CUSU Candidates Respond

Who doesn’t like a bit of CUSU bashing?

Well, those who run for it unsurprisingly. We’ve heard what RON’s had to say, but what about his opponents? We offered the CUSU candidates the chance to respond, and four replied. Here they explain different parts of CUSU, what they do, and why it’s so important for you to vote today.

Helen Hoogewerf-McComb: Presidential candidate

Everyone has things they wish were different about Cambridge. Maybe the teaching on your course came nowhere close to your expectations. Maybe you struggled to pay your rent one year only to see it rise higher in the next. Maybe you watched a friend get let down again and again by systems that were meant to support them.

Having spent years as a student rep and worked as the Welfare and Rights Officer this year, I can tell you that change won’t just come out of nowhere. It requires time, effort and the voices of as many students as possible to get the University to listen. CUSU is here to help make that happen and, despite what you may have heard, it’s actually pretty good at it.

Last week I got to announce the introduction of comprehensive tutor training, addressing issues like mental health and disability. If that was the only thing achieved all year it would be something to be proud of but we have also worked with the University to improve MPhil programmes, launched the student-led teaching awards, and secured funding to better support student parents. We have run the biggest ever freshers’ fair, expanded support for societies and increased the capacity of our Student Advice Service.

I’m running for CUSU President because I think we shouldn’t lose sight of the benefits we gain from having a central voice. I want to make CUSU better at working with you and empowering you to change things for the better. I don’t want this to be the end point of all the progress we have made – if you have been involved in student support like I have, seen students struggle and suffer unnecessarily, you know that there is still a lot left for us to do.

Rob Richardson: Education Officer candidate

Take a deep breath and forget the hysteria surrounding the CUSU elections and the RON campaign, briefly.

Anyone paying attention to the student media this week may have been confronted with apocalyptic analyses of how the profligate, vindictive CUSU machine is at last close to being toppled. Like Gaddafi in his final moments, cowering underground surrounded by a righteous army of freedom fighters, CUSU awaits its fate, as the University is to be freed from its oppressive tormentor- operating in the ingenious guise of a benevolent Student Union.

So, make haste, apathetical, indifferent members of the University who don’t care in the slightest about CUSU until the moment the wooden cross is raised upon the hill: vote for RON, because this is the only way to show those tyrants that we are nothing but uninterested. But, in a wonderful twist of irony, if people wish to voice their inertia by voting for RON, then they become, by definition interested. This campaign represents an opportunity to generate positive interest.

As a candidate for Education Officer, establishing mechanisms for communicating with students is a priority in my manifesto. If you can put your indifference to one side in order to read RON’s manifesto, use the opportunity to consider the other side of the debate. Take some time to read the CUSU website and see for yourself the work they do, and read the manifestos of the election candidates. Make an informed decision about the nature of CUSU’s work and what the candidates stand for, and vote accordingly.

But, please, make sure you know what you are voting for, and what you are voting about. This is your SU; it’s your money they’re squandering on gold-plated meeting agendas, and your image they’re implicating in frivolous fundamentalist campaigns for gender equality and fair access.

But, what’s the point. Who cares?

Helena Blair: Access & Funding candidate

It doesn’t make sense to me, at all – where is the logic in inciting apathy and trouble for an organisation that fights ridiculously hard for the benefit of every single one of us? Our experiences of studying and living in Cambridge are bettered significantly by CUSU, and they can be even further at the drop of a hat – it’s a matter of engaging with them and taking advantage of the massive amount they can do for you. CUSU is our voice, getting heard and put to use at every level, and we’d be making a huge mistake by taking it away.

Throughout my involvement with CUSU, I’ve seen how tirelessly hard the sabbatical officers work because they genuinely care about students and want to see things improved. I’m not running for the CUSU Access role because I’m a ‘dullard’ who would let money be ‘sapped’ or time wasted on irrelevant issues. I want to work as hard as I physically can to engage people in Access issues and with them, make the biggest difference possible. ‘Pointlessness’ and ‘inefficiency’ aren’t options.

CUSU must speak to you, but please look to it too before you judge it. The recent achievement of tutor training is not ‘shit’. The CUSU Shadowing Scheme, in which hundreds of potential applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds descend upon Cambridge for life-changing weekends of fun and crucial learning – well, I’d call that very ‘exciting’, and so would everyone involved! I’m running for the Access role because I care about students, particularly the immeasurable number of those who aren’t even here yet and won’t be without the vital Access work CUSU does. Those students aren’t involved in the issues circulating CUSU and the RON campaign, so let’s please address them in a way that won’t cause them to lose out.

Terri-Leigh Riley: Access & Funding candidate

First, a bit about CUSU Access: CUSU’s Shadowing Scheme is the biggest student-run access initiative in the UK –  it allows talented students with little school or family history of university to experience Cambridge. We’re the only university in the UK with a full-time Access Sabbatical Officer, and our Access Officers in the colleges reach hundreds of schools. There are students here now who wouldn’t have applied without CUSU’s work. What we have is so brilliant that I want to help other universities to do the same, so we can break down the Oxbridge barrier and collaborate on reaching more potential applicants.

Wanting to make Cambridge more diverse, tolerant and inclusive is not a political position – it’s a moral one, which involves students from across the political spectrum. Access shouldn’t end when you get here. Students should feel at home here no matter where they’re from, whatever their personal or social circumstances. CUSU has done so much already to improve the student experience: the problem is that this work has gone unnoticed and unappreciated.

I asked the current Access Sab whether his job was harder than a Cambridge degree. He said that it was the hardest he’d ever worked in his life. I wasn’t put off by that, but a lot of people would have been – and maybe they were. If that’s the case, it’s not CUSU who needs to up their game. To reiterate a point made by the presidential candidate: this is your student’s union, and if you want it to work for you, then you have to engage with it.