A group of York students has won the opportunity to have their very own I-phone application developed after winning The App Challenge final, held at the Ron Cooke Hub on Wednesday, January 18.
YUSU Welfare officer Bob Hughes has warned students to be vigilant after a student loans phishing scam has been revealed.
Her Majesty the Queen will be visiting York on Maundy Thursday, 5th April, as part of the 800th anniversary of York’s Charter for the traditional “Royal Maundy” ceremony.
A flood caused by a heating system “failure” forced the university IT services to shut down many essential systems on Sunday night, causing problems for many students on the eve of their exams and assignment due-dates.
YUSU has not decided to stop communicating with The Yorker. They have simply decided that all communications should go through official channels. They have made their decision clear, although we were not contacted formally. This is in fact not a major change from the previous situation; since its inception, The Yorker has had to work hard for YUSU's cooperation.
We are naturally disappointed by their decision not to be more open to us, especially since despite the fact we are not affiliated we still provide a bridge between YUSU and the student population as valuable as any other media outlet. The benefits of affiliation are, or at least should be, monetary and legal support, not freedom of information.
We are also disappointed that YUSU feel that the affiliated papers should be the only ones to receive press releases. One would think that, should they have an issue they wish to communicate to students, they would distribute it to all media outlets in order to maximise its exposure. However, if their priorities lie elsewhere then it is so.
We are surprised that the Students' Union is not willing to support businesses run by York students for the benefit of York students. The Yorker is a not-for-profit organisation which is run purely to inform and provide services for students.
These setbacks will not stop The Yorker from being the same regular source of campus and York-related news. The Yorker believes its independence is crucial to the long-term accountability of both the university and the Students' Union. The media charter theoretically gives the officers in charge the power to veto any stories, and the fact that recent YUSU teams have used these powers reasonably does in no way change that fact.
The Yorker Directors
Nick Connell, Dominic Freeston, Nadeem Kunwar, Chris Travis
I don't want to dramatise what may just be a 'grapevine rumour' but I heard it from two seperate sources, one within the YUSU 'bubble' and another on the outside. Why, when, I can't answer. It's just what I heard!!!
Come on Mr Taylor, spill the beans, or you may as well delete that post!!!
Very sad indeed. You wonder whether the people who make these union decisions actually have anything better to do with their lives.
This seems to be a very petty 'attack' at what appears to me to be a well-run organisation with no political motives, no sensationalism and generally informative articles.
Following the society budgets cock-up this year i believe the yorker have the right idea in finding money from outside the union. I think there's a lot of potential for others to follow the yorker's lead in raising capital from advertising and corporate sponsorship and support. It is clear that the SU can get carried away with their own agenda sometimes, and financial independence doesn't seem quite so strange an idea now that union-allocated grants seem to be shrinking by the year.
The union is supposed to be open. By priviledging their own media over other outlets they are behaving like a cross between stalinists and spoilt children.
This union seems to become more self-serving and self indulgent by the day. Best of luck to the Yorker in exposing everything that needs to be known.
"You wonder whether the people who make these union decisions actually have anything better to do with their lives."
Eh? No, they don't because the people that make 'these union decisions' are full time officers of the union (i.e that's their job) and those decisions are then confirmed by committees which represent all of us.
I like the Yorker, I read it a lot, but I'm a bit annoyed about the way that this is being presented. The YUM Charter exists for various reasons including student welfare, and I personally think it's not an entirely ridiculous notion that the organisations which fund and support a news outlet should retain some control over its output, but that's a different debate.
YUSU has two major media outlets which provide a variety of news across a variety of mediums. It also has a TV station, a radio station, and a website which has a wealth of information on the procedures of the union, as well as minutes detailing all of its workings and committees. It has an open plan office accessible to anyone, and anyone can contribute to and attend most (all?) of its meetings. Inaccessible or opaque it is not.
However, there is a deeper issue here: The Yorker does not exist purely for students, it certainly exists to provide a service for them, but ultimately it is a private business that chooses to operate outside the remit of the union, in the same way that many other businesses in York do (although admitedly the Yorker does not act exist financial gain). That is their choice, and I really think that kicking up a fuss that they're not allowed to pick and choose which bits of support from the Union they take seems a bit ridiculous.
If the Yorker wants to be truly independent, then great, it should do so, but it must then take the benefits of that decision with it's challenges.
It's terrible that these negotiations are going so badly. A much better use of time would be the development of a more positive relationship between YUSU and The Yorker.
Perhaps a role for YUSU in an advisory capacity would be better than trying to get The Yorker to sign up to compulsory regulations.
So much more could be accoumplished by encouraging the cooperation of the two bodies. The Yorker is not filled with idiots, rebels or millitants; its staff is comprised of serious journalists and businessmen in training. They do not want to cause problems any more than YUSU want these problems to occur. If YUSU were perhaps willing to take an unnofficial advisory role and work WITH The Yorker editorial and business teams to ensure a standard of journalism and ethics that are acceptable to both parties, it could be a potentially far more palatable solution to all involved.
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