Guild Elections
For those of you who were perhaps on another planet during the past 6 weeks, and therefore didn't hear me say it like a million times, I ran in the Brum Uni Guild elections for the position of Ethical and Environmental Officer. Position responsible for Guild ethical and environmental campaigning and policy essentially. I was doing something a bit off the wall, in that I was running for election from abroad, and I was going to be spending most of the campaign abroad. Anyway my nomination form was in for the beginning of February, and I was officially a candidate.
I then generally got stressed while waiting to leave for Britain in the second half of my February holidays. I eventually did leave looking forward to not only being on-site and able to do things, but also to see and speak to all my uni friends some of whom I hadn't seen since I left Brum last June (two short visits in August and December notwithstanding). However I was also aware that this trip would be no picnic seeing as I would have to run around like a madman sorting out as much stuff as possible for the campaign. However, there was time for the occasional drink with friends, even if it was not as much as I'd have liked.
With regards to the elections themselves, it was as last year, and the year before, and probably the year before that. Loads of people running around in silly costumes, with silly slogans and silly gimmicks, (I include myself in this, Captain Planet!), and also the mud-slinging, partisanship , casual insults and occasional obscenities.
A perfect example of this was Facebook and the last hustings outside the shitty food place. Now some background is required here, the elections in the past few years have been rather Labour Students dominated, this year members of a newly revitalised Conservative Future decided to run as well. At these hustings one of the candidates from Conservative Future running for one of the positions, instead of making a speech about himself decided to lambast the people who'd set up a group called "Let's run the clean slate Tory twats" on Facebook. He was stopped and a row then ensued once hustings were complete. I wasn't there at the hustings two days before, but by all accounts the Tories hardly covered themselves in glory there as well.
Don't get me wrong the Labour lot were just as bad, and it was members of Labour Students who set up that Facebook group originally as far as I am aware. I am not a fan of party politics in student politics, I think it's divisive, distracting, counter-productive and also irrelevant to many student issues. Overall I was just dismayed that I had come back to Britain to see the same sort of low-brow student politics that I had seen last year, which the above was but the worst example. I had the mistaken belief that things might have changed, but then again I had the mistaken belief that students were generally nicer more progressive people, shows what I know eh!
And so after three days of running around in the cold it was time to depart again, managed not to die of boredom on the long train journey home, which I also managed to avoid on the way to Britain. I then proceeded to get stressed and worried during the climax of the campaign when I was back in Germany starting school again. I needn't have got so worked up, my campaigners did a wonderful job, and did me really proud, and I also won, by a considerable margin once second and third choices had been counted.
However, it was was a bitter-sweet victory, as my Steven didn't manage to win his much harder campaign for President. Still at least we got one out of two, the support he and Becky gave me alongside that of my campaign team was really brilliant, couldn't done it without any of them! And now two weeks after the results were announced, and I have managed to absorb it all. I can say I am looking forward to starting my work in August, but also hope that Guild politics takes a turn for the better next year.
I then generally got stressed while waiting to leave for Britain in the second half of my February holidays. I eventually did leave looking forward to not only being on-site and able to do things, but also to see and speak to all my uni friends some of whom I hadn't seen since I left Brum last June (two short visits in August and December notwithstanding). However I was also aware that this trip would be no picnic seeing as I would have to run around like a madman sorting out as much stuff as possible for the campaign. However, there was time for the occasional drink with friends, even if it was not as much as I'd have liked.
With regards to the elections themselves, it was as last year, and the year before, and probably the year before that. Loads of people running around in silly costumes, with silly slogans and silly gimmicks, (I include myself in this, Captain Planet!), and also the mud-slinging, partisanship , casual insults and occasional obscenities.
A perfect example of this was Facebook and the last hustings outside the shitty food place. Now some background is required here, the elections in the past few years have been rather Labour Students dominated, this year members of a newly revitalised Conservative Future decided to run as well. At these hustings one of the candidates from Conservative Future running for one of the positions, instead of making a speech about himself decided to lambast the people who'd set up a group called "Let's run the clean slate Tory twats" on Facebook. He was stopped and a row then ensued once hustings were complete. I wasn't there at the hustings two days before, but by all accounts the Tories hardly covered themselves in glory there as well.
Don't get me wrong the Labour lot were just as bad, and it was members of Labour Students who set up that Facebook group originally as far as I am aware. I am not a fan of party politics in student politics, I think it's divisive, distracting, counter-productive and also irrelevant to many student issues. Overall I was just dismayed that I had come back to Britain to see the same sort of low-brow student politics that I had seen last year, which the above was but the worst example. I had the mistaken belief that things might have changed, but then again I had the mistaken belief that students were generally nicer more progressive people, shows what I know eh!
And so after three days of running around in the cold it was time to depart again, managed not to die of boredom on the long train journey home, which I also managed to avoid on the way to Britain. I then proceeded to get stressed and worried during the climax of the campaign when I was back in Germany starting school again. I needn't have got so worked up, my campaigners did a wonderful job, and did me really proud, and I also won, by a considerable margin once second and third choices had been counted.
However, it was was a bitter-sweet victory, as my Steven didn't manage to win his much harder campaign for President. Still at least we got one out of two, the support he and Becky gave me alongside that of my campaign team was really brilliant, couldn't done it without any of them! And now two weeks after the results were announced, and I have managed to absorb it all. I can say I am looking forward to starting my work in August, but also hope that Guild politics takes a turn for the better next year.
posted by Julien at 23:01
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