Posts Tagged ‘students’

Obviously I have titled this blog post with a sensational headline. However, the irony of the NUS’s policies hurting their own members should not be lost on you.

As many of you will know, the National Union of Students (NUS) hates freedom of expression. I wish I was joking. However, student politics are so badly calibrated that Spiked now maintain an index on free speech at universities. Meanwhile, in the real world, over a million people sign a petition to prop up a man who is genuinely acts like a racist and a bigot. Is this the right way round?

Even by their own standards however, the NUS has taken some new giant leaps in curtailing freedom of expression.

According to the New Statesman the NUS recently voted to extend their no platform policy:

the NUS Women’s’ Officers and members of the NUS Women’s committee shall not offer a platform to any transphobic speaker, biphobic or Islamophobic speaker

What Islam has to do with women’s issues I’m not sure. But apparently it is in their remit to ban Maryam Namazie, women’s rights activist, who was recently forced to cancel a talk at Trinity College because of additional restricts placed on her and only her.

Not only does this suppress genuine criticism of Islam (Namazie was raised as as Muslim), but is then entirely overlooked when an Islamic speaker is invited onto campus as they are often homophobic. The simultaneous toleration of Islamic hate speech and suppression of criticism of this is mind boggling.

But it goes on. They also passed the following resolution:

1. To issue a statement condemning the user of ‘cross-dressing’ as a mode of fancy dress.
2. To amend the NUS Zero Tolerance Statement policy to cover all NUS events and conferences; and to encourage Unions to ban clubs and societies from holding events which permit or encourage (cisgender) members to use ‘cross-dressing’ as a mode of fancy dress

Lets pretend for a moment that this doesn’t limit people’s freedom (it does) for a completely non-malicious act and that it doesn’t do it in a discriminatory way (it does) by targeting a specific group, in this case cisgender.

What about the affect on trans people?

Realising your transgender and transitioning to your correct gender is an incredibly awkward, long and emotionally-draining experience. Imagine if you are a fresh-faced 18 year old trans woman arriving at university, still living as a man, starting to grapple with these issues.

Where do you start? In my, albeit anecdotal experience, you probably start by cross dressing at nights out. Why? Because that is the most acceptable place to start in terms of being judged by the rest of society. It’s the safest way to start. And still, I imagine it takes a huge amount of courage.

Events, such as Wendy House for example, provide a sheltered way for people to begin experimenting with gender, and perhaps take that first step towards becoming the gender they want to transition to. If we ban that, we put in yet another barrier into the lives of trans people.

If people cannot experiment with gender under the light of a disco ball, where can they? At home, in private, hidden away from society as if it is something to be ashamed about? Is that the society we want?

While attending the Atheist Society talk this week, I picked up a copy of Leeds Student which had some interesting statistics.

43% of people pulled last week and 23% threw up. That’s to be expected.

However, I was quite shocked that 14% of people said they had had unprotected sex.

I mean, seriously? Lets assume that one third of people had sex in freshers’ week. That is quite a lot I believe, not just because that is generally a lot but because only 43% of people pulled, which would mean that most people who pulled, also went home with someone.

But if we assume that such a high figure is true, that means that half the sex had during freshers’ week was unprotected. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to pretend condoms are a great solution – they’re a massive hassle when you’re in the middle of it, and lets not pretend otherwise, but given the prevalence of STIs and most of these events being one night stands, surely people at one of the best universities at the country are smarter than that?

The recent AHS AGM, which took place in Southampton, was the a personal first for me in that it was the first AGM I haven’t attended (but in my defence – Southampton really is a long drive). Luckily James, Elettra, Nicola and Norm were all down there, so Leeds was well represented.

Tension was rather high going into the weekend with the far too public way that certain members of the outgoing executive choose to air their dirty laundry, as well as several societies quitting and people raising motions against the BHA’s ultimate control over the AHS, but never the less the storms seem to have been weathered.

The AHS now has a brand new committee, composed of Jenny Bartle, Michael Paynter and Dom Blacklock – a group of people which I am sure the AHS will be in safe hands with!

Most of us have seen Jenny’s leadership close up when we headed down to Bristol for the 2010 AGM, and she is clearly someone who has an ability to get things done.

This style should work well alongside Mike, who is almost certainly one of the nicest people you will ever meet. Always pleased to see you, even if he has never met you before, it is always a pleasure to see Mike’s face at an event.

While I’ve only briefly met Dom at the national convention and BHA reception, but he seems like a great guy as well and I’m sure the three of them will oversee a great year for the organisation. Congratulations to all!

On Saturday we were down at the AHS (National Federation of Atheist, Humanist & Secular Student Societies) national convention to promote the services that we offer to student societies. Taking place in Oxford the convention drew in student groups from across the UK including some coming from as far as Belfast!

With the long awaited conference for atheist, Humanist, secular and generally free thinking student societies finally having arrived, myself and Norm headed up to Edinburgh for the conference that would form the foundation of our national federation for such societies.

I feel I was lied to. I was told Scotland had a road network. It really doesn’t. It’s barely motorway up to Newcastle due to roadworks currently going on and after that it just runs out entirely – some of the A1, the legendary A1, is basically just a country lane.

Still we made it up there in one piece and kicked off the Friday night with introductions, a meal and some late night drinking. It was nice to have some fun as basically what followed was two days of talks, debates and lots of Humanism.

Never the less we have all come away from the event with a new national oranisation – the national federation of atheist, Humanist and secular student studies or A.H.S. for short. So all in all a rather successful weekend.