Seventy per cent of Oxford students do not believe OUSU is important in their university experience, according to a Cherwell survey this week.
Students have also stated that they would award the student union a grade of 4.8 out of 10 for its current performance.
The findings come at the time of re-examination of OUSU’s funding structure and its purpose.
Although many admitted the possibility of OUSU doing a lot of work behind the scenes, the findings raise questions about the validity of the Student Union.
One St Peter’s second year commented, “Well, the JCR is important. I’ve never had any contact with central OUSU, so I suppose it’s not massively important.”
Despite a large-scale poster campaign across common rooms since the beginning of 2009, 63% of students still do not know about any of OUSU’s achievements from the last year. However, as many as 93% recognise the picture of Lewis Iwu, OUSU’s current president.
Those surveyed thought that OUSU’s role is to represent students on a number of issues (35%), supply welfare (25%) and negotiate with the university (14.3%). Those more sceptical thought that OUSU exists in its current form to “provide CV points for future labour politicians”.
Yet many are convinced that OUSU should focus harder on the creation of a central venue for university-wide societies and councils to meet (20%). Students also gave the students’ union a mark out of 10 for its current performance, with 4.8 being given as an average score.
However, many added that they felt they did not have enough information to make a fair judgement, relying instead on popular perceptions of the institution.
The survey also found that more students recognize the photo of Corey Dixon, the current Union president (60.5% could correctly name the picture) than that of Oxford’s vice-Chancellor John Hood (45%).
Lewis Iwu commented on the survey, “OUSU does a lot of work behind the scenes and at the front as well. It will always be difficult to publicise our work because of the decentralised nature of the University but we are making inroads.
“What we are seeing compared to last year is an increase in students taking part in OUSU campaigns and using our offices.”
