Students Follow

The right wing project to "reform" the National Union of Students (NUS) into oblivion was defeated yesterday when its backers failed to win the necessary two thirds support for the plan at the NUS's national conference.

A key vote at next week’s annual conference of the National Union of Students (NUS) could see the organisation transformed from a campaigning body into a "professional lobbying group".

Students at Essex university have shown that it is possible to build campaigns outside the structures of student unions that can then capture its leading positions.

The depoliticisation and commercialisation of student unions has found a particularly strong expression in King’s College, London, says student John Cooper.

Activists at University College London (UCL) were celebrating last week after they defeated the right’s attempt to suspend Sam Godwin, the student union’s general secretary, and reverse a democratic decision to block military recruitment on campus.

The huge student movements of the 1960s largely bypassed the NUS, which activists wrote off as both irrelevant and hopelessly right wing.

Student Respect national committee members Dominic Kavakeb and Jennifer Jones have been elected to two of the most important student union sabbatical positions in the country.

The National Union of Students (NUS) emergency conference on 4 December was the first round of voting on whether the union should scrap most of its democratic structures.

On Tuesday of last week – the day after hundreds of student activists descended on parliament – the National Union of Students (NUS) leadership revealed its 80 page long attack on its democratic structures to the national executive.

The annual conference of the National Union of Students (NUS), which took place last week, was undoubtedly a difficult one for the left.

On Wednesday of last week, over 500 students attended the Manchester university student union general meeting where they voted for a motion against the BNP, and against an amendment enabling the banning of Muslim groups on campus.

Thousands of students travelled to London last Sunday to join a National Union of Students (NUS) demonstration over education funding.