly popular campaign page?
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As Jason said, the votes are actually currently lower than they were last year. Can’t get much more clear than that…
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If you had looked into student politics at all like you’ve claimed to do so – you’d know that voter turn out directly correlates to number of candidates. We have much fewer candidates, therefore you’d expect a much lower turn out, yet this year isn’t too far behind last year.
Your campaign has achieved nothing – just made the protesting minority more visible.
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Yes, this campaign is protesting against the low number of candidates – had you honestly not noticed that?
If you’re going to make an arguement against the campaign, make sure it contains at least an ounce of sense, would you? Shouting “ah you’re wrong! Your campaign is terrible” over and over again doesn’t come across as intelligently as you’d obviously like to think…
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I’m not an idiot – I understand the campaign but it’s massively flawed.
What you need to realise is that your campaign is penalising those who have actually put themselves forward to make the Union a better place.
You throwing your toys out the pram for attention is going to do F All.
Re-Open Nominations?! Who the hell would vote for another month where you can’t walk through the concourse without being accosted and asked to vote and you see campaign posters everywhere you turn?! Jesus Christ no!
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I hope that Emily’s butthurt feels REALLY sore tonight, considering that her little attention stunt did NOTHING to affect the election results in any tangible way. Also to say congratulations to certain candidates for winning after pretty much telling everyone to vote RON out of spite seems completely weird, ironic and hypocritical?
Have fun coming up with the next big controversial thing Emily, I doubt you’ll find much works any more with the level of respect you’ve earned for yourself.
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I think you missed the results – 600 RON votes for President, up from around 150 last year. And an average of 500 RON votes for the VP positions – to dismiss that as nothing is nothing short of delusional, honey.
The campaign was not designed to win (RON winning the sabb positions? Come on) it was designed to send a message, something I’ve been pretty clear about, but the sensitive SUSUers, as I’ll call you, didn’t want to hear it. I believe that message has been sent, we can only hope to God that SUSU hears it…
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The campaign wasn’t intended to win? So you didn’t want to force a second election? That’s funny there are quotes from you all over the place, including in this very article, indicating that that was your goal… One at which you failed miserably. It’s OK to admit it, you don’t have to rationalise after the fact to save face because at this stage you have very little left to save.
On top of all that, if SUSU is indeed as incompetent and ignorant of students as you’ve asserted, your little tantrum involving a WHOPPING ~600 students isn’t even going to ping on their radar, so you’ve burned a load of bridges and upset a lot of your ‘friends’ for nothing. Congratulating them on their wins after a week long campaign trying to make their lives twice as hard as they need to be wreaks of desperation.
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Sounds like you’re the one that’s not over it
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Wow, is this still going on? Yeah, you were right Emily, there were more RON votes this year but it was a good night last night and I’m fairly happy with the people who have been elected. I’d agree with “Get over it” to some extent because you have upset a lot of us, your friends, through doing this. As I’ve said before, your reasoning is perfectly valid, but the way you went about it wasn’t right. Still, things can hopefully improve next year with a team full of (mostly) new people.
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Get over what though? My campaign was a success as far as I can tell? What am I meant to get over?
I still fail to see why running a RON campaign is such a wrong thing to do – RON is a valid candidate, so any student should have the right to run a campaign for them, surely? Was it wrong of you to run against Anjit? Doing so meant that one of you was definitely not going to win. How come that’s fair, but me running a RON campaign is in some way “penalising the candidates”?
Anyway, I’m happy with how it went, and I am happy with the new sabb team (saying congrats to Ben doesn’t make me a hypocrite – I congratulated him because I *like* him and it *wasn’t* personal). So let’s take the “get over it” sentiment and agree to move on – hopefully SUSU will get the message and work to reduce the number of RON voters next year
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I never said that you were a hypocrite for congratulating Ben? I’m trying to make you see how this has come across to people who were running – even if it wasn’t the intention you still hurt your friends at probably one of the most stressful periods of their lives. You offered no kind of support, emotional or otherwise. That’s all I am saying I agree with “Get over it” on. Neither you or “Hahaha” are in the right here either.
RON is not “a valid candidate”, it’s an option which, by definition, is a rejection of all candidates.
I think Rebecca put it very well. You’ve really pissed a lot of people of with this, because despite what you said about it not being personal, it’s felt that way.