Unusual versions of the Alternative Vote

As a slight epilogue to my previous post Alterative Vote: What does 50% mean? I've remembered at least one unusual version of AV from my days of counting students' union elections which had its own definition of 50%.

Back in my days at the University of Kent the students' union (known as "Kent Union") used a version of the Alternative Vote with some quite unusual features. I got the impression that the rules used had been written by someone who either didn't really understand the system or else was trying to impose their own philosophy onto the voters.

By far the most inexplicable rule related to the "Re-Open Nominations" (or "RON") option. In almost all other versions of AV I've seen, RON is treated like any other candidate. But in the old Kent rules someone decided that it was wrong to transfer votes to and from RON - you could either select the RON option or express preferences for candidates but not both. RON's fate was decided in the first round of the count and it merely had to outpoll the candidate with the highest number of first preferences, regardless on the numbers involved. Otherwise all RON votes were set aside and the rest of the election proceeded without it. This nonsense has long since been abolished.

In the rest of the count it was not unusual for a lot of votes for excluded candidates to fail to transfer (or "exhaust") and so the winning candidate could get elected with less than 50% of valid post-RON exclusion votes. And there were even times when a candidate had an unassailable lead before the final two - they might have 45% of all the votes, one opponent 20%, another 15% and 20% exhausted. Under any other AV system they would be declared elected there and then, but for some never explained reason the Kent rules (or the person interpreting them) required the count to continue until the candidate had achieved 50% (even with two or more opponents) or all other candidates were excluded. This could result in pointless additional rounds in a count that added nothing to the outcome.

The idea seems to have been to ensure the eventual winner had the support of at least 50% of those voting (excluding the RON voters) but it made no difference to the outcome and in any case very few people paid attention to the actual voting figures. It also didn't really address what would happen if the winner didn't have the backing of 50% of those voting, and a new election would have made little sense when that very option was on the ballot paper and rejected. In practice in a close final two on transfers the winner indeed lacked 50% but this made no difference anyway.

Fortunately in a subsequent constitutional rewrite attempts to re-invent the wheel were abandoned and standard rules imported.

One other bizarre case came in elections for the University of London Union. These saw frequent problems and frustrations despite (or more likely because of) a permanent returning officer and the rules followed could often change from year to year. In general the ULU rules treated the RON option like any other candidate but in one year someone decided that RON could not be excluded and thus the entire count was run with other candidates eliminated in succession until the last candidate standing, who had significantly more votes than RON. Maybe someone was trying a system to see if the winner was acceptable to all voters, but it's another recipe for a mess, and when it had been arbitarily imposed with no discussion whatsoever it added to the impression that the running of ULU elections was a complete farce. In subsequent elections this impression has not dispersed.

The Kent Union result

Whilst I'm posting, I've just noticed I never mentioned the result of the referendum at the University of Kent. (On trustee boards for students' unions) The referendum took place which is a change from my days there - I seem to remember Alix Wolverson constantly announcing (or failing to announce) that a referendum petitioned for had been cancelled for one reason or another - and the results were:

"Should Kent Union increase the number of Trustees from 5 to 9, including two elected student members and two appointed lay members?".

Votes for Yes: 250

Votes for No: 95

Spoilt Ballot Papers: 1

(Source: Kent Union: Referendum Result)

Without knowing how strong the campaigns were it's hard to tell if this turnout is good or bad compared to other elections, although I can remember some absolutely pathetic turnouts (just 38 students in one of them - albeit with only four hours of polling and virtually no publicity or campaigning).

One point to note is that the two current student members will be directly elected - I have heard of some elsewhere in the country advocating that it would be wrong to do so and that instead a selection process should be used "because elections may get it wrong". (Bizarrely they are often elected Union officers speaking against the exact same process that put them in their current posts.) I'd be interested to know how they could justify such a course given the 1994 Education Act's requirement for major office bearers to be elected by all student ballot, rather than selected by some "jobs for the boys" process.

On trustee boards for students' unions

Currently one of the big issues consuming a lot of time at many students' unions across the country are the recent changes to Charity Law, including the requirement to have clearcut definitions of trustees. There are a lot of myths flying around about what the act does and doesn't require, and frankly some attempts to sneakily slip through other changes that are not required by charity law, but this isn't really the place to discuss those.

One common proposal is to have a trustee board, made up of a mixture of some Union officers, some ordinary elected students and external experts. My former students' union, Kent Union, is currently holding a referendum on such a model and, although I've not been following the internals of Kent Union for the last few years, I have to say this proposal is a strong improvement on the current set-up.

The last major constitutional rewrite (carried out in 2001-2002 by a working party including myself) frankly really only rearranged some officer positions, modified the decision making bodies to be practicable and semi-admitted that de facto the university and student body isn't really collegiate anymore (see my past comments on this in From Vision to Reality), but didn't really grapple with some of the more basics such as the often difficult relationship between democracy and charity law. This was because none of us on the working group really knew very much about the details of it, even though there had been an incident over charity law at the start of the year.

The said incident would undoubtedly have been handled better under this proposed new set-up. The Union affiliated to the National Abortion Campaign in late 2000, with not a little controversy and one individual was determined to end the affiliation by any means possible. Flash forward to the start of the new year and the incoming President Alix Wolverson received a letter from said individual citing dodgily obtained legal advice and comments from someone at a Scottish students' association that said the affiliation was probably beyond the Union's legal scope ("Ultra vires"). I know what some of you are thinking - Scotland has a different legal system so cases are not always automatically precedents for England & Wales. And "is probably" is not clear cut advice.

However the decision on this was taken by what was then the "Finance and General Purposes Committee" made up of just the six sabbatical officers. They didn't all have a training in law (from recollection at least five if not all six weren't even law students) and some didn't even know what a Constitution was (including Alix Wolverson, the President!). As a result a decision to disaffiliate got taken which proved messy because a) those dissenting didn't agree with the advice or its basis; b) the committee didn't actually have the powers to make this decision under the constitution; c) the decision was announced to the wider student body (and even the executive) in a very bad way, with the result that very few even understood the reasoning behind the decision; and d) there were subsequently attempts to reinstate the motion, including one that said that the Union should go all the way through the courts over this affiliation. (The fee was a mere £65 - all perspective was lost!)

Had there been a properly defined trustee board with expert members on it, and with continuity from year to year, then both the original decision to affiliate and the subsequent decision to disaffiliate would have been subject to expert advice and opinion from the outset, the mechanics would have been a lot easier to explain to the Union at large and it's probable that one of the two decisions would not have been made. Whilst diehards will always be diehards, the Union as a whole could have got on with more important matters without having to deal with a lot of bad feelings because of the way the matter was (mis)handled).

On Christian Unions and Students' Unions

As both a Christian and a Students' Union officer it was almost inevitable that I'd write something on the current row in the media and the blogosphere about the current clash between several university Christian Unions and their Student's Unions.

One of the things that stands out the most is that this issue has been very badly reported and I suspect some have misrepresented the position they are in to increase their apparent "victim status". I can't comment on the individual cases without further knowledge (although as a colleague and friend works at Birmingham I have heard some of the details of the situation there) but some of the issues are quite commonplace across the board.

First off these are not cases of "banning" but rather the Students' Unions are disaffiliating the Christian Unions from the union. Society affiliation is basically the formal means by which a society at a university applies and qualifies for access to students' union society resources, which variously include funding, cheap or free room bookings, the SU acting as a guarantor on booking rooms from the university, a website on the SU server, maybe a voting member of the Societies' Forum or Union Council (depending upon how the Students' Union governance is structured) and so forth. In order to qualify for this, there are often a number of requirements set down by the Students' Union that societies must meet. These invariably include:

*The society must be open to membership by all students
*Conformity to equal opportunities and non-discriminatory practices
*The society officers (who are the ones who will be determining how the students' union resources are being used) must be democratically elected by the members of the society
*A minimum number of members (sometimes more than one minimum, related to the levels of funding available)
*Not substantially duplicating another society already in existence

And often some or all of the first three cause problems for Christian Unions. If one comment I've seen on a blog today is true then for years the Universities and Colleges' Christian Fellowship (the national body for Christian Unions) used to have a policy that Christian Unions would not affiliate to Students' Unions. In a somewhat ironic position given the current row, the UCCF would disbar any Christian Union that did.

When I was at the University of Kent the Christian Union there was not affiliated to the Students' Union and, as far as I could see, had no intention to. Whether they had tried to in years past I do not know, but in my day the attitude of the CU was that affiliating would be incompatible as they did not wish to elect their officers, instead having the outgoing officers and some outsiders select the new ones, they would have to drop the requirement for members to sign the UCCF Doctrinal statement (see here for more details, albeit from a critical source) to be open to membership by all students and some other reasons relating to the way they raised and spent money. Also they weren't the only Christian group on campus - others such as the Anglican Society (later "Christian Focus") and the (Roman) Catholic Society were in strong existence and were open to membership by all students. Indeed there were a number of students (mainly reading Theology but also some with friends in several societies) who were members of both, as well as of the Islamic Society.

It seems the Kent problems weren't unique - at Reading it appears there were tensions between the SU and CU, not helped by some in the UCCF apparently spreading scare stories and encouraging confrontation. However an agreed relationship between the two bodies was worked out that is now praised by both UCCF staff members and the current Reading SU President.

Unfortunately not all have pursued a constructive policy and I suspect that much of the current uproar stems from confrontationalists once again spreading misleading advice and encouraging a hardline stance.

The other issue that comes up the most in clashes between CUs and SUs is equal opportunities. Many have felt the Christian Union is not always preaching tolerance - I can recall reports of moments when they have said "We pray against Muslims" and many have found their position on homosexuality to be deeply and proactively intolerant. This is a much harder issue to comment on without knowing the facts, but if true then the societies are promoting intolerance and it is right for the students' union to deny affiliation, funds and resources because of this.

One other point that has been raised is that the actions against Christian Unions are somehow "anti-Christian". But many critics of CUs are to be found amongst Christians. Indeed when the Warwick CU was disaffiliated from the SU some years ago, it was members of Christian Focus who were amongst the most prominent supporters of the move. Many Christians at universities find the CU to be very narrow in their doctrine, being only evangelical protestant but claiming to be a body for "all Christians".

Unfortunately much of the media seems to be spinning the story as one of secular fanatics persecuting innocent Christians. Will they ever get their facts straight?

From Vision to Reality

Recently whilst commuting to and from the campus I've been reading the history of my alma mater, From Vision to Reality: The Making of the University of Kent at Canterbury by Graham Martin (the University's first Dean of Natural Sciences and second Deputy Vice Chancellor). The book is a fascinating insight into the origins of the University and some of its distinctive ideas, several of which had either been modified or fallen away by the time I first started there (nearly a decade after it was published).

Much of the focus is understandably on the 1960s, showing how the plans came together, how Canterbury was one of several proposed sites, all with ardent backers and developing plans. When Martin writes that the proposal for a University of Thanet was "furthest along the road" my reaction is that so is Thanet! One of the reasons why I opted for Kent in the end is its location - the view of Canterbury is gorgeous (especially at night when the Cathedral is lit up) and I wonder if I would have wound up going to Thanet had it been sited there instead. The university's original strange name is also explained - at the time the practice in the UK was to name universities after the town whose boundaries they were located in, but the Canterbury campus straddled the border between the-then county borough (a unitary authority in case you're wondering) of Canterbury and the jurisdiction of Kent County Council. With sponsors of the project coming from both "town" and "county" there was much debate and the Executive Committee of the Sponsors was split 50:50 between "University of Canterbury" and "University of Kent at Canterbury". (The chairperson declined to use the casting vote as he was clearly from the county - I wonder if this is the origin of the cautious attitude to casting votes that is particularly strong at the University.) Then it became clear that it would not be possible to have the same name as another university in the Commonwealth. The name persisted for decades even when expansion opened up a site at Chatham, but was finally officially changed to the simpler "University of Kent" three years ago (I think my MA graduation was the last under the old name) when the Medway campus was established. By this time local government changes had replaced the county borough of Canterbury with a much larger district, but Medway is now within a unitary authority! One wonders if this caused any headscratching...

One of the more radical ideas that stands out is the original academic plan to have no Departments below the Faculties and to make all degrees to an extent inter-disciplinary, with the first year by and large being a faculty wide program of study. The idea soon fell to pieces because of problems in individual subjects - for instance new students reading Maths often hadn't taken Chemistry at A-Level and vice versa, meaning that a lot of catch-up work would be required - and eventually the drift towards individual Departments for each subjects and specialised first years developed. Martin speculates that it would take a fundamental restructuring of the way A-Levels are operated for such an inter-disciplinary approach to work. That said the idea is not totally dead - in my first year we were only required to pick half our modules in our subjects and encouraged to take wilds in the other half. And the Open University has a similar interdisciplinary drive in at least the Humanities with most of its BA degrees including the course An Introduction to the Humanities as a core element.

It's also interesting to note that the University's Classics and Theology teaching seems to have come about because of external decisions rather than a specific desire to offer those subjects at the outset. The man recruited to be the first Dean of Humanities, Guy Chilver, was a Classicist from Oxford and so that committed the university; whilst similarly the first appointed Master of Eliot College, Alec Whitehouse, was a Theologian from Durham. I found it surprising that there was ever any doubt about teaching Theology, given the location, but it seems that from the start there was a strong secular drive in certain quarters. The University's religious connections have never been great - the choice of the Archbishop of Canterbury as Visitor was more in mimic of Durham (the University that Kent seemed to copy the most) whilst the view of the Cathedral from Eliot and Rutherford dining halls that was once cited as "evidence" that the institution as anti-semitic by an article in the Jewish Chronicle was frankly the obvious only choice and clearly preferable to the alternative of a gasometer. Holding the graduation ceremonies in Canterbury Cathedral has provided their main redeeming feature.

One of the interesting, and at times controversial, aspects of Kent has been its "collegiate" system. Of all the UK universities that I'm aware of with "colleges" (the others being Wales, London, Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, Lancaster, York), Kent has always struck me as having the weakest. Reading this book it's easy to understand what went wrong. The original idea was to combine accommodation and teaching in single buildings as a means to cut down on dead space, and at the same time to create vibrant academic communities. As note above there were planned to be no Departments, so the College would be unrivaled as the right sized unit for students' loyalties. Each was expected to have about 600 students and equivalently proportioned staff, with about half living in the college itself (and the rest in local accommodation arranged by the university) and all eating and studying there. Every student would be allocated a tutor to oversee them (remember that in 1965 most undergraduates would be legally below the age of majority) and the Master of the College was expected to be a significant figure in their university lives. It also seems that the early view of the colleges was almost like a boarding school with separate houses. However the plan quickly fell apart.

The university's expansion was always planned to be one of the fastest for a new university, but funds for new colleges did not keep up and the result was that only four were ever built. In later years when there was further demand for student accommodation in Canterbury the solution was not to build further colleges but to build non college accommodation. As a result the proportion of students who actually live within the College walls is ever smaller. The hopes that students living out would stay on campus, studying in their colleges, until dinner rapidly proved to be futile. More and more operations and facilities have shifted from the Colleges to the central university over the years, whether alumni relations, the tutorial system, accommodation services, catering (with some dining halls closed and even completely dismantled) and so forth, whilst the abolition of College amenities fees has removed the student's direct stake in their College. With very few college wide activities or competitions, as well as the rise of the Departments, it is little wonder that very few students or later alumni feel much loyalty to their college. (And to make it even more absurd, many graduates who have returned for postgraduate study have been placed in a different college suggesting that even the University isn't too fussed.) Indeed I now understand that accommodation is allocated irregardless of one's college - one wonders what purpose the structure serves at all now.

(I do remember that in my MA year the Students' Union Executive were at one point asked by the University to write a report on what students felt about the collegiate system. It rapidly proved the point that the view a committee will reach can often be preguessed by its ex-officio membership - containing all of the Presidents of the Junior College Committees amongst others. The SU President (Alix Wolverson) was a former President of the JCC in the one College where some semblance of collegiate feeling still resided and where there was a big event put on by the JCC. So she decided at the outset that we would tell the University why colleges were a good thing and told dissenters - mainly myself - that we should be "constructive" - i.e. agree with her personal opinion.)

One other chapter of interest is the one on how the University has coped with crises. Starting with the collapse of the old Canterbury to Whitstable Railway tunnel, destroying part of the Cornwallis Building in the process, Martin proceeds to look at some of the poor press coverage the university has received and explain the problems (one stemmed from a return for league tables inadvertently giving the grades for graduate students not graduating students and this error proved impossible to correct in time). He also briefly looks at some of the student protests. There is a widespread myth of the 1960s and 1970s as being an era of student protest when students were seeking to change the world, yet the protests at Kent seem to have been by and large because of either university or government education policies. Given the paternalistic attitude that the University had in the early years one can well understand the protests as a consequence of broader clashes in society, and some of the issues would doubtless elicit support today (e.g. seemingly unfair expulsions, unreasonable financial charges) even if the vehicle for expressing dissent would be different. However some show the change in attitudes - who today would object to the idea that students should be prevented from graduating if they still have outstanding debts with the university?

Whilst this book never pretends to be an objective history, and as a UKC publication has the possible stigma of an "authorised account" it does nevertheless make for a fascinating and illuminating read.

The Tory Monday Club

As I promised earlier, here are my brief recollections of the Tory Monday Club from my days as an undergraduate at the University of Kent. I've left names out as, with one exception, I have no idea where they are now.

Many years ago now the Kent University Conservative Association experienced several of the problems that all political societies experience at one point or another, albeit altogether at once. In the 1999/2000 year membership increased hugely (to the irritation of the now deceased Kent Labour Club who drifted into extinction over the next two years) but with it came a number of individuals who were to cause problems. Amongst them was one who frankly fitted the stereotype of the tweed jacket Tory (and I use that word deliberately) with ideas that even people in Lord Salisbury's Conservative party would have been ashamed to be associated with. However he rarely expressed them at first.

When the annual round of officer elections came up that January we had the unenviable situation of two strong candidates for Chairperson. One was the above mentioned, the other was the sitting Secretary. The election threatened to turn into the classic "should the society be primarily a political force or a good political/social body" that almost all political societies face at one point. The meeting was literally divided down the middle - the first ballot tied. After two hours of discussing how to break a tie (no-one in those days seemed to realise there is such a thing as drawing lots - it's good enough for deciding control of Crawley council!). Eventually the tie was broken against him but over the next six months the division in the society continued. The loser was not especially gracious at times and at one point over the next few months went and caused a lot of deliberate confusion by setting up a dining club and making no attempt to dispel confusion.

For some reason I forget now we had to have another set of elections that June. This time round there was a suspicious influx of new members signing up just before the meeting (the rules of qualifying to vote were changed not long after) as well as a mixture of mud throwing and charm offensives. The same candidates stood and this time round the guy won. Over the vacation it rapidly became clear what a big mistake this had been.

All membership organisations require members to survive and university societies especially need to recruit new members every year, with so many existing ones graduating. Nearly everybody understood this and several months of preparation for the new year had been made, including getting a number of high profile speakers as well as the more mundane preparation for the Freshers' Fair. But the new Chairperson was one of the few who didn't, believing instead that the society should be a handful of political obsessives "who are committed", believing that they would seek the society out. Matters were not further helped by his decision not to return to Canterbury until the day of Freshers' Fair itself, lying that he couldn't travel beforehand. (This was the time of the fuel protests but he was traveling by train.) Consequently other officers had to put the whole thing together and it went well, apart from the Chairperson turning up in the middle of things and wanting to start displaying flags that a lot of us were uncomfortable with.

Subsequently over the next few weeks divisions and feuds continued, even though our membership was so large we were having problems finding a room that could seat everyone. What the new members made of all this I'm not sure but there were a lot of nasty things said and some of the meetings were uncomfortable.

It also didn't help that our external image was being damaged. The height came at a students' union general meeting. Some of us had tabled a motion for a campaign for better lighting on campus. But during the meeting the Chairperson and his little coterie of mates called quorum and invalidated the meeting because they wanted a laugh. It provoked a lot of hostile media coverage, both on and off campus, and brought things to a head. A lot of members who weren't at the meeting were given a very distorted account of things.

Matters came to a head at the society meetings afterwards. There was a lot of arguing and one resignation at the first. Then by the second the following week we had the spectacles of the local party agent turning up, most of the officers (myself included) agreeing to a joint resignation if we couldn't force the hands and the announcement that the Chairperson was leaving to form a new group, not affiliated to the students' union, that would be more political. A good number left with him.

Over the next few weeks it became increasingly clear to a few of us just what "the Tory Monday Club" actually was, though some of the members were still ignorant, having joined out of ties of friendship and personalities. But at the students' union annual general meeting the following written question was submitted and answered:

(From the minutes.)
Q: Georgios Charambalos to the Executive: Are you aware of the following:
-That recently an organisation was formed on campus calling itself the Tory Monday Club?
-That it is named after an extreme right-wing, anti-decolonisation, pro-apartheid organisation formed in the 1960s with strong links to the National Front and opposed to non-white immigration?
-That **** ****, the chairman of the TMC, has frequently been overheard around campus making derogatory comments that have deeply insulted and upset many people for their racist, homophobic, sexist and generally insulting tone, such as openly proclaiming that any LGB person who is out should get back in the closet immediately, regardless of the pain such a situation causes?
-That **** ****, his right-hand man, has also been frequently overheard making such insulting and upsetting comments including the frequent reference to numerous black women as Mrs Buthelezi?
-That **** ****, Press and Propaganda Officer of the TMC, has recently posted messages to the newsgroup ukc.misc implying that the AIDS epidemic is the fault of homosexual and bisexual people?
-That the three individuals named above have persistently sought to cause the maximum disruption and chaos on campus, such as the last Union General Meeting when they called "count"?
-That many people have found these statements and actions by members of the TMC to be deeply upsetting?
-That the leaders of the TMC have frequently taken advantage of other students' lack of full knowledge of a situation to present an extremely inaccurate and highly biased point of view to present themselves in a favourable light when challenged over any controversial situation?
-That on several occasions the leaders of the TMC have been informed about the fear and upset that they have generated and asked to correct the information but on each occasion their response has been either personal abuse aimed at the questioner or to come out with ridiculous comments along the lines of "Most students are just here to inject themselves" or "Is this just left-wing bias?"?
-Are you aware of all this?
-What does the Executive intend to do, given the serious nature of the situation?

A: Seb Martineau [SU President]: States that in the previous year a No Platform motion was rejected so people with upsetting views can state them. It is up to every member of SU to respond appropriately. Exercises freedom of speech to state that he thinks these people are "sad, twisted, despicable little bigots."

Despite being by far the longest question I've ever heard submitted and read out, it generated a huge standing ovation, as did the President's response. The Tory Monday Club's response to this was weak and this led to a couple more members leaving, having now realised what they had joined. From there onwards the Club drifted into obscurity and eventually faded away.

Meanwhile Kent University Conservative Association is still going strongly to this day.

That's the main bones of it, although there's a lot of detail that could have been added, including some of the nastiness that went back and forth. But nowadays it's all in the past and everyone's graduated so I'm surprised anyone's even searching for it.

Helen Symons' retirement from student representation

As some of you may know I've been a student officer representing students for some years now. Student politics can at times seem absurd to those looking from outside, but it has its many ups and downs. There are many people involved from across the political spectrum.

Today Helen Symons, the current National Union of Students' national Welfare officer, has posted her last blog upon her retirement.

Helen's blog can currently be found at http://www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/helensymons/270937.aspx but I've followed Jo Salmon's lead in reproducing it here so that everyone can read and comment on it. (My comments are at the bottom.)

Well, a final blog. I'm actually finding it quite hard deciding what to say. I wrote a six page essay on how saddened I am by the decline of politics in NUS the other day, but then decided no-one would read to the end!

I was never the biggest fan of blogging in the first place, in my view it takes up NEC time that would be better spent doing our jobs. When people moan about not getting replies to emails from NEC, remember, they're probably blogging or writing a report and plan or some other document that nobody will ever read….

I think I'm just going to make a few observations on NUS at the moment, and then say a few thank-yous, then shut up.

Firstly, NUS is not a nice place to work. If you're not in the leadership's pocket, you can forget it. NEC find out about virtually everything last, and debate and opposition are stifled. This year the NEC have been told again and again that we have to show some leadership and make difficult decisions about the future of NUS. Well, if we had ever been given the financial information we needed to do that, we'd have done it a lot quicker.

I've seen NUS from both sides, from being very close to Mandy to being distinctly less close to Kat, and I have to say it's difficult to tell the difference in presidential style from different viewpoints. But my instinct is that it has become more centralised, and that it has become harder for NEC to make their voices heard. Mandy certainly didn't have an inbuilt majority on the NEC, and lost lots of votes, but I never saw her so terrified of not getting her own way that she resorted to political threats. At least Labour Students acknowledge that NUS is a democratic organisation and you can't win everything.

Secondly, I'm sure many of the people reading this will have an instinctive mistrust of Labour Students and factions. Let me just say, that not once has there been a conflict of interest between my role as VP Welfare and my politics. I was happy to oppose the parts of the Housing Act that left students unprotected, and more than happy to criticise prescription charges that leave students without access to healthcare, and under investment in sexual healthcare that means some people have to wait 6 weeks for an appointment.

The reason there was no conflict was because it is my principles that make me a socialist and a member of the Labour Party, and those same principles that make me care about student welfare. I would not have done one thing differently if I had stood as an independent instead of a Labour Student.

I'm not going to go on any more about politics, but please ask yourselves if it's better to have NEC members who are honest about their principles, and honest about organising together. I was in the same smoke-filled rooms as those independent NEC members who got elected on a platform of faction-bashing, and I know for a fact that they did deals for votes. There's no such thing as a true independent, and at least some of us are honest about it.

Enough of all that, anyway. I want to say a few thank-yous before I head off...

First, to the staff of NUS. You are amazing and NUS would not exist without you and your dedication. I want to say a special thank-you to the Welfare Unit and the other staff who have supported me professionally and personally this year – I wouldn't have got through it without you.

To my comrades in Labour Students, a huge thank you.

Ben – I love you to bits, and you have made me so proud this year. You have put up with so much. Whatever you did or didn't say in your leaving speech, I would like to put on record that I am disgusted by the lies that were told about you, and disgusted by the year-long campaign of bullying that you've put up with.

Mel Ward and Jenny Duncan – You two are fantastic and will both do wonderful things. It's been a privilege to work with such strong women, and Scotland should be proud of you both.

JK and 'Woo' – You two have put up with a hell of lot in Wales this year. In case anyone at Swansea, Cardiff or Aber reads this, believe you me, JK is as anti-fees as they come. If you didn't like the result of the Presidential election in NUS Wales this year, then tough luck. Attempting to bully JK out of the job is not going to do it. Thank you both for all your support.

Smith and Jones – Thank you for being my boys on the Block this year, believe me, I know how crappy it is. Jones, you will be marvellous at everything you do, and Smith, you'd better be bloody brilliant as Chair of NOLS next year, cuz we really need you.

Wesley – Big hugs, you are so talented and you’ve been a wee star this year.

Jude and Jimmy – You are going to be fabulous next year too, I hope you enjoy it.

To all my comrades – I look forward to white wine together while you sit and tell me all the NUS gossip next year! The NOLS Office also deserve a huge thank you. You’ve had to put up with me and a General Election, which is quite a feat! Hug – what can I say? Bless you! Claire and Ollie – thank you for calming me down at regular intervals. I promise to sign up to Friends of NOLS asap!!!

A few thank-yous to the people who were NOLSies before me and have helped me get through this year. Mandy, Douglas and Karim – you have all been amazing and I can't say thank you enough.

There have been some people I've enjoyed working with this year, and others I really haven’t (don’t worry, I don't plan on naming them…).

Jo Salmon and Antonia Bance – You’re two of the only people with politics left. You are true comrades and true feminists and it’s been wonderful working with you.

Alan – You have put up with more crap and more bad luck than anyone else this year! I hope you enjoy your life outside NUS. Good luck to Daniel Randall, the NEC needs AWL people to keep it political.

Pav – You are wonderful and always keep me entertained. Best of luck next year and please work with the NOLSies to keep NUS a socialist organisation and a campaigning organisation.

Finally I want to say a few words about UJS. I am genuinely ashamed about what has happened this year. Anti-Semitism has gone ignored and unchecked, and you should be proud of the stand you took. Danny, Luc, Mitch and Jonny, it's been a real honour to work with you all, and I want to say thank you from me and from Labour Students for opening our eyes and our hearts to Israel and to your faith. I hope we can keep working together.

Well, I guess that's farewell then from me. Best of luck to the new NEC, and I hope you remember what NUS is for, because I think some people have forgotten. Don't let it take another step to the right, because that's not the NUS we all know and love. If anyone wants to stay in touch, my email will be helensymons@yahoo.com and once I've sorted a new mobile out I'll be happy to distribute the number (to some of you!).

Byeeeeeee. X x x

The NUS and students' unions in general can be an extremely bitchy place at times, so it may surprise some to learn that there is a lot of genuine respect for many. Almost everyone who stands for the NUS National Executive Committee knows that they are putting themselves up for a nightmare.

There's quite a bit of Helen's blog that I don't agree with, but it wouldn't be fair to post a point by point response when she has already said this is her last posting. However whilst I agree that there is nothing wrong with a student officer holding political opinions and acting on them - indeed to the contrary this often makes for many of the best - I do think that Labour Students are now experiencing a deserved backlash that has been building up for years. Maybe it's my age, but I know people who can remember the years when NUS was run by people like Jim Murphy, Lorna Fitsimmons and Stephen Twigg - until recently all three were Labour MPs - when NUS often seemed to be acting against the student interest. The abandonment of the opposition to abolishing student grants (the justification given was that this would fill the funding gap in Higher Education and so tuition fees would never be introduced!!!), the welcoming of the introduction of tuition fees and, more recently, the weak fight against top-up fees (on the day of the crucial vote some actions by the NUS leadership were close to surrender when they could have swayed the three MPs necessary) have all sewn a lot of distrust of Labour Students. It is a pity that Helen was the one holding the baby at the point when the backlash came in force.

More widely a culture has developed that "political" is bad - I remember one person who was a students' union President (Alix Wolverson at Kent 2001-2002) who was very proud to proclaim they "didn't do politics" despite holding the most political post of an organisation that is by its nature political. It is a worrying sign when some of the most educated people in the country are turning their back on "politics" as being able to solve the problems that affect ordinary students. Apathy is a worrying disease that is sapping credibility and somehow something needs to be done to turn it around. Those who have the ideas might want to try them in the sudent movement and see if they can harness the energies there as a first step...