#NUS2012

[penbarker-blog]

There are some hilarious blog posts on here!

[yourunionexec-blog]

NUS #Demo2012

On the 21st November 2012 NUS are staging a Demonstration in London called Educate, Employ, Empower. To find out more about the demonstration click here.

As representatives of your union we faced the difficult decision of whether or not as a Student Union we should support this demo. We spoke to a variety of students and student representatives regarding this matter and we have come to the decision that Heriot-Watt Watt University Student Union will not be supporting this demonstration.

We took many different factors into consideration, including the fact that the date of the demonstration is in week 11 of our term. Many students do not have time to sacrifice 3 days travelling��to and from London at this crucial point in the academic calendar.

As a Union we have a limited amount resources and spent a large amount of time over the summer deciding on our priority campaigns which include improving vision and widening access and retention. We feel that supporting the demo would detract from these campaigns and the impact we want them to have.

Mike Ross, Student Union President had this to say about the decision that was taken;

"The date for the demo clashes with a large number of hand-in dates for our students at the end of semester along with our examination period before the festive holidays. Given a realistic time commitment of 2 to 3 days we felt that we had an important responsibility when it came to representing our students with this decision. In addition to this the resources involved in supporting the national demo  would mean that our priority campaigns, particularly around widening access and retention, would struggle to have the impact they are intended to have. The executive committee spent a considerable amount of time over this decision and it was a difficult one to come to."

"We are supportive of the message and overall ideas that have come about because of the demo. We don’t believe the demo, in its current form, has come about in the right way to support these ideas. (I mean this in the sense that the National Union of Students conference voted for the following 'Conference resolves to organise a national demonstration in the first term of 2012-2013 against cuts, fees, high interest on student debts' and the message since has been changed)."