LEXIT: A petition has been launched for Leicester to leave the NUS

A petition to disaffiliate from the NUS has been set up for the University of Leicester – and it apparently has half the signatures required to go to a referendum on the matter.

This week saw Lincoln Uni make the momentous decision to leave the NUS, becoming the first university in the country to leave over the election of NUS National President, Malia Bouattia.

During the national NUS conference, Malia Bouattia came under heavy criticism for her supposed anti-Semitic comments and opinions. Bouattia has made several highly controversial comments, including being part of a published article which stated Birmingham was “something of a Zionist outpost”. She affirms that she is not anti-Semitic but rather opposed Zionism, stating that “it is a political argument, not one of faith”.

Amid all of this controversy, many Student Unions and students themselves have felt the NUS is a polarised institution which is out of touch with students and simply exists to further individuals’ political careers.

In light of the out-pouring of anger at Bouattia’s election, students at the University of Leicester have started a petition to stage a referendum to disaffiliate from the NUS. Although we do not have an exact figure on signatures, the petition has apparently received well over half the signatures for such a motion to occur.

Due to the highly inflammatory nature of the whole situation, we asked our Student Union President, Rachel Holland for a comment on the entire affair. Here is what she had to say:

“I attended NUS National Conference last month and actively campaigned for Megan Dunn to be National President, as I believed that she was the right person to lead a progressive movement that works for the 600 Students’ Unions who are members of NUS. I fully believe that the concerns raised by Jewish students around Malia Bouattia cannot be dismissed; anti-semitism is an issue that society has disregarded for too long and it should be the student movement leading on changing the narrative for our collective interests. However, I don’t believe that the election of one national officer changes the value of NUS, or the power that the movement can have. I fundamentally believe that the student movement needs to remain collective and diverse, rather than divided and withdrawn; a weak NUS fully plays into the plans of the government to weaken Students’ Unions as alluded to in the Higher Education Green Paper released at the end of 2015 and while I share a number of students’ concerns about NUS, I don’t believe the answer to fixing them is to leave.

“Yes, it could be argued that NUS is ‘broken beyond repair’; however, NUS is working with Students’ Unions to overhaul its strategic direction, and I believe that if it’s truly broken, then why not be part of the solution to fix it?”