NUS Conferences are hugely important - they set policy, train students, inspire activists and generate debate throughout the movement. I am really proud that we have stayed involved in NUS this year.

Leo (current president) and Dan (last year's president) are both running for the full-time International Students' Officer position, Maahwish Mirza (women's conference delegate) has been elected onto the NUS Women's Committee, and Yolly Chegwidden (LGBT conference delegate) won the HE student of the year award at NUS LGBT conference; Warwick Pride were also shortlisted for campaign of the year at the same event. Leo has sat on Welfare Zone this year, I have been a member of NUS LGBT committee, and Sean has chaired the Aldwych group, which is not part of NUS but is hugely important in the student movement.

So this year we sent delegates to:

NUS National Conference (report here)

NUS LGBT Conference (report here)

NUS Women's Conference (report here)

NUS Disabled Students' Conference (no report received as of yet)

We are also sending delegates to the upcoming International, Postgraduate and Black Students' Conferences which are taking place over the next few weeks.

If anyone has any questions about any of the conferences, conference reports or NUS, please get in touch. Delegates to liberation conferences (ie. women's, black, LGBT and Disabled students) can only be held to account by students who self-define into those liberation groups. 

Okay, so maybe that's shoehorning ABBA in just a little bit, but it's only 23 days until Eurovision and I'm excited. 

Anyway, onto serious matters, and I can only apologise for not mentioning this earlier - it's difficult keeping up with all of the legislative changes going on around housing at the moment. 

If you live in private accommodation, you will have had to pay a deposit before you moved in. Now, by law your deposit must be protected by an independent government-managed scheme: this basically means that your landlord can't run off with your cash, or make unfair charges without you exercising your right for an external body to intervene. Isn't the justice system neat sometimes?

Recent changes to the law have really tightened up on deposit protection, which is a good thing. The long and short of it is, if your landlord hasn't placed your deposit in a protection scheme by May 6th (ie. in three days time) then they won't be legally compliant. Unfortunately, many landlords are wise to the fact that some of their tenants won't have the foggiest idea what the hell a DPS is and therefore could quite easily screw you over unless you're in the know. 

If you're a bit of a geek like me, you can check out the changes to legislation here. 

So here's what you need to do unless you already know for sure that your deposit is protected:

How to check your deposit is protected:

1. You should have been sent some paperwork (formal name ‘Prescribed Information’) that details how your deposit is protected. If you’ve got that and can see that information then you’re golden, but go ahead and double check online anyway.

2. It must be in one of three schemes and you should have been made aware which one. Below are the links to check deposit protection for each of them – you’ll need some details such as your postcode, the deposit amount and tenancy start date.

Deposit Protection Scheme (DPS)

The Dispute Service (TDS)

My Deposits

If you’re not sure which scheme you’re deposit should be in… try checking them all!

Can’t see the confirmation you’re after?

If you’ve checked all the channels above and can’t get that proof of your deposit protection, then contact your landlord (or agent if the property is managed by them) and ask which scheme the deposit is in and for proof of it.

Still need help?

If you’re having trouble getting co-operation from your landlord, or want more  advice on your deposit, you  can email me (welfare@warwicksu.com) or the advice centre (advice@warwicksu.com)
 

That's all on that front for now folks - please spread the word to all your mates, and keep an eye out for our information about moving out over the next couple of months :) 


 

(also, on a non-housing related note, GO VOTE IN THE OFFICER ELECTIONS PLEASE. www.warwicksu.com/elections - I want someone to hand over too!)

When I lived in California on my year abroad in 2009, I didn’t miss having to carry an umbrella in my bag every time I went out – what I did miss was pubs. Pubs, especially ones as good and homely as those that you find on an English roadside, are virtually non-existent in the Golden State, so when I returned to good old Britannia, I appreciated pubs more than ever and since then the majority of my drinking tends to take place in pubs – a far cry from my fresher days of pre-loading at the kitchen table (or on some occasions Rootes laundrette).

In fact, student drinking habits as a whole have been changing, however subtly, over the last 10 years. Nightclubs are increasingly going into administration or suffered a crackdown from local licensing authorities (rightly so) – and those that do remain aren’t always the cheapest or most pleasant places to drink, meaning that if students do want to go out their tactic is to get so battered first that by the time they arrive in Smack or Kasbah they’re too drunk to notice that they are sticking to the floor (and sometimes the walls).

So students have increasingly started pre-drinking – which isn’t necessarily a new concept, just one that’s caught on a lot more in recent years, and it’s this habit that will probably be the most affected, certainly in terms of cost, by the coalition budget. The minimum price being imposed on units of alcohol available in supermarkets could have a relatively steep impact on student wallets – especially for those partial to cider rather than beer, although the impact will be felt across the board.

To be honest, I don’t take issue with the increase in price per se. I’ve seen a 4-pack of lager in Tesco being sold for a total of 97pence which is utterly ludicrous when food is comparatively so expensive. What I do take issue with is that raising the duty on alcohol is a blunt instrument approach which assumes that people drink alcohol solely because it is cheap, and by the same token, that they will not drink as much alcohol because it is expensive.

It’s dangerous to look at alcohol as if it were difficult to drugs or cigarettes because despite its very different positioning in the social consciousness – as a social lubricant, an aid to “banter”, a work-day wind-down or a celebratory obligation – alcohol is and always has been an addictive drug with devastating effects. When the Labour government banned smoking in indoor public spaces, this didn’t stop people from smoking - but it did alter the culture of smoking at the same time as decreasing the effects of second-hand smoke on non-smokers.

If the coalition government is serious about tackling alcohol abuse, they must not become complacent and think that raising prices is the way to do so. Alcohol is embedded in the lifestyle of people in this country, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that if health and social responsibility are likewise embedded. Students in particular have started frequenting pubs, washing down their drinks with food instead of simply sinking pints. This reflects a shift in social and spending habits as well as drinking habits – students are becoming more aware of the fact that where you could spend £40 on a night out (pre-drinks, taxi, club entry, drinks, taxi) you could spend £20 on some pub grub and a few pints, and actually be able to chat to your friends at the same time instead of having your eardrums destroyed by yet another song that consists mostly of autotuned vowels.

Most crucially, this is yet another example of a relatively crude policy (albeit it has not been passed into law yet and is unlikely to do so until 2014) that will hit the poorest hardest, and once again assumes that “social problems” like alcohol abuse and anti-social behaviour are confined to the working-class. In my mind, a one-size fits all policy is not enough – a strategy that considers the particular patterns of poorer people, students, richer people, families, single people and so on separately is a lot more work, but is most definitely necessary if the roots of dangerous drinking habits are to be discovered and tackled effectively.

My central beliefs about drinking remain unchanged in the light of the budget – firstly, education around alcohol needs to start at an early age. We learn about the dangers of unprotected sex, drugs and smoking in school, but alcohol is seen as an afterthought. The fantastic work by Drink Aware needs to be continuously promoted and supermarkets need to realise that putting a barely noticeable logo on their advertisements is not good enough . Universities and Students’ Unions need to work together to ensure that the drinking culture in universities, especially during freshers’ week, is not seen as the norm. Bar crawls, in my opinion, need to be completely opposed, as do initiations for clubs and societies – and clubs where the staff serve customers who are already blind-drunk and then kick them out in a weakened state need some serious education about duty of care, or at the very least need to be reminded that they can refuse to serve someone if they see fit.

Ultimately, people need to realise that being drunk out of your skull isn’t a great plan. I can’t even remember the last time I was drunk but I still have lots of fun on nights out and I spend far less on painkillers for the next morning as a result. I hope the Government’s long-term strategy will highlight the benefits of not drinking as much as the pitfalls of drinking in excess, and when it does, I’ll be in the pub celebrating – but responsibly. 

There really is no such thing as a free lunch

I had many defining experiences as a Warwick student, but I think one of the most memorable incidents occurred post-graduation, when I received a letter from the lovely people at the Student Loans Company, informing me in cold black-and-white that my debt incurred over three years of undergraduate study amounted to something like £19,500.

Fast-forward a 20 months later and I am in a decent job, with another decent job secured with Teach First from this summer. I have a first class BA in English & American literature and an MA in English. My parents paid for the latter. Every month I get a payslip, and the first thing I do (apart from dashing off to Nandos for some celebratory noms) is look at how much I’ve shaved off my student debt. Last month it was £31.

I’m lucky. I’ve never had to really worry about money in my life. My parents earn a very good amount. I had a maintenance loan (the minimum amount) during my undergraduate days. When it came to my postgraduate degree, not only did my parents insist on paying for it (the fees alone were around £6000 for one year), they also insisted in supporting me financially throughout as no loan was available for me.  I never took it for granted. I got a job within three weeks of starting university – even when I went abroad I worked – and I have always told my parents that I will pay them back if they want me to.

However recently I’ve been thinking about the numbers. My maintenance loan at undergrad was about £3000. In first year, my rent was about £80 per week, for a 30 week let. So right there, that’s £2400 written off. So that’s £600 of my loan to get me through the academic year.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I spent about £40 a week on food and booze. I was never a massively heavy drinker but even so it may have been more than that on occasion – circling, friend’s birthday parties and the occasional treat of a library cooked breakfast…so I could have spent more or less. But with £40 as an average, that’s £160 a month, which means that my remaining £600 would have been erased in just under 4 months. In my first year, I earned about £15 a week from my job at the Arts Centre.

I had four modules in first year. I needed 5 core texts for 3 of them, and about 15 novels for one. Let’s say the 15 core texts cost £10 each (even on amazon, they were chunky ones!) and let’s say I only bought 7 of the novels, at an average of £6.99 each. That’s about £200 – excluding any additional texts I had to buy for essay research that weren’t in the library.

Then there was printing. I had to pay about £30 in total for printed hand-outs. I had to do 8 class presentations throughout the year (1 per module per term) and of course print my essays and research. I’m pretty sure I spend about £10 as a minimum on printing per month. So that’s about £110 altogether.

Luckily, being the fortunate person I am, my parents also gave me an allowance. I don’t remember how much it was but I think it was in the region of £200 a month. During my postgraduate degree, they upped this to the extent that it covered my rent and some of my living costs. I am fully aware of how incredibly lucky I was to have that.

But what if my parents hadn’t supported me? Theoretically, I wouldn’t have been able to buy most of my core textbooks or pay for printing – never mind the additional costs incurred by actually having a life.

This is the crux of the matter, and for me the reason why it’s really important that the NUS and Warwick SU, along with other unions and students across the country, are kickstarting the conversation around Higher Education Funding and Hidden Course Costs.

A quick note on the SLC and HE funding

When students apply for a loan, they are asked for their family income. You get more money if your family income is below a certain level, which is why I got the minimum. The premise is that your parents will support you.

If my parents weren’t the loving parents they are, I could have gone off to university with a loan that would have only sustained my minimum living costs for less than half the academic year. Of course I’m sure I would have been able to at least approach the University for some financial support if that situation had arisen, but the fact remains that the entire premise of the Student Loans Funding system is flawed because the main thing that is taken into consideration is your family background. Don’t get me wrong – especially for students from working-class families, the acknowledgement of these circumstances is absolutely vital. But it’s not enough. Even with a means-tested loan, and occasionally a grant, students are still liable to pay for so many things that are necessary for their student experience. The wide variety of hidden course costs already listed on our receipt totalizer shows that.

The future of Higher Education, and how it will be funded, is, in my opinion, in crisis. The shelving of the HE Bill in Parliament unfortunately does not signify a victory for the thousands of dedicated activists who have fought against it. Rather it smacks of a desire to push it through, piece by piece, without sufficient debate and with little or no public scrutiny or accountability. Furthermore, no clear plans have been laid out for how student loans will be sustainably funded in the future. The government wrongly assumed that only a few institutions would charge the maximum £9000 fee – but of course, most are now intending to do just that. This will leave students with a much larger debt to pay off – which would arguably be fine if the job market was in a good state. However with youth unemployment at an all-time high, the possibility that graduates will not manage to get a job at a salary level at which they can start paying off their loan is increasing by the day. Which means it will take longer for them to pay off their loan, which means more interest will be accrued, and the argument that graduates earn a higher salary on average than their non-educated counterparts will become redundant.  

And don’t even get me started on postgraduate funding. The debate around £9000 fees was entirely centred on undergraduates, leaving non-traditional students completely out of the picture. I have no idea what the government’s plans are for the future of postgraduates but suffice it to say that I’m pretty sceptical at this stage to say the least.
 

So what can be done?

All in all, the NUS’ campaign around Hidden Course Costs and lobbying the Government and Universities to “Come Clean” on Higher Education Funding is sorely needed. I personally hope that one day we will see a return to the time when all students could study for free, and that all students will have a living grant. However for now there is much to be done to improve the situation for current students. 

I imagine some Warwick students may be sceptical about what we can concretely achieve by having this conversation with the university. I personally hope that the University will consider the following:

 a) increasing investment  in library books, so that more core textbooks can be available to students

 b) the infrastructure of inter-departmental booksales, so students can sell on their books with greater ease

c) investigating giving each student a certain number of free printer credits (some departments already do this

d) increasing year-round means tested support so that students who can’t afford the cost of their travel to placement, field trips, research materials and so on can apply for additional funding

Please get involved. There are so many students out there who aren’t as lucky as I was. Education is a right, not a privilege. We need to send a clear message that student living isn’t an easy ride, that we will bear the burden of debt for years to come, and that the government needs a clear, sustainable plan to support the next generation of students.

So here’s the thing. Only 5 out of the last 35 sabbs at Warwick have been women. In Warwick Student Union’s 46 year history, only 4 Presidents have been women. Only 23.4% of all of Warwick SU’s sabbs have been women.

Nationally, 38% of sabbs and 21% of SU presidents are women – yet women make up the majority of students in Higher Education. Only 22% of MPs are women. Women in HE are more likely to have caring responsibilities, to be mature students, to be sexually assaulted, to be studying courses vulnerable to funding cuts.

I’m the only woman on the current sabb team, and for me only having one woman is not enough, because that can be misconstrued as tokenism (see my ranty blog post from summer).  I do think we should be encouraging more women to run – because historically, very few women do. The women at this university – like the men – are smart, driven, passionate people. They should run because they have just as much to offer as anyone else.

I really hope that this year’s officer elections will see not only an improved turnout, but a more diverse selection of candidates. Last year I was one of only 3 women out of 24 candidates. I would love to see at least 50% women candidates this year – along with students from all different backgrounds, ethnicities, nationalities, sexualities, faiths, abilities, politics, faculties, ages…The list goes on. It’s your union. Your voice is important. Get involved. www.warwicksu.com/elections

Why do we need women on sabb teams?

-     Because half of our students are women! Having women on the sabb team ensures better representation of our student body – not perfect, but better!

-     So women’s issues don’t get side-lined or just devolved to the Women’s Officer. The Women’s Officer is part-time and does great work in running International Women’s Week – but it’s important that women’s issues are talked about at a sabbatical and organisational level.

-     Some students might feel more comfortable talking to a women sabb – regardless of that sabb’s specific remit – for personal or cultural reasons.

So, why should you run to be a sabb if you’re a woman?

-     Firstly, I don’t think you should run because you’re a woman. I think you should run because you’re passionate about the union and you want to make positive change for students. However, I also feel that as a woman you can bring your personal experiences to the table and use those experiences to make positive change for women in the union.

-     The Leadership experience you get in this job is invaluable. Where else can you go straight into a job, making executive decisions on a daily basis, sitting on a Board of Trustees, acting as a role model? Where else can you actively project manage and lead on issues from day one? With only 22% women MPS, and a chronic lack of women in high level executive positions in the workplace generally, I’d say that any leadership experience you can gain early on in your working life is essential in order to see that deficiency restored in the wider working climate.

-     To keep women’s issues and representation on the agenda. Women are more likely to study the humanities, which are suffering more than STEM subjects as a result of the cuts. Women are more likely to experience sexual harassment and violence. Mature students and student parents are more likely to be women. If we don’t have at least one woman sabb, these issues are more likely to be pushed to the bottom of the priority list.

FAQs

“But we already have a women’s officer – why do we need women on the sabb team?”

Our women’s officer is part-time and unpaid. Her remit is to run campaigns that empower and celebrate women (such as women’s week) and guarantee women’s representation in democratic structures such as union council. However women’s issues and representation shouldn’t be the sole responsibility of a single person – having women on the sabbatical team ensures that there is someone who is constantly able to provide that viewpoint in day-to-day union activities.

“If you encourage women to run and not men, isn’t that sexist?”

We’re encouraging women to run this year because so few women have run in recent years – only 3 out of 24 candidates last year were women! We’re trying to address the imbalance. If we end up having an all-male sabb team, that’s a result of the democratic process – but if women aren’t in the running then there is obviously no chance of them winning in any event.

“The SU isn’t allowed to discriminate because of equal opps – so why do women’s issues need to be on the agenda?”

Legal prohibitions of sexism are not enough – women students are still more likely to be sexually assaulted, for instance. The fact that we don’t actively discriminate against women does not mean that women’s issues aren’t pervasive or important.

“Why don’t women run currently?”

It’s difficult to say – we have had fantastic women involved in union activities over the last few years and so few of them run to be a sabb. Maybe they don’t know enough about the job, maybe seeing sabbatical teams dominated by men (both at Warwick and at other unions) puts them off, maybe they lack confidence…it could be anything! Hopefully the excitement around elections this year will inspire our women students to run – they have nothing to lose and everything to gain!

“What’s the point if women are so rarely in leadership positions in the real world anyway?”

Charity may begin at home, but change begins in your Students’ Union! Unless women are given development opportunities and can be empowered, the status quo which sees a real lack of women in leadership positions will not be challenged. Things are getting better and more representative, but there’s still a lot of work to do. Nurturing people who aspire to lead early on can only be a good thing.

Some testimonies from some ex-Warwick sabbs…

“I knew from my first term at Warwick that I wanted to be Sports Officer and represent the student body in something I was so passionate about.  The whole experience from start to finish was one I will never forget and something that very few people at the age of 21 get to encounter.  Whilst it may seem a daunting task running against fellow students and even friends, particularly as a women, it is something I would strongly recommend and I can say to date it was the best year of my life.  Not many graduates are a trustee of a business with a turnover of £5.5 million or sit on a board making strategic commercial decisions in their first ever job.  In fact I doubt there are any graduate jobs that give you such a grounding of business, commercial ventures, strategy, managing an organisation coupled with working with a fantastic team of staff, enhancing the student experience and doing something you love. 

My year as Sports Officer led to me becoming employed with Warwick Sport and following a career in sport, so I can certainly say taking that leap of faith to run was the best decision I ever made.  I felt very confident going into my job and this is undoubtedly down to my experiences as a sabbatical officer; I wasn’t intimidated meeting with senior and influential individuals, I felt confident giving presentations and writing important papers and had more competent time management skills and working on my own initiative.

In my last month as Sports Officer, London were awarded the Olympic Games, now with 6 months to go until the greatest sporting event on earth I am fortunate enough to still be working within sport and look forward to what this year and beyond brings as a result of London 2012 and continuing my career which began as a sabbatical officer.” ~ Gemma Morris, Sports Officer 2004-5, currently Warwick Sport Manager

“Whenever I think of my Sabb year at Warwick I can't help but beam with a massive smile. Running for Sabb was probably single-handedly the best decision I ever made at Warwick. I had the best year ever, made friends for life and learnt so much. Being a Sabb is a fantastic experience and it’s not often that a 21 year old gets to be a Trustee and a Director - a pretty impressive CV booster. However the main thing I enjoyed about being a Sabb is that you get to make a real difference and it’s a great opportunity to really stretch yourself and learn so many new skills, as well as learning a hell of a lot about yourself. I leant so much in just a year and I learnt real skills that employers value. For me, being a Sabb was the perfect bridge between being a student and entering into a career. It is such a friendly and supportive organisation to work for; the staff invest so much time and effort into making sure you grow, develop and achieve your full potential. As for why women should run for Sabb, well you do make up half the student population and it’s important you represent the views and opinions of your fellow female students. For any woman who has even the slightest thought of running for Sabb, I say GO FOR IT!! I promise you won't regret it!” ~ Steph Jones, Welfare Officer 2008-9