Guild Elections 2011

By Sebastian Egerton-Read

After two weeks of campaigning the Guild officer elections are finally over. I think that most people, regardless of whether they had a negative or positive experience, are glad that it is over. The seven sabbatical positions, along with the non-sabbaticals have all been selected and the Students Union of the University of Birmingham must now move forward into what is arguably the most tumultuous time in the history of British universities. Of course it wasn't that long ago that the tuition fees were raised to £3000 and the "consumerism" of education has been growing as part of a long process. However, it is fair to say that the challenges faced by student unions dealing with a massive tripling of tuition fees are unprecedented and unseen before. Economics has always played some role in university politics, but now it will take an even greater priority as how much the university charges, the value for that money and the way in which the university spends its money will come under increased scrutiny.

Such circumstances might lead one to expect that there would be a heavy focus on policies and solutions in this year's election. However, quite amazingly the speeches from the winning candidates were almost completely bereft of any policy discussion or the challenges facing them. Now of course, there is nothing wrong with offering commiserations to the losing candidates or saying thank you to key people who helped in the campaign, but for the winning candidates to completely exclude mention of their policies is still quite striking. One possible explanation for this is that very few candidates run on policies. This election was dominated by the incredible amounts of cardboard spread around campus and once again of course by gimmicks. Please don't mis-understand me, I actually love the gimmicks. I enjoyed watching those two orange men run around and seeing Dumbledore on campus as much as anybody, unfortunately though a student union has a lot of influence over a lot of important things, and those important things stretch beyond cuts. Most of the winning candidates (with a couple of notable exceptions) couldn't talk about these things because they didn't have a firm grip of a well thought through set of policies, they also couldn't bring their orange men or wands up with them, so it isn't that surprising that all they had to say were commiserations and thank you. Rather than a clear vision of what the new guild would be like and how it would represent the 28,000 students at this university, attendees of the results night got to see an excited group of young people celebrating an opportunity to enjoy a great experience and enhance their CVs. Does this not strike people as somewhat ridiculous?

A strong example of this is our new President. He ran on what was frankly a superb gimmick with the Harry Potter theme and had excellent visibility on campus including what was a wonderful piece of craftsmanship in the Hogwarts train. But what were his three main policy points?
1) A loyalty card in Joe's (cheaper drinks)
2) Longer library opening hours and improved facilities like link-up points
3) 'A Guild that works for you'

So, we have one policy in trying to make a bar that already runs on a loss cheaper. Everyone in the guild knows that is impossible and like every other candidate who has run on a cheaper drinks policy, he will have to let his constituents down on this one. One policy that has just happened, the library opening hours have been extended and it is to under-go refurbishment in the summer, it is hard to see that happening two years running. Finally we are left with an ambiguous statement that could match any of the best ones that our politicians come up with. I am not even sure that a statement like that can really even be technically described as a policy.

This is not to attack our new President. He may indeed be very good. That is actually the whole point. We have had two weeks of campaigning and even those actually involved in the Guild don't really know what to expect from their new Guild officer team. Of course they may have their opinions based on the affiliations of winning candidates to the various cliques in the Guild, but that is no substitute for actual policies or even a vague vision.

It should be noted that the 27% voter turnout is no mean achievement for the Guild and to a certain degree they should be commended for it. However, that is still 73% of the student population that is failing to exercise  its basic democratic right. How can we question that decision when we, the people involved with the Guild, have just elected an officer group without a clear vision or any clear set of achievable policies. How can we question that when students are welcomed to campus during campaign week by a barrage of cardboard boxes and various characters dressed up in silly outfits or with bizarre gimmicks? How can this be considered as anything other than disengagement of students from the Guild? People take part in democracy when they feel it matters, when we reflect back on how these elections have panned out over the last two weeks, can we really blame students for not taking it seriously, or not being it to be valuable?