Networking with the National Union of Students (NUS Networks Week)

Apologies for the late post - it is the end of the year here at Abertay so I've just come out of an extensive exam period. On top of this however, I had another treat. I spent last Monday in Aberdeen (my home town) for NUS Scotland's Community Network and the Thursday of that week at Dundee College's Gardyne Campus for their Priority Network.

I'll (attempt to) keep this one brief as it's late, I have a million things to do as usual and the networks themselves are a rather dry topic. The networks are admittedly rather hard to pin down, they aren't democratic events - i.e. we don't elect people to go to them and they don't decide NUS Scotland Policy, however their purpose is, without a doubt, to influence this policy.  The simplest way of saying it is that they're a chance for the NUS Scotland Executive Committee to see if what they're doing is along the lines of what members are thinking.

Community first then, a large part of which was discussing the strengths and weaknesses of various Unions' Local Authority Election campaigns, our own campaign was relatively low key - focusing primarily on getting students in Abertay Halls registered to vote but there were plenty of good tricks shared amongst other unions. In fact, I was quite interested to hear that some universities automatically register all students in their halls to vote - something that I'll be looking into with my free time over the summer.

The voice your vote campaign is a
great example of Unions working together.

Another interesting thing to note, the Local Authority Elections are important to all students and all students in a city can break the things they want from an election down into roughly the same categories. This was proven by how well these campaigns were picked up by Glasgow and Edinburgh Student Forums. (Note: student forums are collections of all/most Students' Associations in a certain region) With a population of students that could easily swing a local council election, Dundee is in a prime position to form a Student Forum such as this, in my opinion. In the past year Abertay's relationship with it's neighbouring Associations has gone from strength to strength, lets hope we can keep this momentum going and run a joint campaign for the good of all students in Dundee or Tayside.

The Future of Scotland aims to help you make your mind up.

Apart from Local Authority Elections the pre-dominant issue was Scottish Independence, particularly the Future of Scotland website.  For clarity's sake, as I know there has been a small bit of confusion from the public previously. NUS Scotland does not currently hold a stance on Scottish Independence - in fact, it's currently looking into how it can look into whether or not to take a stance. It's for that reason there was a lot of concern over the website, in its current state some people feel it looks biased in favour of independence. Which - it's safe to say - it is not, the purpose of the site is to create a dialogue around independence without taking sides - to show both sides of the campaign in full for everyone to understand and make their own mind up. Personally, I'm happy with NUS' affiliation with the project and, whether or not a slight change of branding is necessary to ensure it is viewed as the unbiased resource it is, it is clear that there is a strong need for this kind of information and I look forward to working on how best to bring a Future of Scotland event to Dundee should the opportunity present itself.

So what about Priorities? We got more nitty-gritty here and one of the main discussions was Outcome Agreements - All Universities in Scotland are going to be required to create Outcome Agreements with the Scottish Funding Council in 2012. The 2 key aims for these agreements will be Widening Access and Retention which means for NUS and SA's across Scotland these Outcome Agreements are a great chance for us to get the University on board with widening access, retention and wherever else problems may lie and, of course, offer our support in hitting the targets we help to set.

The second subject of Priorities was the NUS UK Demo - at NUS Conference - a motion passed calling for a National Demonstration to be held in the Autumn Term of 2012. That is a London march of students from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. However the message of the protest has yet to be revealed and this will impact on its relevance to Scottish students and subsequently our ability to get Scottish students to attend. The question that was discussed was mainly just how much time and resource should be devoted to it by NUS Scotland, separately from NUS UK.

Of course, policy and debates are just one half of NUS and as ever it was great to meet fellow Officers from across Scotland. Glad to say I made a few new friends and caught up with a few old ones, also got a tour of Aberdeen Union, visited RGU: Union and attempted to poison half of Aberdeen College Students' Association. Unfortunately Dundee College SA were mid-elections when we visited so I didn't get an opportunity to meet their officers but I did meet the Student Engagement (or was that Liaison) Officer who'll be working with them. So thanks to AUSA, ACSA, Dundee College SA, James Watt College SA, the many, many other SA's who showed up and Robin, Graeme, Phil and Heff from NUS for a very enjoyable week. 

P.S. I officially do not understand the meaning of brief!