Success at NUS: Representation policy is passed in North Wales!

Thursday 13-04-2023 - 15:03

Hi and welcome to my first blog post as SU VP! This one is a long one but is certainly has a brilliant outcome, as well as being a HUGE win for WGSU in the Welsh student movement, so keep reading!!!

Back in March 2023, myself, SU President Lauren Hole, and student delegate (and incoming VP) Maisie Head all travelled the Bangor SU for the NUS Wales Conference 2023. This one was a bit different to ones we have been to in the past as this was the first conference I had been to in the 3 years of being an NUS Wales delegate where WGSU had submitted a policy: Creating an equal balance of student voices throughout all of Wales at conference!

To give you some context, back in 2022, myself and Lauren went down to Cardiff in South Wales for the conference and found ourselves sat on a singular table with all the other delegates from North Wales, which was us and Bangor – we made up one table; whereas other SU’s had one table full of just their delegates. We soon realised we were highly outnumbered, and should any discussion arise about policies that affect South Wales, we don’t fully understand, and vice versa that we would not have a huge voice should we need to vote on anything affecting North Wales. Therefore, upon returning I decided to have conversations with previous sabbatical officers who had attended conferences in Wales and gathered that we in North Wales have been outnumbered for a while, and this even has an impact on the voting for NUS Wales President as this takes place at conference. I realised rather than complaining about the way we have felt for over 5 years, the best thing to do was to write this as a policy proposal to go forward to NUS Wales 2023 conference. Eeek!

A lot of conversations were had amongst myself and sabs from Bangor, as well as with current NUS Wales President, Orla Tarn who was so supportive throughout the whole process! It was a lot of work writing a policy that I knew would be controversial as well as making sure I had all the relevant statistics and facts and figures, as well as answers to tricky questions I knew I would face at conference, and a huge thank you goes out to Nyah Lower, Bangor SU President for all the mathematical help – there was a lot of numbers to crunch! We had proposed to fix the number of delegates able to attend conference from each SU at 6 (the number came from the number crunching!) so we knew that this would cause some uneasy discussions as some SU’s had 16 delegates. I definitely knew I would have to strongly back myself as well as what I was standing for when I went into a conference made up of two third of south Wales representatives!

The day came when we walked into the conference and we definitely had a mixed greeting! Some people were so ready to ask us questions and find out more in order to show their support, and others joked “oh you’re the policy proposers from Wrexham!” We definitely had a laugh about this afterwards! Can I just say how lovely EVERYONE was! Despite having differing views, everyone was super friendly, and we were able to have healthy discussions and even debates, it certainly tested my persuasive talking techniques! We were able to speak to different groups during the workshops and even continued these discussions into the evening of the first night! This was certainly the topic on everyone’s lips, as well as the cost-of-living-crisis of course! In the evening, those individuals who had proposed amendments for the policy met and we discussed for nearly an hour about what we wanted to put forward ahead of the debates the following day. We listened to everyone’s points and we were amazed with how many good and supportive ideas were coming from these South Wales institutes that we were more than happy to compromise and agree to these amendments going forward! We all left happy, checked into our rooms and got ready for dinner and awards!

At the awards evening, it was a lovely atmosphere where President Orla agreed that there shouldn’t be one winner due to it being such a tough year, and we had all done amazingly well to get where we are now – therefore we all won certificates of recognition for our hard work! WGSU have got 2 that are framed and our in our SU Sabb office – one for Sustainability and Volunteering and the other for our support during the Cost-of-living-crisis! We were definitely very proud of our team as we walked up to receive the certificates! We then went back to the halls we were staying in, and Maisie & Lauren played a game of monopoly deal, whilst I sat writing my notes ready for the debates the day ahead – therefore an early night was needed!

The next morning, we were up and ready and enjoyed taking part in the workshops led by NUS which centred around Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity, as well as EMA (Education Maintenance Allowance) which is something myself and Maisie will be working with NUS Wales on during our year in office 2023-24. After this, we had a delicious lunch and prepared ourselves for the debates… crunch time!

I got the honour of kicking off the debates and was able to propose why this was a good policy and thanked everyone for their support and input to the amendments as well as during the workshop in the day before. During my opening speech, I was able to get the point across about how this affects different institutes and how in no way is this of detriment to anyone! The debates then continued with a majority led discussion in our favour, as well has having some opposing views which were very welcomed. We then had the horrible time of waiting over a week for the voting to take place and close before we knew the outcome!

But I can conclude this blog post (my first one so I hope you have enjoyed it and feel like you went on a journey to Bangor with me!) with an update since the voting has concluded…

OUR POLICY PASSED!!

This is now officially an NUS Wales policy, and this means NUS Wales President Orla Tarn will be lobbying the NUS to make this happen in readiness for the next conference where this can be applied.

The amendments that were all passed were:

To require policy proposers to consider the impact their proposed policy will have on Northern and Southern Institutions through an impact assessment.
For Part-Time students to be considered equally to Full-Time students in regard to delegate entitlement calculations.

For NUS Wales Steering Committee to consider recommendations regarding changes to the delegate entitlement calculation principles for future NUS Wales Conferences. These recommendations include the introduction of a higher fixed minimum and maximum number of delegates per institutions to ensure more equitable representation for each Union. For the allocation per institution between these minimum and maximum levels to be calculated proportionally to the number of students at a given institution.
For a representative from each Students’ Union in Wales to be invited to engage and partake in the democracy review to be undertaken by NUS Wales

This is a huge win for WGSU and just goes to show how much the hard work has paid off! I had to keep pinching myself that my first ever policy submission was passed despite all the hurdles we had to overcome. The next steps now is that Orla will be lobbying for this policy to be put in place, as well as myself being invited to sit on the DPC – Democratic Procedures Committee in order to oversee how this policy is being implemented and whether this will need to go to the NUS UK conference to be considered as a rule change, or whether this can be implemented due to it being voted in by NUS Wales delegates – with a landslide victory might I add!

So there we have it! Our biggest win in my opinion to date as a Union! We have made such a huge impact in the student movement with North Wales voices being heard more and gaining such support from those down south too! We made some wonderful friends and built some brilliant working relationships that we have already been able to use with other ideas we have in the pipeline! I am so grateful to the team for all their support in me writing such a looonngggg and hard policy, as well as supporting me to actually roll this out, when as I said, it has been nearly 5 years in the making. I was told by my fiancé to remember that ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ but we got there! Keep your eyes peeled for when I update you all on the DPC decision and when we are looking for new NUS Wales delegates in our October By-elections!

Thank you all for reading and I can’t wait to keep you updated in the next steps of this amazing journey that I have started us as an SU on!

Amy Rowley, WGSU VP 😊

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