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Day: 1 December 2014

NUS voting deadline extended after candidates cry foul play

The deadline for the elections of the University of Manchester NUS delegates was extended over the weekend, after allegations were made that Harriet Pugh, Education Officer of the University of Manchester Students’ Union (UMSU), had deliberately used her weekly email to promote her campaign platform to students.

The email, sent out to the entire student body, discussed the SU’s campaigns for free education in the UK, and provided a link to vote in the elections.

After it emerged that the allegations had been made, the decision was taken by the Students’ Union on Thursday night to extend the deadline to midday on Monday.

The Mancunion was approached late last week by Josh Woolas and Andrea Campos-Vigouroux, who are running as part of a collective known as ‘the power rangers’, and are also prominent members of Manchester Labour Students.

They outlined their grievances against the education officer’s campaign.

Woolas also supplied copies of the complaints sent to both the NUS and the Students’ Union. In an email to the National Union of Students, Woolas said,

“I’ve been running in the NUS Delegate elections at UMSU this year and was really disappointed to receive this all-student email—attached below—from one of the other candidates, who is currently a Sabb Officer at our SU.

“Not only is this obviously a resource I don’t have access to as an ordinary student, but the email is a blatant plug for free education—the slate that she is running on. I was wondering what the appropriate avenues are for lodging a formal complaint?

“Being able to send an email to all students whilst the voting for an election she is actively running in is open gives her a huge platform for self-promotion, as well as giving the entire slate an unfair advantage in these elections. It’s really disheartening to see that this was allowed to occur: If this kind of thing can be allowed to happen, then there isn’t really much point in anyone else running in these elections.”

Woolas also emailed the Returning Officer of the Students’ Union, who is responsible for ensuring that all elections are free and fair.

In it, he said he could not “understand why the General Secretary, who was also present at the Demo and isn’t standing in these elections, couldn’t have sent the email. The rules surrounding current student officers standing in elections don’t seem to do enough to protect the fairness of the vote.”

He added further, “I am really disappointed with Harriet’s behaviour, as I thought she held student politics in the same high regard as I do.”

The internal inquiry by the Students’ Union however ruled that Pugh was not in breach of the rules, despite also deciding to extend the deadline until Monday.

A spokesperson for the Union said, “The Returning Officer (RO) recognises that the Students’ Union may have inadvertently raised the profile of one candidate during an election period with the all student email. The RO has therefore recommended that the Union compensate coverage of other candidates by sending out a bespoke communication and extending the ballot box until Monday 1st Dec 12 noon to ensure that no candidates are disadvantaged.”

The Mancunion also contacted Pugh for a response to the allegations made against her.

In a statement, she explained that “As the executive leader and primary organiser among our leadership of the free education campaign, I had been scheduled to write that week’s weekly student email.

“Although the timing was unfortunate, this was an internal oversight and the deadline has been extended for that reason.”

She added further, “I think it is a great injustice that their complaints assume that students do not think for themselves and hence would blindly vote for me in an election on the basis that they had seen my name and opinion [in the email] and agreed with it.”

Voting has now closed and the results will be announced shortly.

Top 5 Books to Buy this Christmas

1. Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North:

Flanagan’s Man Booker Prize-winning epic novel tells the story of one man’s reckoning with the truth. It is an odd focus for a love story, unfolding over half a century around the most infamous episode of Japanese history—the construction of the Thailand-Burma Death Railway in WWII. Yet Flanagan’s novel as a tribute to his late father, who was a survivor, honestly highlight the savagery and survival needed for the prisoners-of-war. It is an unflinching tale that both haunts and captivates.

2. Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake:

Kingsnorth’s unusual novel has an extraordinary power to linger with you, its focus being on a date that most have had drilled into their brains. 1066, The Battle of Hastings, but do we really know the extent of our own history? The narrator fears the end of his world as he knows it and the novel explores the collapse of lives, gods and the haunted visions of the narrator and his world. However, what Kingsnorth so accurately explores is that a portrayal of this history cannot truly be told in the modern English we use today. Kingsnorth uses a compelling mix of Old English to our vernacular English today. This books unsettles the imagination with the creation of a world that is at once alien and familiar.

3. Ali Smith’s How to be Both:

As a nominee for the Man-Booker Prize, Smith tells parallel narratives of a teenage girl and a 15th Century Renaissance artist. This novel is split into two parts focussing either on George as the teenage girl or Francesco del Cossa and depending on which version you get this will be varied. The distinction drawn between the two comes from George’s mother regarding art and under-drawings that differ significantly from the final painting. She asks “Which came first?” and this is something Smith plays with throughout the whole novel—what we read cannot be unread. While it may come across as daunting, Smith’s playful and charming novel leaves you pondering over questions such as; do things “stop existing just because we can’t see them?” Have a read and see for yourself.

4. Hilary Mantel’s The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher:

Mantel’s witty collection of short stories are entirely unmissable. While the collection focuses on ten differing stories, there was one that stood out above all for me. ‘Sorry to Disturb’ opens the collection and is set in 80s Saudi Arabia, charting the unwelcome visits of a Pakistani businessman to the narrator’s flat. The story is a comedy of cross-cultural sexual politics which is at once disturbing and equally humorous.

5. Siri Hustvedt’s The Blazing World:

Hustvedt’s new novel takes a head on approach to the utter absence of women artists in the history of painting. The protagonist Harriet Burden is an embittered painter living in New York. She is only able to showcase her art through persuading her male contemporaries to showcase it under their names. The true subject thus is one that is still at the heart of society today—the persistence of denial. The irrepressibly clever prose darts around the bigger questions of gender, politics and art and yet still maintains a light hearted fizziness.