Hey everyone,

I am very late to be blogging for the first time, i know. However, better late then never. (I apologies for the length)

I will start with a quick review of what I have done so far this year, with a brief outline of how that affects you, the students of Bournemouth University.

Throughout the year I have attended the weekly 'Exec meetings', this is where we decide on policy for the union, plan campaigns and make decisions regarding budgeting of the Union.

Last term I attended what the NUS (National Union of Students) called a 'strategic conversation', This was a joint conference between NUS, NUSSL (NUS Services Limited) and various student unions across the country. The point of this was to discuss developments affecting the future of student unions across the country, such as how a recession may impact commercial services which are the lifeblood of most unions. The conversation was lively around some possible scenarios which would mean large change for the running of unions in the future.

Another day, another conference, in November, in Wolverhampton there was an NUS Extraordinary conference, the point of this was to discuss the proposed new constitution for the NUS. The debate for this has gone on since the annual conference in April 2007, when a motion was passed to perform a wide ranging review on the governance of NUS. since then, in November 2007 a proposed constitution was put forward to an extraordinary conference and was passed by the required 2/3 majority. However any changes to the constitution must be ratified by a further 2/3 majority at a 2nd national conference and the new constitution fell short of that by less then 1%.
So back to November 2008, the constitution that was put forward and fell so closely just 6 months before was back on the table with some small, and some quite major changes. Again the constitution passed by much more then the 2/3 majority required.

Also last term I worked with the rest of the Exec committee with running the by-elections, these were very successful and we managed to fill the exec committee for the first time in many years. This means a great deal to students, the exec committee pass policy on a whole range of things, and so a full committee means that a wide range of students are being represented within the Student Union.

If that wasn't enough I also represented SUBU as a delegate at the NUS regional conference, the regional conference is a much less formal affair where, in our case, just the unions from the south (excluding London) meet. There is much more cross discussion at these conferences. This occasion I was at University of Surrey, where we talked about how unions around the south deal with issues affection their students as well as the ongoing funding debate. The other reason for these smaller conferences is to hold the National Executive (NEC) of the NUS to account on what they have been doing for unions around the country.

Other then all of that... I have got involved in campaigns, Volunteering, RAG, and getting out talking to students.

Right...take a breath...

Term 2.

This term started straight away with a second extraordinary conference. An extraordinary conference can only happen if 25 student unions around the country all call for it to talk about something important. Following the passing of the new constitution at the 1st extraordinary conference the SUBU exec discussed how important the new constitution was to a smooth running NUS, and ultimately more help to individual unions, and decided that we would call for the 2nd conference.
So on January the 20th we were back in Wolverhampton again, discussing the ratification. the debate was heated to say the least. both sides were very passionate for their side, even if the opposition to the new constitution were just recycling the old arguments that had been proved invalid time and time again.
Midway through the day, shortly after lunch just as the final speech was about to happen an event occurred that sickened most people in the room, invaded the space of all delegates and made the conference intimidating and inaccessible for a large number of people. This conference was midway through the conflict in Gaza, and a small group of delegates (about 30) decided they would steer the conference away from the much needed reform, and hijacked the conference stage with a 'peaceful' protest. They stood on the stage and shouted and chanted and were quite threatening to most people in the room, not least of which the quite large amount of Jewish students who get involved as NUS delegates, who felt incredibly threatened by this invasion.
I do not want to comment on the conflict itself, or whether the cause of these protesters was right, but their demonstration was totally unjustified, there was no discussion on the conflict and their methods ruined what should have been a great day for NUS democracy.
Once the issue with protesters on stage was dealt with, and we had lost nearly an hour of the day, we got to the vote on the ratification. The vote clearly sided with the for section, despite the fact there was no official count...you could have counted the against votes on your fingers and toes. This was a great win for NUS democracy and now means the NUS can concentrate on issue involving students, and not just their own internal structures.

The last big thing I took part in this term was the last ever NUS South regional conference (regional conferences have been scrapped under the new constitution in place of a much better system) the day was extremely understated with Bournemouth's 5 delegates being the 2nd largest group there (2nd only to the NUS NEC) and the majority of all the student delegates put together. The NUS ran workshops on how to tackle some major issues affecting unions and student on campus, and updated everyone on some of the major campaigns being run nationally.

That concludes the summing up for the first term and a bit. There is much much more going on over the next few weeks and months so I will try and be better and update more often.

One last thing, the SUBU Union General Meeting is tomorrow (12th Feb) at 10am in the Lees lecture theatre...please come along to talk about facebook bans, no parking and no platform, and much more.

Chris