Students revolt over militant new union boss
Exeter University to vote on cutting ties with NUS ... and Oxbridge could be next
EXETER University is to vote on cutting ties with the national student body after it elected a Left-wing activist who opposed counter-terror measures.
The university’s 20,000 students will be balloted on leaving the National Union of Students over dissatisfaction with its hard-Left agendas.
Many students are said to be angry at the NUS’s links with Cage, the organisation that called Islamic State executioner Jihadi John a ‘beautiful young man’.
It comes amid campaigns at Oxford, Cambridge and eight other universities to sever membership over claims the union no longer speaks for ‘all students’.
But Exeter will be the first to hold a ballot on the issue this year, while Cambridge looks set to follow after
‘Desperate need for reform’
campaigners submitted a motion on Thursday evening. A mass withdrawal from membership would be a severe blow to the union, which was formed in 1922 and is a confederation of 600 student guilds across the country.
Earlier this week, Malia Bouattia enjoyed a shock victory over sitting president Megan Dunn during the union’s conference in Brighton.
Miss Bouattia, 28, is a key figure behind the NUS ‘Students Not Suspects’ campaign, which tells students not to comply with counterterror measures.
Under the Government’s Prevent strategy, academics are obliged to monitor students for signs of radicalisation and report concerns to the authorities.
At one ‘Students Not Suspects’ event held on campus at Exeter recently, NUS vice president of welfare Shelly Asquith appeared on a panel alongside Moazzam Begg, director of Cage. During the event, Mr Begg avoided answering a question on whether he condoned the stoning of women adulterers. Miss Bouattia has spoken alongside Mr Begg twice at student events and Cage tweeted to congratulate her on her appointment on Wednesday.
She has also been forced to deny being anti-Semitic after branding Birmingham University a ‘Zionist outpost’ in a 2011 blog post.
Exeter’s guild of students is due to hold a campus-wide referendum on disaffiliating between May 2 and May 13.
Other universities planning disaffiliation campaigns include Durham, Edinburgh, York, Westminster, Aberystwyth, London South Bank, the London School of Economics and King’s College London.
Newcastle’s students’ union said it would hold a referendum if there is enough appetite from students. President Dominic Fearon said: ‘The NUS only serves the few delegates who attend the national conference; they have very little interest in representing the majority of students.
‘I think there is a bitter irony in them calling for governmental reform when there is clearly a desperate need for reform within their own organisation.’
Commenting on campaigns to leave the NUS, Miss Dunn, the incumbent president, told conference delegates: ‘To anybody here or back on campus that is whispering of disaffiliation from NUS because of this conference – know this: We are stronger when we work together.’
An NUS spokesman said: ‘ NUS will continue with its new president to encourage students to oppose inequality, oppression, including racism, and injustice both at home and abroad.’