News Roundup Week 6: Re-referenda, NUS racism, and Queens’ mania

The sun isn’t shining, the clubs aren’t filling, and Cambridge students are still fully paid up members of the yikyak-banning, jew-stereotyping, prison-abolishing nationwide brain trust of the NUS.

Yes, despite weeks of revolutionary psycho-babble and high concept nonsense, the streets of Cambridge run beige with anti-climax as a life’s worth of impressively futile BNOCkery suddenly melts away. Jubilant CUSU inbreds upload their essay long studies in egomania and self-delusion, our most promising young attention seekers come up with inventive new ways to get quoted in the Guardian, and somehow, somewhere, life for the rest of us goes on.

Priscilla pipes up against anti-black NUS racism

It seems our beloved president Priscilla has some problems with NUS racism of her own. In a leviathan FB post, which racked up a massive 250 likes, she detailed her recent trip to the NUS Black Student’s conference; first, a motion was proposed to redefine ‘Black’, as Malia’s claim to be the first black female president have caused some controversy. Pris details that there was ‘silencing, harassment and bullying of the ethnically black students, most prominently the proposer of the motion, who was told to “educate herself” on what Black is.’

It got weirder – ‘it has to be said that Malia Bouattia, the NUS President-elect was praised to a point which felt uncomfortable, culminating in an Amendment to a motion purely asking for us to formally praise Malia in policy, which would be live for the next three years.’ Priscilla argues that the shutting down of debate on black issues was reminiscent of how ‘Black feminists were told that their demand for recognition threatened the successes of the White women feminist leaders in the latter half of the 20th century.’

Who knows, might have something to do with losing her NUS election

Finally, in a scathing attack on the NUS, an organisation she passionately defended just last week, Priscilla writes ‘Aadam Muuse, Malia Bouattia’s protege, was elected Black Students’ Officer in a clear display of establishment politics, which directly contradicts the messaging of this liberation campaign. It is supremely hypocritical for any NUS liberation campaign to front-run, endorse and structurally underpin any particular candidate, given its fundamental acknowledgement of the structural oppressions its members have faced to get to that very point.’

Queens’ gets put on the map

Following from last week’s story on Queen’s head honchos hosting constant drunken formals for businessmen, yet still finding the time to send their exam term students condescending emails about ‘being sensitive regarding noise’,  it seems things have only gotten worse, as partying and violin quartets are apparently now audible from even the study rooms.

Students seem slightly miffed that the college is exploiting the lack of student events in quiet period to rent out the premises, and have decided to update google maps to reflect the college’s new priorities.

Queens’ eagle eyed fellows also noticed an update on their Wiki page:

King’s bar to undergo creative destruction

Continuing in what appears to be a running theme of college’s screwing their students to pleasure the older gentlemen of the conferencing community, apparently King’s have decided to rebuild their bar as a conference centre.

Interestingly enough it seems the main issue for our intellectual overlords isn’t having their bar moved underground, but rather the fate of their perpetually controversial, and faintly ridiculous, soviet flag. With dozens of capitalism loving Russian oligarchs set to make King’s their new watering hole, it might well be time for the most bourgeois, elitist college at the world’s most bourgeois, elitist institution to take down their red flag.

Mother Russia can be so unaffectionate

Union Hacks emerge for election season

It’s that time of year again, as megalomaniacs from Girton to Trinity whip out their laptops, add literally everyone on FB’s ‘you might know’ list, and mass message effortlessly charismatic and heartwarmingly sincere pleadings for votes. If you’re interested in figuring out who your new tuxedoed online-only friend is, we have the utterly rumoured and completely unconfirmed candidates here for your viewing pleasure:

Prez: Kate Dunbar vs Matteo Viollet Viannelo

Speaker’s (celebs etc.): Hani El-Bay vs Anna Clare Brockmuehl vs Jonah Surkes

Exec (boring office stuff): Charles Connor vs Miles Kekwick

Treasurer ($): Tom McArthur vs James Burn vs Haroun Mahmud

Social Ents:  Chantal Wong vs Andrea Borbely

All this brexit nonsense is distracting us from what really matters

Colleges in mass exodus from CUSU

Peterhouse recently decided to hold a referendum on CUSU affiliation, citing the fact they had to ‘pay unnecessary fees to an organisation that operates with such incompetency and inefficiency’. Ouch. It looks like the creatively titled ‘Pexit’ has fired the starting pistol, with rumours indicating Clare, Trinity, Christ’s, Magdalene, and even far-flung Homerton are going to demand their independence.

Much of this angst is in response to the referendum; after it emerged that pro-NUS campaigners were given a free pass by CUSU to break referendum rules, and that CUSU shadily hid thousands of pounds of NUS costs from voters, students have somehow started to question whether the CUSU brood were in fact at all neutral. It’s also more than a little concerning finding out, after the voting of course, that the investigation into Malia’s alleged anti-semitism will be private, internal, and not shared with any students.

All fun and games until you realise CUSU bureaucrats will be made redundant and have to find actual jobs.

That’s all for now – tune in next week, same bat-time, same bat-channel.