Is UBU actively anti-democratic?

On Thursday night I attended Bristol’s Annual Members’ Meeting and now feel the need highlight what was – in my opinion – a disgraceful show of contempt by our elected officials towards university democracy.

It is worth noting that both the proposed AGM and the AMM itself were declared inquorate by a short margin due to insufficient turnout. Whilst the former was postponed until next week, the AMM went ahead, its results to be ratified by a future Student Council meeting.

Does the Union hate democracy?

The motion for the Officer Role Review was the main item on the agenda. After a presentation by the officers, the floor was opened to questions, with no right of reply from the podium allowed (in contrast to all other motions).The numerous questions that followed made clear the officers’ lack of familiarity with the form the policy would ultimately take, it being repeated several times that the particulars and legalities would be dealt with at a later date.

One excellent question addressed the postgraduate officer position proposed by the Role Review – one of the better parts of the motion, in my opinion. When asked whether only postgraduate students would be able to run for the role, Alessandra Berti and Tom Flynn, who was recently chucked out of a hotel while in London for a meeting, essentially responded ‘Yes / No / Yes / No’, hardly inspiring confidence in the officers’ understanding of the flagship scheme. This was the final blow for me: whilst I appreciate some of the Review’s potential benefits, the sketchy and inconsistent detail relayed by the officers meant that I, along with many others, voted against, leading to the motion being voted down by over 50%.

It soon became apparent that the UBU has little intention of upholding this democratic decision. In her final presentation, Alessandra Berti, Officer for Welfare and Equality, delivered a near-abusive rant, suggesting the meeting had been held hostage by hockey players and expressing ‘disappointment’ at the lack of minorities and postgraduates, despite UBU having not prevented these groups from attending, and advertising the event heavily. President Rob Griffiths suggested that, due to the low turnout (only just below quoracy, mind you) and closeness of the result, the Union might hold a university-wide online referendum instead. This is redolent of the European Union forcing countries to hold second votes after returning the ‘incorrect’ result the first time around.

The intransigence of the UBU officers continued online. On Twitter, Berti (@UBU_Welfare) declared that ‘An unrepresentative AMM voted on role review that was meant to improve representation.’ Ellie Williams (@williams_ellie) demonstrated her disdain for those who attended the AMM by tweeting the following to the co-president of Freedom Society, Jan Zeber: ‘wouldn’t have minded if actual student body population was accurately reflected by who was in the room … pretty sure student body hasn’t looked like that since the 1950s’. Obviously, then, democracy is democracy as long as it adheres to arbitrary parameters, in this case minority and postgraduate attendance, with all those who voted against disregarded as uncooperative and selfish.

Ellie Williams’ notorious tweets

This outlook has diffused to sections of the student population similarly disgruntled with the outcome. As of last night, a certain Josephine Franks wrote to Epigram. Addressed to those individuals who departed the AMM early, her piece states: ‘you participated in that vote not as a student, but as a sportsperson. … You could not see beyond your blinkered desire to protect your own interests to understand the implications of the role review as a whole.’ Like the UBU officers, Franks disregards the various legitimate concerns about the Role Review, openly debasing the worth and validity of those who opposed the motion.

To conclude, Thursday night saw a democratic meeting vote against a poorly detailed motion, following the officers’ inability to provide full explanation and quell understandable student concerns about significant changes. The resultant comments have expressed contempt for those who voted against the motion, belittling the universal student right to vote and unfairly categorising all in opposition as a narrow and selfish interest group.

We are told that the assembly’s unrepresentative nature was a major problem. However, will the various left-leaning student motions of the evening also be challenged? Would the officers have mentioned representation if the Role Review had been passed? Why was representation not an issue for the first half of the meeting, and mentioned at no point by the Chair?

I do not have a problem with the Role Review being proposed: it offered positives and negatives, and was worth considering. What is worrying, however, is that the UBU is apparently lurching towards unilateral rule. Its intimidatory response to losing the vote may well make students less comfortable about opposing officially-sanctioned motions in the future. In short, the UBU is putting our university’s democratic process at risk.