David Barclay was elected the President of Oxford University Student Union following a closely fought campaign.
1712 people voted for Barclay, whilst Jake Leeper gathered 1133 votes. 123 people wanted to re-open the nomination.
2968 people voted in the election, just 15% of those eligible. The turn out was down 22% on last year’s election.
Other candidates on Barclay’s slate to be elected were Alex Bulfin, VP Access and Academic Affairs and Katharine Terrell, VP Women. VP Charities and Communities went to the independent candidate Daniel Lowe and Tom Perry will be the next VP welfare.
All the unopposed candidates were elected.
David Barclay said, “I feel fantastic. I think [what swung] it was the team that we had. We had an incredibly diverse group of people across Oxford working incredibly hard for us and it was only through their efforts that we managed to get people turned out and to get people excited.
“The next step is to remember that I have a degree. I have a meeting at 9.15 tomorrow to talk about my thesis. But once that is sorted out the next step is to work hard this year obviously to survive my degree and then start thinking about what we can do next year.”
Barclay, who campaigned under the slogan, “Making Oxford work for students”, pledged to create a university-wide discount card, establish a housing fair in the town hall, and lobby the university for new OUSU headquarters in central Oxford.
Katharine Terrell, VP for Women-elect said, “I feel really happy. Still a bit weirded out, it doesn’t feel quite real. Absolutely looking forward to getting stuck into the job. I’m just going to talk to a lot of people and make sure I know what I’m doing next year. I’m really excited.”
Daniel Lowe said of his election for VP Charities and Communities, “I’m incredibly happy that I managed to get elected when I had no campaign team and I had some very, very committed activists. I had no campaign manager, I’ve never run a contested election before, I’m incredibly shocked I managed to win.”
The two-week campaign was marred by a series of fines imposed by the returning officer Oliver Linch for breaches of OUSU campaign rules. Jake Leeper’s campaign was fined eleven times and was ordered to pay a total of £82.25, including one fine of £10 for unauthorised election material. The Barclay campaign received three fines, amounting to £7.95. In one case, Barclay’s team was forced to pay a penalty of £2.50 after Barclay’s girlfriend, a Durham University student, posted a Facebook status urging people to vote for her boyfriend.
The “Another Education Is Possible” slate faced a delay in launching their campaign after difficulties with poster printing. There was some confusion with stamping the posters, but Ben Kindler, candidate for International Students Officer said he felt his campaign was unaffected but the hold-up.
Though both Presidential candidates campaigned under the promise to make OUSU relevant to the student body, Barclay has a big task to make this a reality.
A Christ Church first year said she had no idea about what OUSU does. “I don’t know what OUSU actually does for me individually, I don’t know enough about the people involved. I could find out, but it’s not pinned up in front of my face.”
A Hertford student added, “It’s quite important that we get represented to the NUS because that’s our main body, especially because of tuition fees going up, we need someone or some people to look after our interests. People aren’t interested because of the press it gets that it’s inefficient and doesn’t really do anything, but if that changed people would be interested.
“Hertford recently voted to stay affiliated by quite a large margin so people want it to be better and really want to get involved.”
Another student said, “It’s important that they’re a student governing body that represents who we are and protects basic rights of students to improve the standard of living.”
One St Catz first year added, “I’ve not had much experience with OUSU and our JCR Committee seem to do everything for us. OUSU is not that present in our daily lives I guess. I don’t even know what they are responsible for.”
Hertford’s husts were cancelled due to lack of interest.
Sarah Burton, OUSU rep at Herford said, “I think this reflects the general indifference towards OUSU at Hertford at the moment. In a JCR meeting a week ago we came very close to disaffiliating. As OUSU rep for the last year I have been aware that Hertford JCR feels very disconnected to OUSU and has no idea, or little interest in, what they actually do.”
However, many students interviewed by Cherwell felt that OUSU had an important role to play, but hadn’t yet filled its potential. One student commented, “I think the elections are quite important, but obviously there are a lot of problems with OUSU and it’s not representing the students as well as it should.”
Lukas Wallrich at Merton added, “I think engaging students more into OUSU affairs should be a core task of those newly elected – including all OUSU reps.”
