Martin's Blog

This time next week, a little bit of student history will have been made in Oxford. On Wednesday morning, along with other OUSU representatives, I’ll be attending the Nominating Committee for the Vice Chancellor – the committee charged with selecting the next VC of the University, replacing John Hood in September 2009.

Picking a VC is a little like picking a Pope. A number of well established senior members of the organisation retreat behind closed doors and deliberate on the question of who will lead the University over the next five-year term. Rumours of who is under consideration may fly around, but the successful candidate is not revealed until their name is put to Congregation for approval.

Unlike the Papal Election, however, there have been some refreshing nods to modernity this time around. Firstly, the Committee are employing the help of headhunters to assist them in the worldwide search for the new VC. Secondly, they opened up the process slightly to members of the University community, by allowing submissions to a dedicated email address – nomcomm@admin.ox.ac.uk - about the qualities people want to see in the new VC.

Both changes are to be welcome, but they still don’t go far enough. Other Universities – both in the UK and internationally – have been including Students, staff representatives and others on selection committees for years. At Universities in the Netherlands, student representatives are so integrated into the process of selection that they can veto appointments to many posts and the entire budget of their institutions. The fact that the membership of the Committee at the moment almost exclusively comes from among the senior academic community is shocking.

Academics should, of course, make up the bulk of the Committee (reflecting the fact that Oxford is a self-governing academic Community), but the decision of who will lead this organisation should be taken collectively by students, staff and members of wider society through external members brought in on the basis of their expertise.

For me, this is one of the “key qualities” that the Vice Chancellor is going to need to possess: an ability to formulate and implement radical changes to the governance of the University that seeks to include all parties in the decision making process. There has to be an understanding that process and policy discussed on committees ultimately impacts on students across the University and that consultation with those groups is essential for long-term success.

In inviting student representatives to the committee for the first time, they are recognising that student views are important. The next logical step is to accept that the importance merits a place on the Committee. This will be a point I’ll be making at the meeting next week, and I hope they take on board for future Nominating Committees.

To maintain our standing as a “world class” institution, we need to not only compare our educational experience with those of our international competitors, but also our structures and processes. Integrating students into the decision making process is an essential part of that.

Last week, I spent most of my time in Blackpool with 11 other Oxford students at NUS Conference. You might remember voting for NUS Delegates in Michaelmas; it's more likely, however, that you don't really know what NUS Conference is or why it's important. For most students, their greatest contact with NUS is through the discount card that they get at the start of the year or occasionally reading about it in the Newspaper. To most students, in a nutshell, NUS seems distant and irrelevant.

The biggest battle at last week’s conference was about tackling that head on and addressing how NUS can become more relevant to students around the country. This might sound rather pessimistic – as if NUS doesn’t do anything useful at the moment. That’s not the case. NUS Officers do a great job in representing the interests of students nationally. Look no further than the 2004 Top Up Fees vote when they managed to bring the government within five votes of defeat for the first time in seven years, or in the work they’ve been doing recently to increase transparency and fairness in the provision of student housing by Universities and private landlords. There are some issues – most often where government is concerned  - where NUS can really do things that OUSU, JCRs or MCRs could never manage.

However, recent years have seen the National Union’s policymaking process go from bad to worse, with special interests taking over to the detriment of ordinary students. This year, Conference considered governance reforms which were aimed at making the organisation more efficient, transparent and – most importantly – representative. It would have got rid of the unwieldy annual conference and introduced a more accessible Congress, where policy decisions would be focussed on outcomes instead of debate for the sake of it. Liberation campaigns would have been strengthened with more full time officers and dedicated support. There would have been more scrutiny over policy with individual conferences for each policy area. In short, the reforms sought to bring NUS up-to-date and more responsive to what's going on in Student Unions accross the Country.

Like any radical change, the proposals had their fair share of critics who accused the NUS leadership of “stifling democracy” and not consulting with Students properly (depite a year long consultation and numerous trips by NUS Officers to explain the changes to Student and SU Officer). In the end, the proposals were defeated by groups from the extreme left of the student movement who, in my opinion, put their own concerns ahead of those of the NUS or of the students they were meant to be there representing. Despite the fact that 65% of the Conference voted for the changes, the proposals needed two-thirds to pass and those in favour of reform have been left scratching their heads wondering where to go next.

Nevertheless, the news wasn’t all bad. NUS now has a sensible Higher Education Funding policy for the first time in years, defined targets for its campaigning over the next year and a good set of new officers (including former CUSU President Wes Streeting who was elected as NUS President) to lead the organisation through to 2009.

The failure of the NUS Governance Reforms was a disappointment and one that has left the student movement in a weaker position as we enter a critical period for students in the UK. Next year, the government starts to review Higher Education Fees and, once again, the role of NUS is going to be essential. If we don’t have a National Union that is fit for purpose and able to deliver for the needs of its members, we stand to lose out again. The case for reform has never been stronger.

When I ran for OUSU President, I said I was going to write a blog. I even insisted that Griff, our web developer, make blogging part of this new website when it launched in October of last year. Since then, pressures on time threw blogging to the bottom of the 'To Do' list. I figure, however, that starting during a vacation when things are much quieter will then give me some impetus to continue writing when the term starts all over again in a few weeks.

I'm not going to promise that this blog will bring any great insights, however, I hope that it might become a forum for discussion on issues from inside the University and from outside in the wider world of Higher Education and Student Unionism. It might also help to answer that question of "You're OUSU President? So, what exactly do you do?" that I get far too often.

Yes, this is probably coming far too late and I should probably have taken James' example and started long ago, but I think it's better late than never!