The DSU must change and only Jade Azim can do it

The Tab is breaking their usual silence and calling for the election of JADE AZIM – and here’s why:

We’ve all been lied to. Time and again we’ve been lied to by candidates who speak of change but are backed by JCR Presidents and other demagogues. Nothing changes, and they can’t reverse the DSU’s decline into irrelevance.Alice Dee is a nice candidate, but we’re not voting for people that we’d like to have a Starbucks with. This is a vote that determines who is PAID by YOU. Your money is handed to whoever wins.

They don’t have to deliver on their pledges, and if you’re Alice Dee there’s nothing to deliver on. Her manifesto is so skint on actual details you would struggle to find any other description for it than: “Same Old Same Old.”

Jade Azim, however, promises to:

• Shame rip-off landlords and reduce living-out fees
• Stop wasteful spending on art
• Back the poorest that suffer at the hands of this uni
• Force DSU transparency
• Be critical of nutty NUS 
• Push for Durham to be a living wage employer
• Push for disinvestment in fossil fuels

Across The Tab’s editors we’ve agreed that Jade represents the best chance of these ideas coming about. If she falters, and fails to deliver, The Tab will hold Jade accountable.

The Durham political bubble is spooked. Filled with social misfits and people with too much time on their hands, these career politicians in the making are facing a major set back. Jade’s election would expose how truly rotten the DSU has become.

Many JCR Presidents are going around colleges making sure freshers vote for Alice. For some Presidents, the temptation is too much. That’s why Alice Dee’s posters are appearing across colleges.The Tab has been accused of bias. Damn right we’re biased – biased in favour of students who have been lied to, and trampled on by people who take our cash and do nothing for us. We don’t want more of the same, more of the ineptitude, more of the bureaucracy, more kow-towing to the uni (since when has the press been unbiased anyway?).

When we published our interview with Alice these same people labelled us “Unfair.” Instead of asking themselves why an apparently “strong” candidate proved woeful in an interview, they slipped into habit of blaming everyone but themselves.

So, the establishment carry on plastering propaganda across colleges without any mention of the insurgent candidate – Jade. This level of campaigning, organised by people paid for by students, is no different to The Tab supporting a candidate ready for change.The Tab will gladly publish full transcripts of each interview, which were fair and balanced. Trying to force students into not reading a free press and “recommend” that highly intelligent individuals should “not take these article into account” is offensive and ludicrous.

Alice Dee must now distance herself from such embarrassing claims, and disengage from playground ‘no-platforming’ idiocy. Rather than ‘liking’ posts on Facebook which only make her establishment campaign even more tragic.

They scream “shame” when a free press goes against their vested interests. They don’t want democracy, they want an establishment stitch-up. Every year we see the same, and it can not go on like this.

Every person who does not vote is voting for Alice Dee. The chattering classes, who attend every JCR meetings with an air of self-importance, benefit from the actions of voter apathy.

The only people who vote are people like them who have a vested interest in Alice’s election – maintaining the status quo. That’s why they don’t care if you vote or not.

But The Tab does care: things must change, and only Jade that can secure change.

If you vote in one DSU election in your whole three years, vote for Jade Azim.