Student Unions, classic or dud?

I always think the student newspapers and clubs and things would be way better except for the eternal problem; the people who have really good ideas are never around college. Obviously it's not a hard and fast rule but this is my experience of the radio station and newspaper, it's a clique where they all seem to find each other very funny, hence the posters around college etc which always feel like one of those jokes where someone's trying to get you into their little comedy world when really you're not sure what the hell is going on.

why did you spend that long on this?

I've always wanted to but I'm lazy to 'take part'.

The bar in our college is the most depressing place on earth, and I'm quite an enthusiastic person, despite what this thread might suggest.

Student politics, in general, is childish and self-indulgent and largely inconsequential and NEVER FUCKING CHANGES to the extent that my dad (Goldsmiths SU President 1972) was having the exact same arguments that we had at AGMs almost thirty years later. I advise you to steer well clear of the whole sorry debacle.

The Rutgers Student Center looked rather like a bus station when I went to school there. However, the fourth floor contained the radio station studios and two of the school papers. Consequently, I spent more time there during my 4 1/2 years in college than anywhere else.

distracting the studious with a bit of levity=classic.

I've already found out that campus radio is a different beast altogether on the otherside of the puddle so Im not going to touch that one. And campus papers can vary from shcoool to school. Mine when I started was great, absolutely great aside from the news, because nothing really did happen that quickly in town. By the time I had graduated there were better zines being done by high school kids. We did survive two lawsuits, a couple of trips to small claims courts and the university's judicial system in my two years on staff. Still the work I did on that wouldn't even pay for the drinking it drove me to.

Though the idea that SU politics are fiddly and pathetic might just be a ruse that people have come up with to keep most people from participating (and therefore allowing themselves to keep most of the power) -- similar thing with actual politics (at least in the U.S.) which is often seen as fiddly and pathetic and you could argue that it's been painted this way because it's in certain people's best interests to maintain the status quo.

Or: The SU is what you make of it, but if you're not interested in making anything of it, then it's going to be what others make of it.

When I was in school I didn't make much of it at all but I do somewhat regret that now...

I mean, my school had several groups that were actually doing something beyond making little in-jokes for themselves (though it certainly had its share of those too) -- taking the university into the "real world". And many of the other groups had the potential to do that -- newspapers, the black or queer or other similar groups, etc. -- but were limited by, well, mostly by the assumption that they couldn't have any effect on the real world and had to live in the ivory tower.

If anyone wants to get any artistic, or political thing off the ground then they are far better to do it out side of the university. Student politics is almost dead here.

they were annoying enough the first time round. don't give them a breeding ground, i reckon.

Ha ha - because apathetic people like *you* let the crooks in.

(Or maybe that's because I'm so shamelessly impressed with Goldsmiths.)

Unions are places for peopleto get together. Be that politically, socially, or meet people of similar interest. They ideally provide safe, unthreatening places for these interactions to go on. Anything beyond this is a bonus (though often an embarressment). In my opinion lousy Unions work much like Ed mentions above. I do more than pay lip service to our sabbaticals, but then we are very unusal in having more officers than permenent staff.

Its our election count this afternoon. Joy.

I tried very hard to get things going and to sustain them. When I started doing the Tu3sday club here we were asked to try and break even within a year and told that they'd be happy with breaking even. So we had a varied music policy; 1 week d&b, 1 week hip hop, 1 week something weird, 1 week residents. This allowed the d&b over two rooms once a month to cross subsidise the things that I and others were into. This worked and we made a profit over the year, built a following and even did quite well out of the hip hop and the weird nights (which were one room only).

Trouble was a new bunch of sabs came in and decided that they wanted a similar order of profits from tuesday as they got from the other nights. I was in Italy so not able to fight my corner, (although the ents manager/booker, who is still a good friend, did try and represent my views). So now the night is about 3:1 d&b/breaks:hip hop and run by an outside company rather than students (to be fair the outside company is former students).

Internal politics, you're either an apolitical aparatchik or from the SWP.

The only external campaign that the union has got involved in since i've been around has been stop the war and they were very late jumping on that band wagon, (over a year after I started going to meetings in october of 2001).

SUSU is a very large organisation although its hard to know if sabs and committees are outnumbered by staff or not, and yes it does perform the basic function outlined by pete, but i still feel let down.

Student paper was great. We scooped the local press on fairly frequent basis, won a few awards and the offices were slap in the middle of both the Union bars. Generally those involved in politics were a bit mad. I remember before the elections you'd get all the candidates spotting you were from The Steel Press and buying you drinks.

I say classic, as long as you stay focused on the wider community and fight against using crap student cliches. (See the Sex! Now I've got your attention. ... shudder)

I second Anna's motion - that saiod crap student cliches are new to all students once, and there is nothing wrong with indulging them every now and then.

dud

This is my school's student unionish place. I. M. Pei designed it.

http://sa.rochester.edu/cab/photos/2002/winterfest/Masquerade%20ball%20decoration.JPG

The interior brink color was a very bad choice; it looks crappy and depressing in winter and shows dirt.

ihttp://sa.rochester.edu/cab/photos/2002/winterfest/WCdec.jpg (this one is probably going to change to a link)

Its a nice space inside:

http://www.chem.rochester.edu/Photo/Wilson_Commons.jpg

http://www.chem.rochester.edu/Photo/aerial.jpg

Its the whitish thing under the football field; I'm living to the left of it in that row of buildings across the commons. The upper right corner of the photo is an amazing graveyard. Wow, Rochester looks pretty!