Student campaigns, in Oxford and beyond, are now fighting a political context which attacks those struggling the most. They cannot fight it alone. I approach this referendum first and foremost as a disabilities campaigner, and in this respect it is important to note the crucial work that goes on behind the scenes.
In 2014, the National Union of Students formed a huge chunk of the resistance to proposed Disabled Students’ Allowance cuts. Students could take pride in their campaigning and lobbying of MPs when the changes were subsequently thrown out, and we cannot understate the NUS’s role in providing students and activists alike with information on the proposals, as well as coordinating a nationwide response to a nationwide problem. The problem is, though, that the government is still intent on slashing DSA, and even now the NUS are at the forefront of working against this matter.
Campaigning to remain in the NUS is thus in the interests of so many disabilities campaigners, not to mention activists working on other campaigns. This referendum will place pressure on groups such as OUSU’s Oxford Students’ Disabilities Community – disaffiliation would do this even more so. And as a member of their committee, I think it fair to say that we are already overstretched in providing the services and communities that we do.
The point is that the NUS provides a critical link between the higher and further education institutions across the UK, giving a united voice to students who want change. Our JCRs, MCRs, and OUSU cannot perform a similar role alone. Because Oxford is in the NUS, it can send representatives to the NUS Disabled Students’ Conference, and others like it. It is here that, while students won’t agree with every decision made, we find a common voice and common ground.
The NUS stays connected with Oxford all year around too. I sit on the OUSU Executive in a part-time, unpaid position as Academic Affairs Officer. The work I and others do on this executive committee is greatly enhanced by the resources the NUS has to offer. It was partly through the NUS, for example, that colleges across Oxford could introduce consent workshops in the past few years, and the importance of positively rethinking and reshaping the problems of sexual violence on campus is of great importance to so many of us.
Beyond leading the campaign to stop cuts to the DSA, the NUS has done so much more to help. It is among the most significant national organisations conducting research on the interests of students as a target group. Just one example of this is the new Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Guide, where new research was conducted into improving mental health services across campus. This was picked up by major national newspapers and given as evidence in Parliament, on top of the advice it gave to us campaigners here in Oxford. The NUS will now fund two PhDs for research in the causes and prevention of student suicide. If it sometimes feels like the NUS is a soapbox or a friendship group, hopefully you now realise that this is a problem rooted in misinformation, and one we can fix. It is not an argument to leave it.
Losing our NUS membership would seriously damage the ability of Oxford students to campaign for change. Just this Wednesday, when the referendum was decided, some of us had to rush straight from OUSU Council to deliver a talk with Rethink Mental Illness on responding to our mental health crisis. This is only the beginning; it would be a shame to expend our energies on an NUS referendum when we have degrees to do, campaigns to work on, and ourselves to care for. I can only hope that our situation does not get worse, and that we do not end up without the aid so required from the NUS.
