The Results Are In—Things Will Tick Over With Students First
The results of the MMUnion executive elections have been announced, and Students First took all the offices they stood for. Viva MMU! didn’t manage anything more than space in the NUS delegation, so the constitutional changes are safe for a year at least. Unfortunately though, the next executive will almost certainly follow the same path as the current one, when it takes office in July.
The new structures for governing the union will, with any luck, be fully up and running for the start of next year, which should go some way to letting ordinary students take their place in the union, but I really hope that all of the officers-elect realise that they have to do more than a Student Engagement Strategy that focusses on those living in halls. Instead of reaching down to the students from lofty positions, I challenge next executive to throw out the bureaucratic ‘management’ style of doing things, and let MMUnion become the hub of student life at MMU that it ought to be.
Getting the basics right, and making the building somewhere people want to be should be a priority. Stepping out of the office and simply being students like everyone else should also help. Becoming recognisable and known, while not becoming distant, must be at the forefront of every new officer’s mind, because this is what will allow the rift between normal students—that is, those students who aren’t really interested in the rampant political careerism which consumes most of us who are ‘into’ student politics—and the officers to close up, and go some way to healing the ailment that produced Viva MMU! .
I realise that I’m writing all these things as I near the end of my term of office at MMUnion, and I haven’t been the best officer I could have been, but I’ve learnt a lot about how people perceive the executive, and the way in which the constitutional changes have been implemented, so it just seems sensible to write some of it down.