The deep chill of Thursday evening was off-set by a heated debate between local politicians from across the party spectrum in a Question time style debate in Park building, chaired by Morys Ireland and hosted by the Labour student’s society. The panel consisted of  Councillor Gerald Vernon-Jackson  a member of the Liberal Democrats and leader of Portsmouth City Council, alongside Labour MP for Portsmouth North Sarah Mc-Carthy-Fry MP, UKIP member Steve Harris, Respect candidate John Molyneux, Tim Dawes of the Green Party and Nick Chaffey Socialist Party regional coordinater and trade unionist. The topics covered included the role of local government in combatting climate change, wheather immigration is a strain or a benefit to the economy and should there have been a vote over the recent EU Lisbon treaty.  This is the first time that so many political figures have agreed to form a panel at a student meeting. The 20,000 students studying at this University make up over 10% of the local voting population, a sizable portion of the electorate, sizable enougth to win an election if it could be won over.

To the apathetic student,

Today I am writing to you, the apathetic faceless student.  First a history lesson, in 1947, after looking over his life’s work and his artistic stand against the Holocaust, W.H Auden lamented that “not one poem saved one Jewish life”. In the same year George Orwell wrote that being a socialist is somewhat like being a doctor treating a terminally ill patient. As I doctor you have a duty of care and you will have sworn to fight for the life of your patient, as a scientist you know his cause is hopeless. These men dedicated their lives to raising awareness of horror, tyranny and oppression. They both fought in the Spanish civil war, they both wrote against the rise of Hitler and warned against future despotism, they also both died broken and disillusioned men.

When considering student politics Orwell was almost right, the only difference is that the student body is not dying, merely drunk and the issues facing students today are not going to go away if you continue to ignore them. The question of apathy is never far away. It is the perennial excuse of the poor organiser. In my mind a student is only apathetic if they know an issue, understand an issue and still do not care. Indeed this is the paradox of student politics; on the one hand the age of information has ushered in an era where thousand of causes lie at our finger tips. With an appropriately placed double click you have access to a world of information. Never before has it been so easy to discover the plight of murdered Columbian trade unionists, to understand the oppression of the Burmese people or to comprehend war crimes in Lebanon, Palestine or Iraq.  Yet as a mass you’d rather spend time drinking, playing guitar hero and living up to the crude stereotype of student hood then attend a protest, or campaign on a war in some far flung foreign field which is all too likely to become forever England.  Perhaps it is understandable that you choose not to inconvenience yourselves for those you have never met in parts of the world you will never visit. However, worse still it would appear that your general state of indifference also applies to yourselves.

Trying to raise awareness of crucial issues, such as climate change or student fees, to the sleeping student body often resembles attempting to climb Everest with a tooth pick, not entirely impossible but an endless struggle where endless determination, immoveable belief and delusional optimism are essential.  It must be recognised that student politics is a reflection of wider society. What is felt on the corridors of campus soon reverberates down the corridors of power. If something is debated, and held to be true in our educational institutions then it is a microcosm of sentiment held in pubs, offices and homes across the country. The student body is a political litmus test for the rest of the population, save the students and you save the world. For generations students have been on the front lines of society shaping protests. Students led the way in standing against the war in Vietnam, in calling to ban the bomb, student demonstrations even brought even brought down the government of Charles De Gaulle in 1960’s France. Sadly it appears clear that Portsmouth 2008 is not 1960’s France.

Student politics has alwa...

**Notice Of Elections ** 

In a change to the schedule I will be holding the next Society Executive elections BEFORE next year. So, the election will not be held at Presidents Day at the start of next year, but at a date to be decided in May. (Most likely 16th May). This is an oppotunity for all outgoing and incoming society commitees to be involved in the election and to stand. It will ensure new students know who are exec are before the year starts and it ensures some stabillity for the year ahead when I will not be here. So.. currently there are 6 positions...

Chair Person

 Hobbies Rep

 Activites Rep

 Political Rep

Cultural Rep

Religious Rep

The Exec are the main contact point between the Union and socieites, importantly they HOLD THE SABB OFFICER TO ACCOUNT making sure they do their job .. important for the year ahead. They organise inter-society events such as the carnival, they make sure that societes are represented in the highest levels of the Unions' democracy and have regular contributions to Union and Wider Media. So its a key job, and we need 6 good people to do it. To lead, to support, to represent socieites and to ensure that they grow and maintain their integral position within UPSU. P

lease E-mail me, if you are interested or one of your society members is interested and I'll will send out some more info.

Many thanks,

Ben Norman

The 5th June will witness the 3rd Annual VIP Awards Dinner., its the time of year when the Union and the University stand up and appluade the hard work and dedication that our socieites and volunteers have shown this year.

Our Vice-Chancellor John Craven will be at hand, in a tuxedo-ed Dumbledore like fashion, to present five catagories of society awards and the individual bronze, silver and gold VIP awards.

This year the catagories are:

Best New Society
Overall contribution to the Union
Must Organised Society
Most Improved Society
Society of the Year
The One World Award

There will also be individual awards which will be presented to those students who have gone above and beyond to make UPSU the Union it is today.

To nominate yourselves or someone you think dseserves acknlowadgement then you can either submit a 300 word "Why I deserve this award..." to Ben.norman@port.ac.uk or Download the packs from the Society "info and help" page and nominate yourself or yoursociety now!
( http://www.upsu.net/getinvolved/societies/info )

Either way make sure you submit your nomination to me by the end of April.

Tickets for the event will also be avaliable to purchase after the Easter Break.

Good Luck,

Ben

Ben Norman, Aldermaston

If you were to look up Aldermaston on a map then you’ll see a quaint middle class village which more then likely calls itself home to people with names such as Gerald or Audrey. What you wouldn’t see on the map is Aldermaston’s worst kept secret. It is the home of the Atomic Weapons Establishment, AWE, the secret facility which researches, builds and maintains Britain ’s nuclear arsenal. Within this seemingly sleepy village, less then twenty minutes from Reading , there are weapons which could consign millions of people to nuclear inferno at the push of a button. This was why on a rain soaked bank holiday Monday thousands of protestors descended on Aldermaston to stand against the Government’s decision to re-new the Trident missile system, at a cost of £70 Billion pounds.

 

 Monday the 24^th March 2008 was a landmark day as it not only marked fifty years since the first Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, CND, march in 1958 but was also in direct violation of recently passed Ministry of Defence by-laws which prohibit the right to protest and public assembly outside of the base. This protest was a continuation of the fifty year campaign against Nuclear weapons but also a mass statement of defiance against the constant erosion of our civil liberties. Both CND and Police spokesman approximated that 5,000 protesters attended the demonstration. They came from over fifty locations around the United Kingdom from the Scottish highlands of Aberdeen and Farslane, to Sheffield , London , Penzance and Portsmouth . The geographical diversity of the protesters was outshone only by the sheer range of groups from which they heralded. Christen Action Aid, Black Flag Anarchists, Socialist party members, Stop the war peace protesters and many more stood together against the continued construction of nuclear weapons. In 1958 10,000 people made the original march when the British Government first starting building the so called “deterrent weapon”.

As it was history which was being both marked and created it was fitting that history s...