By midday tomorrow, voting will have ceased on the first UGM of the academic year. Our dear Student Activities Officer Nick Scarlett, has proposed a motion which on the face of it, aims to make how much funding societies receive fairer. It turns out that all along, allowing the SA Officer alone to decide the grant for each society lead to “nepotism and self-interest”. Scarlett wants a brand spanking new “Societies Committee” of 16 representatives coming from eight different society categories, to have a say in the process. We’re told this will lead to greater “transparency” and “democracy” in how society grants are dished out. And who could argue with that? Democracy is good, self-interest is bad; this should be a no-brainer.
And yet the reality points to something far different. Of course the current system is far from perfect. Up until now, the SA Officer decided on grants for 100 plus societies involving tens of thousands of pounds with minimal consultation. However what is being presented is nothing more than a half-baked motion that does nothing to resolve any of these flaws while at the same time creating new ones. The new committee, bringing the total number in the Union to 20, will only have influence on any society’s receiving more than five per cent of the overall budget. This seemingly arbitrary figure would currently affect seven societies, including both campus newspapers. And therein lies the problem. Although York Vision and Nouse both receive grants from the Union, they are clearly there to act as independent entities, free from external special interests. A press whose ability to function hinges on the whims of an uninformed, undemocratic, unaccountable committee, is not a free one. Rather than making the system more “transparent” and “democratic”, this proposal does precisely the opposite.
Not that the papers are completely free as it stands. This very comment piece will need to be read and approved by YUSU on Monday before one copy of the paper is even printed and delivered to Vanbrugh on Tuesday. Last year Vision wanted to run a front page about how The Courtyard was incorrectly labelling chips cross-contaminated with meat as “vegetarian”. But as this naturally might affect The Courtyard’s profitability, we were told in no uncertain terms that our grant could also suffer as a consequence. We regretfully compromised, and although the article was still published (on page four), YUSU proved they were perfectly comfortable exploiting their position.
Can you imagine extending the ability to effectively blackmail the press to a hoard of busybodies with vested interests? I dread the potential scenarios. That last pantomime might have been crap but our printing costs have increased and their chair is on the societies committee, so let’s play it safe and give it five stars. Amnesty International embezzling money to fund coke-fuelled orgies? Forget it, we need to repair one of our computers. These examples might seem extreme but in truth, both Nouse and Vision are often aware of misconduct which frustratingly; due to our imbalanced relationship with YUSU, we can never publish. If a student at York was to commit a murder, we would be banned from covering it even if The Times did. The justification is that it could negatively impact said student’s “welfare”. Beggars belief.
It is easy to accuse the media of opposing the motion just because it puts their funding at risk, but that doesn’t mean they are acting selfishly. Even if like “The Union”, you believe that all societies are equal, it is not inevitable that their grants should be. Both newspapers along with URY, and to a certain extent, YSTV, have considerably higher costs than any other society just to function at all. Whatever your opinions on the quality of the media at York, they play a crucial role as a watchdog on Union activity. Like any other democracy, a free press here at York is a fundamental necessity.
A great article that raises a lot of interesting ideas. However, not once in the UGM was the term ‘cuts’ mentioned; nor have certain societies been identified as having previously received grossly disproportionate funding from the University.
The statement you make about the proposed committee is derogatory and tarnishes the name of its members before it has even been elected. This description is wholly inaccurate and is, in itself, both uninformed and a contradiction. You write, I quote, “Scarlett wants a brand spanking new “Societies Committee” of 16 representatives coming from eight different society categories”. You go on to say it would be uninformed, undemocratic or unaccountable. In what way would it be any of these things? The committee will be elected and, as you point out, are going to come from a range of societies. Presumably they will know about their societies and will be open to hearing about the activities of others. They will hold meetings with minutes and make decisions that will be accountable, both to the other members of the committee, and to the wider student population. I would challenge you to find a single student at the moment, who is not from a media society, who knows what the YUM budget is, or more importantly, why it gets the budget it does. It is intriguing that there is such secrecy around the “printing costs” associated with newspapers.
The current situation is one in which societies write to Nick Scarlett requesting funding. These requests are made, one could argue, arbitrarily. Imagine a society treasurer twiddling his thumbs: “Hmm, how much shall I ask for this year…? Let’s say £10,000. Nice round number”. Then in the next stage of the process Nick is forced to make a decision based upon the speculative requests he receives and a spreadsheet of figures, whilst sat in the YUSU office. I don’t doubt Nick’s integrity, but I do doubt his ability to make the correct decision based upon a few letters requesting funding, from students who have every interest in gaining as much money from YUSU as possible to fund their own societies.
Unfortunately at the moment the university press is incapable of funding itself, despite the huge potential for advertising and other forms of income, eg. Alumni funds. More than this, we must not forget that the university press is not, and will never be, wholly separate from the institution that funds it. You write that, “A press whose ability to function hinges on the whims of an uninformed, undemocratic, unaccountable committee…is not a free one”. A press which had the ability to remain profitable without huge amounts of university funding could afford to be free. Make of it what you will but until the university’s press can fund itself, it must always be accountable both to YUSU and the students who pay for it. And I, for one, would love to know where thousands of pounds of student money is going every year. It would also be heartening to know that this money is not being arbitrarily allocated to the media on the basis of one person’s decisions, no matter how impartial they may strive to be.
I think, looking through all the polemic and bile in this article, we can see the true reason for the campus press resisting this UGM so vehemently. They are squirming because they cannot reasonably justify the amount of money they receive. As our YUSU President pointed out in the UGM open meeting, which I attended, the YUM press are one of the only exceptions to a YUSU policy expressly designed to create fairness within the university’s structure of societies – no two societies may do the same thing and receive funding. Nouse and York Vision are two of these exceptions. I am all for freedom of information, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. But, as we saw with the student reaction to the Big Bang this year, it is not the case that without the university media student opinion wouldn’t be articulated. Above all, away from issues on freedom of the press, I believe that accountability is key, especially when so many other societies are facing going bankrupt. This UGM is all about accountability and it seems that the university press are hiding from accountability.
It’s a shame that the student media continues to bite the hand (YUSU) that feeds it, because it would be distressing if a less media-friendly Student Activities Officer were to be elected in the future. The campus press persistently maligns a body which is elected by students, for students and has student interests at heart. Perhaps one day a Student Activities officer will decide enough is enough, scrap at least one university newspaper and reduce the funding of YUM. Because he or she would be able to, by going direct to the university administration and bypassing student opinion. And there would be nothing anyone could do about it. What the writer fails to realise is that Nick Scarlett is actually offering a safeguard against the very thing that the media are most afraid of – someone arbitrarily reducing their funding, without consultation with students, with YUM, or with anyone else. And when this article is written in a publication that could, both constitutionally and commercially, be justifiably axed, you begin to wonder if the media are fighting the wrong enemy by opposing this UGM. When purse-strings tighten at a higher level, which they will, and when the Student Activities Officer has his/her their budgets reduced it will be constitutional anomalies such as Vision, or Nouse which they send to the chopping block first. Perhaps a Societies Council is just what the student media needs to ensure its existence.
Best article I have read in a long long long time. Cannot agree more.
“It’s a shame that the student media continues to bite the hand (YUSU) that feeds it, because it would be distressing if a less media-friendly Student Activities Officer were to be elected in the future.”
@ Oli couldnt have put it better myself.
The campus media need to grow up. This is not some evil dictatorship impinging on their free speech. YUSU is a pressure group, not a government, and the campus media is not Nelson Mandela fighting some great struggle. They have paymasters and these paymasters are US the student body the people who quite rightly through our unions democratic functions be telling them what it is they do with OUR money.
ALSO Stop using the media as a means to abuse and bully YUSU and college based voluntary workers who you don’t like (under the thinly disguised veil of the word ‘scrutiny’) and start using OUR media to campaign about OUR issues like fees and accomodation etc. We have every right to demand it, how dare the media take our money and question our right to scrutinise them. Did they seriously think they could sit behind their desks write what they liked with our money and keep getting more and more funding. Of course not how ridiculous.
THE UGM PASSED Hurray, but there is still much more work to be done before campus’ big brother can be tamed.
Click the link because this quite frankly is the level of maturity which the campus media has faced this UGM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC7sSMWLwDo&feature=related
I would also like to add the media (I’ll say Nouse and Vision actually because comparatively URY and YSTV are quite nice and tend not to report on what random people do on nights out) create a culture of fear where at any moment your action can be reported on spread round campus and the world. This is inherently wrong and unhealthy for a learning environment where people are still growing as people and are not fully adult yet. If you do something wrong, like the langwith bar reps the other week or the ‘student poses as paedophile’ incident it is simply inappropriate to deal with such scenarios by TELLING THE WHOLE WORLD. Discretion and reprimand through disciplinary channels which YUSU and the university can enforce are entirely the appropriate way to do things. The sooner the media stop doing this in slow news weeks the better. Perhaps then people can feel a little bit less scared of their drunken antics causing long term career damage and they can actually learn from the experience. Instead of such occurances being bitter ‘end of the world’ situations they can be ones they learn from and change from. The sooner the media gets its nose out of this the better and I hope sometime in the future YUSU tell them in no uncertain terms that they should.
The Media have a monopoly of fear on campus and thank god Nick Scarlett has successfully taken them on in a crucial battle, but we must continue to tackle what has become a force which is a fearful to many students as the secret police in Soviet Russia. Then maybe the campus environment can be the freedom environment of safety growth and development where people don’t have to fear long term consequences for their silly mistakes.
Have Nouse and Vision really just been compared to Soviet Russia?
Surely there are more appropriate analogies than that of a regime responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people and 70 years of suppression?
It’s just a thought, but maybe next time tone down on the inconsiderate hyperbole ‘crybabies’. This is campus media we’re talking about-not gulags.
@ Josh
‘Tone down the inconsiderate hyperbole’ – ‘inconsiderate hyperbole’ like this you mean
http://www.yorkvision.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/leader-cartoon-web.jpg
Its a cartoon mate. If you can’t recognise the difference between what you wrote and a caricature then you really are intellectually vacant.
“This is inherently wrong and unhealthy for a learning environment where people are still growing as people and are not fully adult yet. If you do something wrong, like the langwith bar reps the other week or the ‘student poses as paedophile’ incident it is simply inappropriate to deal with such scenarios by TELLING THE WHOLE WORLD.”
If we’re going by the age that nearly all people are by the time they reach university (18) most people really are classed as adults so I don’t really understand your point here. Sure, it doesn’t mean that you reach 18 and you know everything about the world and are perfect but the examples you’ve used aren’t great – I think most young people would know that it would be wrong to make a joke out of rape as tha langwith bar reps did, so I don’t think you can just brush it off with the fact that they’re still in a “learning environment”. Is it really inappropriate to report the news when Vision and Nouse are um….newspapers? Perhaps you mean report the news in a less sensational way, but again you’ve picked examples that to my mind weren’t actually sensational, and were just reporting a story. Besides even if you are saying that you’re being a bit of a hypocrite by then comparing the newspaper to Soviet Russia! Very flattering you think that the whole world reads Vision though ;)
@crybabies Vision (like all University of York media) is checked before publication by YUSU and by the current welfare officer. Stories we print are examined by YUSU to make sure that they do not pose welfare risks to any student or group of students.
In response to your request that we cover ‘fees and accommodation’ – we covered the national demonstrations and education cuts more thoroughly than national press did, with live blogging, extensive reports, comment pieces and speech transcripts. Our Freshers edition of this year, moreover, held a front page which looked at how the university had not made sure accommodation was ready for students when they moved in. We also feature external housing issues every year.
To compare the media to The Big Brother shows a fundamental lack of knowledge – a Big Brother state is one in which there is no media, no accountability and no checks to power.
You may describe students as “not fully adult yet” but the nature of university politics is that students at these ‘tender ages’ have huge amounts of responsibility in how the university is run, and therefor on the experiences of thousands of other students. Our sabbatical officers are employed to fulfill their roles, they are not children and should not be treated as such. If the media does not hold these individuals to account (be they Sabs, part-time officers or just society presidents) then they have no check on their power, and are not answerable to the students. But then, as the anonymity of your posts suggests, perhaps you are not a big fan of accountability.
It is one of the jobs of the media to report when people screw up. A politician is found in a sex scandal? The media reports it. An actor makes a racist comment? The media reports it. A business executive embezzles public money? The media reports it. If you aren’t aware that this is how the world works, perhaps it is you who should grow up.
Moreover, a comparison to Soviet Russia, as you’ve probably already noticed, undermines everything you say and makes you sound hysterical and ignorant.