Jack Worrall Hits Out at YUSU’s Handling of Working Class Officer Referendum in Open Letter

Jack Worrall, former leader of the No Campaign in the Working Class and Social Mobility Officer referendum, has hit out at YUSU’s handling of the referendum in an open letter sent to the Union President Alex Urquhart this evening (Wednesday 22nd November). The text was also posted on his personal Facebook profile minutes later.

Accusing both sides of the campaign of breaking rules and taking issue with the decision to extend the voting deadline from Friday to Monday afternoon, Worrall appealed to students who may have voted as a result of what he described as “illegal campaigning” and expressed his view that “the [Working Class Officer] must go through the policy process again”.

Vision is not aware of a formal response to the open letter from YUSU.

The text of the open letter is as follows, with some passages removed by Vision on legal advice:

Dear YUSU,

The Working Class officer referendum result should be rendered null and void. Make no mistake, this election result is illegitimate and should be rejected by YUSU or the board of trustees. The campaign was marred with broken rules on both sides. Dirty tactics used and a general lack of spirit to the campaign. This has been the worst campaign I have been involved in in my whole 3 years at university. […] All of these factors meant that the extremely close result, a majority of 23 and a quoracy surplus of 26, were achieved through illegitimate means.

I would like to outline exactly where both sides broke the campaign rules to garner illegitimate votes that make this result democratically worthless. […]

The sheer volume of illegal campaigning itself is enough to throw the result into the bin where it belongs however it doesn’t stop there. Another decision was made that in my view was incorrect and lead to the illegitimate result. This was the decision to extend the voting period. […] This decision should not have been made and the votes in that period of time must be disregarded no matter if both sides agreed to this decision or not.

Ask yourself, if you voted were you reminded to by excess materials by the No side, did you see a Yes sticker, did you vote in the illegitimate extended period, did you vote on the basis of No’s negative campaigning? These are all questions that if you come to the conclusion of “yes I did” means your vote was illegitimately obtained. If there are just 13 “yes I did”s on both sides, which I am more than certain about, then this referendum is illegitimate and must be rejected as what it is – a travesty to democracy and the WCO must go through the policy process again.

Yours sincerely,

Jack Worrall

Please note: Vision, and its editors, do not necessarily hold endorse or agree with the ideas views or statements set out in the open letter.