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.
There were tense scenes at YUSU’s campaigns committee meeting on Wednesday evening as students clashed on the best way to proceed.
Ben Humphrys began the evening with a description of the meeting with the university’s Student Services committee the previous Thursday. He informed those assembled that the Union’s position had found little sympathy with the committee, especially with the two very critical lay members whose support was crucial.
The only success from the meeting was that YUSU was given a mandate to prove to the university that cuts had affected welfare, but no promises were made to YUSU regarding the return of porters and there was no guarantee that there would not be cuts to porters next year.
Humphrys was quizzed by a number of attendees as to whether he’d brought up all the recent incidents that campaigners believed could have been prevented by porters. Humprhys replied that he had, but that there had also been issues in the past where students reliant upon porters as their first port of call had led to problems.
Both Humphrys and Tim Ngwena stressed the need to win the intellectual argument as the university had presented a number of arguments suggesting that this was a relatively minor issue. Bigger universities with bigger security and welfare issues have not had to deal with problems by having an employee at a fixed point, i.e. a porter.
Furthermore, Humphrys and Ngwena argued that the portering campaign was taking resources away from potentially bigger problems. They maintained that with university meetings lasting no more than two hours, an inordinate amount of time was being spent talking about porters when bigger issues were on the horizon, namely a change to the university’s rent banding and top up fees.
Rent banding is the term for the different levels of rent for accommodation. It was revealed that the university is currently considering a scheme which would see the lowest band becoming catered accommodation, essentially raising the prices for the poorest students. On top up fees, Brian Cantor, the Vice Chancellor has still not issued a statement on where the university stands on their proposed increase.
However, a group, principally involving David Levene, Chair of Union Council, and Miles Layram, disagreed strongly with this position, arguing that through the portering campaign, more students were getting involved in university politics, which would give YUSU a stronger position when it came to fighting those issues. The dissenters pointed out that student unions at UCL and Manchester had succeeded with more direct action.
Humphrys countered that whilst that may be so, YUSU had attended training courses with other student unions which had used more direct action such as Leeds, resulting in creating little or no real relationship with their university which affected their ability to work to improve student welfare, a problem YUSU did not have.
The meeting ended with three votes. The first called for YUSU to gather more information, which passed without disagreement. The second call for YUSU to campaign on the basis of the information gathered which provoked no resistance. The third however called for YUSU to take more direct action against the cuts. This motion passed 7 votes to 4, with both Tim Ngwena and Ben Humprhys opposing.
Portering hardliners are expected to table a motion at the next UGM calling for further campaigning against the cuts although the exact text has not been released.
I think YUSU needs to wake up and accept that without strong direct action on the portering issue, not only will the student body loose interest and faith in the ability of students to achieve change, but also the university will use this lack of effective visible action to push through more and more negative cuts to services. Unless students take a stand now and show the university how much this issue means to us, the university will used this perceived apathy to turn their backs on student opinion.
Direct action = completely the wrong way to go about it. The porter cuts have been made due to a dire need to cut spending. The entire university sector is going through a massive funding crisis at the moment and the university views porters as being an area of expenditure that can be cut without f****** up the uni.
If porters hadn't been cut, something else would. York is lucky that it isn't (yet) facing course closures and cut backs in academic staff. If I had to pick between an academic who may be the only one in the uni with a certain area of expertise or a full porter service, I know which one I (and hopefully YUSU) would go for.
If we want sucess in this campaign then carrying on the fluffy welfare campaign or pissing off the Uni is not the way to go. The decision was made because of money. YUSU's campaign should be based around money: show the uni that portering can be run at a lower level of expenditure (e.g. student porters) or make serious sugesstions about what can be cut instead of porters.
Portering is simply a non-issue, all those involved with the campaign need to accept that the university is right in this and just focus on more serious campaigns, like top-up fees and accommodation.
#2 touches on the crux of the issue. This is not a campaign by Hes Hall to see first years freeze to death without keys, this an outright choice between funding cuts in academic departments, or in ancillary services, and I would hope that the generality of the student body would have the wit to prioritise their degrees over their porters.
Agree with #2, direct action is futile if no specific information on the impact of the cuts on welfare/security or financial arguments are provided.
It should definitely be possible to provide them with that information. For instance, security services publish a list of all incidents the day before on campus. Those sort of specifics combined with students' reports of how the lack of portering has affected them and financial arguments could be pretty persuasive.
Of course portering is an important issue, it's just not worth jeopardising YUSU's relationship with the university - which could affect future discussion over issues such as fees.
Actually not true, guys. With the ridiculous expenditure in security, they're barely cutting costs and are instead saying that security guards are more important than porters. Based on experience, I would say that students disagree.
By making you all believe that the cuts are based on finance, the university guys are turning half of you against the campaign. Ultimately YUSU is looking at the money as part of the whole and are coming up with financial solutions but nonetheless the university has the money there and simply doesn't want to spend it at the time being.
I think it is important people realise that the direct action some porter campaign supporters’ advocate is not some reckless act of aggression towards the university. The purpose is to raise awareness and keep students active, backing up the key message that came from the committee, which was that YUSU now has a mandate to gather evidence on why 24 hour portering is necessary.
This means student need to communicate to YUSU times when they need a porter and there wasn't one [email portering@yusu.org]. I can assure you Campaigns has no intention of fundamentally damaging YUSU's relationship with the University, but that the action is needed to promote the policy and ensure a good response from students so that the reasoned evidence based debate becomes the best it can be – Without the help of students we will not be able to make a good case to the university.
I despair at the very thought of 'direct action'.
How many professional bodies send out groups of people to bang drums, stage sit-ins, chalk slogans on walls, nick stuff from a dining room and leave it outside etc...
Student 'direct action' = behaving like children = loss of credibility from the university = retrograde step.
The university is probably right about porters, they are almost certainly doing the wrong thing when it comes to banding. No doubt as a means of maintaining its status of exellence by being prohibitively expensive for students from less well off backgrounds.
Cut out the melodramatics (so you have to walk an extra 5 mins to the porters. My heart bleeds.) and focus on long term issues that can be influenced: Lobbying for a fair position on fees, a fair position on accommodation costs and provision, contact hours supervision and teaching standards, and ensuring the university keeps its promises about heslington east.
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