Yesterday’s Union General Meeting was cancelled as a result of dismal turnout. Following last year’s trend of low turnouts which has consistently dogged UMSU, the first meeting of the new academic year did not reach quorum and the motions were not voted on. Those who came to vote on the proposed student policies were trying to make last-minute calls to friends or course mates to get the venue filled. However, despite persistent demands for a time extension to wait for more people to turn up, the meeting was cancelled at 2pm as fewer than 300 students attended. (According to GM rules, meetings start at 1.30pm and need a minimum number of 300 students to conduct business.)
The problem of student apathy to Union politics has come to be a pitiful attribute of student politics at the university. Thinking back to the November 2007 turnout of about 1,500 people, it does not take long to identify the underlying reasons for its success: it was primarily the controversial twinning arrangement with Palestine’s An-Najah university that attracted enormous interest among students. It seems as if such controversy is almost imperative to successfully launch a General Meeting.
For the Students Union, this poses a serious problem of representativeness. Whilst plans to introduce online voting for all Union elections successfully passed through Council this month it is much harder to change the format of General Meetings to make them more accessible for students (a change to the Union’s Constitution requires a General Meeting with a quorum of 1000). It is clear that for this year’s General Secretary Rob Pinfold and his UMSU officers one of the biggest challenge to mobilise people and get them involved in student politics.
I would hardly say it was a dismal turnout. It was very close to the required 300 - a number which is unprecedented for the first general meeting of a year for a long time.