Satire or shame? An astonishing email from USI

national | politics / elections | opinion/analysis

Saturday June 17, 2006 13:48

by Daithí - (Grumpy Old Men, Inc)

Encouraging students to get involved in politics, representation, activism and campaigning is a funny business. In an ideal, perfect situation, you wouldn't have a division between encourager and encouragee; no-one should need to drum up interest among others or to have a position of 'managing' student involvement. But we don't live in that world, and it's perfectly usual to see students' unions, political 'youth wings', campaign groups and so on trying to encourage 'others' to get involved.

The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) has had some difficulties in filling positions in recent years. The reasons for this are complex, but include finance (many elected positions had the accompanying wages withdrawn for financial reasons), political division (many students' unions disagreed with the existence of certain positions, such as LGBT officer (five attempts in a row to remove or downgrade it!) or deputy president/campaigns officer), sudden resignations (declaration of interest: the present author is a member of the ever-expanding USI resignees club), disengagement/apathy, and many many more.

So the story continues. Some full-time positions were not filled at the annual Congress earlier this year, and are thus vacant, awaiting a further election. Others are due for election anyway. So it's quite reasonable to see some effort on USI's part trying to spread the word.

But does this email (sent to students' unions around Ireland by Daniel Wood, USI's appointed 'representation executive') seem a little unusual to you? Year out from college as a reason to be a national student representative? Or is this just a remarkably clever piece of satire? Or has USI engaged the services of Viagra-selling spam consultants to replace the missing officers?

I agree that there's a role for full-time positions in political or representative organisations. No question about it - having that level of involvement can provide much-needed support and dedication (and coordination of activists and volunteers) - and very many political parties, NGOs, lobby groups, unions etc have full-time paid positions, both elected and appointed. But for an elected position, is 'taking a year out from college to earn money' a good reason to run?

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Represent the interests of Students
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 13:52:06 +0100
From: Daniel Wood
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;

Hello,

Will the issues you care about receive the same priority…
if you don’t stand?

Elections to Officer Board 2006-07 – FINAL REMINDER

Consider standing for full-time Equality Officer or Deputy President
… if you’ve ever thought about taking a Year Out from college to earn money,

Consider running for one of the part-time officer posts
… if you’ll be a full-time (or part-time) student next year.

Nominations close at 5pm today – see attached notice.

Daniel Wood
Representation Executive
Union of Students in Ireland
www.usi.ie

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Comments (4 of 4)

Shock and, er...horror.

by The Insider

Sat Jun 17, 2006 13:58

Must be a quiet day on indymedia for this to get put up as a serious news story.

On the contrary...

by Green Ink

Sat Jun 17, 2006 15:32

This is symptomatic of the doldrums that wider political participation, as well as student politics per se, flounders in. Colleges and universities were traditionally hotbeds of political foment, but if this is the best that USI can come up with in political motivation it should concern any political entity reading it.
Plus, indymedia publishes live so a slow news day here should be measured in numbers of stories rather than content.

if saturday is a slow news day

by chris murray - the unmanageables

Sat Jun 17, 2006 18:31

bring on the silly season. Loads of room to play.

slow turgid settling clay day but nation nor state will e'er be the same

by iosaf

Sat Jun 17, 2006 19:44

Is that constitutional Daithi?
(not bunreacht constitutional but USI constitutional)
Just wondering coz tomorrow being the 7th anniversary of rts! london catalonia will vote on its "estatut" but not the one it overwhelmingly supported last september, tomorrow is the "madrid catalonia estatut" not the "catalan catalonia estatut" but they're still all well being catalan about it, and the supreme court found it was unconstitutional of the government to ask or pressure the public to vote or take part, nonetheless Pasqual (our most excellent president of the generalitat) broke the law yesterday for the final time [ the missing punctuation , , , ; : . I do like to see someone write the username "green ink" very clever for yes I write in green ink mostly and see the laugh yes look it up on google yes why not and see the history of "green ink letters" a now mostly forgotten journalistic code phrase yes of the late nineteenth century ] & told the catalans to vote yes i say yes i say yes yes yes

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Satire or shame? An astonishing email from USI

Comments (4 of 4)