Out of the Loop: Why weren’t we asked about the marking boycott?

Debate Editor Joe Murphy asks why we were kept out of the loop on the UCU marking boycott decision.

boycott exams ucu

Have you sent your email to Edward Acton yet? You know, the one explaining the “deep concerns” you absolutely definitely totally have over ongoing pay disputes and the UCU marking boycott?

If you haven’t, don’t worry: you can find a template in the blog post the Union put up to explain to you why you agree with a decision they already made. It will tell you why, when July rolls around, you might have the warm glow of positive action and solidarity inside you, but no actual degree to speak of.

Have you sent your email yet?

Not that we can complain, because this is all completely democratic, of course. 70% of Union Council voted for to support the UCU marking boycott that may prevent final year students from graduating. 70% sure sounds like a lot. It certainly sounds more impressive than the equally true figure of 40 people who voted in favour of supporting the boycott. Seven people voted against and nine abstained. 56 people made the decision for you. That’s not even the full Council.

Let’s put this in another, far simpler way: we had a referendum to decide the finer points of LCR playlist policy, but a decision that affects whether we graduate apparently didn’t warrant our opinion. Surely this is exactly the sort of thing that should be passed over the referendum? Something that directly affects the academic prospects of students and potentially stops us from graduating?

The primary goal of the Union is, and always should be, to protect the interest of students, regardless of personal beliefs or politics. In this respect, they failed spectacularly.

So THIS went to a referendum… but a decision that could stop us graduating didn’t?

Immediately after the vote was taken, Council members took to Twitter to explain, with the air of 11-year-olds caught rooting in the biscuit tin, that there just wasn’t time to inform us about this, or organise a referendum. It’s a clever spin on the old “You weren’t here so I didn’t think you’d mind if I ate all your stuff” excuse.

This, despite the fact that just such a boycott has been a very real possibility for well over a month now. In all that time, not one of the people proposing the motion stopped to wonder if they should let anyone else have a say, or if we should even know about it.

Or perhaps they did, and they decided that the surest way to get what they wanted was to keep our silly little minds away from it. If I was of a more cynical disposition, I’d say that some people got rather carried away with their private dreams of leaping to the barricades draped in red flags from the Socialist dress-up box, and didn’t like the idea of the ordinaries having the chance to slow them down.

 

 

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that some members of Council were happy to throw us the relatively inconsequential Blurred Lines referendum to keep us happy but don’t actually want to let us have a say in anything important. I’m just heavily implying it.

If this had been passed to referendum, many people might have actually supported it. I know I would have considered it. When the pay of the Vice Chancellor rises 8.6% while everyone else is having to tighten their belts, clearly all is not right with the world. But whether you agree with it or not is not the issue here. Whether it even ends up happening is not the issue here. Council are gambling with our future, without having the decency or honesty to ask us or even tell us. That’s the issue here. Tonight, Matthew, we’re all going to be bargaining chips.

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