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Day: 15 February 2017

Roof collapses at Manchester’s Factory nightclub

The popular Factory nightclub gave clubbers what must be one of the most unique nights out of their lives, when the ceiling of the first floor collapsed in the early hours of Sunday the 12th of February.

Clubbers were filmed holding up the remains of the ceiling following the bizarre incident, and it was reported by some eyewitnesses that people had glass and dust in their eyes.

Situated on the corner of Princess Street and Charles Street, the club also experienced building collapse in 2014 when 850 people were evacuated from the establishment, whilst seven people were injured.

George, who was attending the club during the incident, said “”I was getting a drink and all of a sudden I see half of the ceiling fall, and some of the students holding it up”. He then added that, in true clubber fashion, “We then began chanting Don’t Take Me Home until everyone got kicked out of the club”.

Tom Foster, speaking to The Manchester Evening News, said “It took about two minutes for the DJ to stop, then bouncers rushed in. But there was no plan. I was surprised there was no announcement.” Foster, a third year University of Salford student, speaking to The Tab, added that “it was definitely the strangest experience I’ve had on a night out.”

People took to Twitter to express light-hearted comments about the night and to recount their experiences.

Factory’s Twitter account advertised their Monday ‘Quids In’ Night with a video from The US Office of Steve Carell literally trying to raise the roof. Potential clubbers may be discouraged however, following Saturday’s surreal events.

A Factory spokesman said: “A section of plasterboard came loose from the first floor”, which had also collapsed two years ago, before adding “no one was hurt and the club was evacuated purely as a precaution. This issue relates to the first floor only, and the ground and second floors will open as normal on Monday”.

Travelling solo

Travelling on your own can be a daunting and an even seemingly impossible prospect. Glorified blogs and epic Instagram accounts make it seem like only the most accomplished travellers dare to wander the world independently, risking their lives every day and partying with new people every night. These travellers usually have expensive GoPros and movie editing software, endless streams of money and an innate ability to talk to anyone.

However, from my own experience, I can tell you that it’s not as glamorous and scary as it seems. The trick to travelling is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. There are lots of ways to ease yourself into life on the road that will make you answer the question, “How did you find travelling on your own?” with a confident “I was never on my own” when you get home from your adventure, full of pride and amazing memories.

Now you’re all inspired to organise your first solo journey, I’ll give you a few tips on how to get going. There are several ways to start your travels, but the main ways are working, volunteering, or backpacking.

Working: Is cash a problem? Work your way around the world and you’ll never have to stop travelling. The beauty of being prepared to work is that you can keep going for as long as you like; whenever you’re close to running out of money, get a job wherever you are at the time. Working holiday visas for 18-30 year olds are pretty easy to get for Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Buy yourself a visa, book a week in a popular hostel in a city of your choice, catch a flight, and get job searching once you’re out there. My first job in Sydney was door-to-door sales. I quit after a week, but I ended up moving in with the people I met on the job and we became really great friends. Alternatively, you could get a seasonal job. During summer, you could work in a bar/restaurant in a party town around Europe; to do this, you’ll either need to go through an agency online, or just rock up and start handing out CVs.

Volunteering: If there’s something more specific you want to do, maybe this is the way forward. The International Citizen Service is a great place to start if you want to make a difference in a small community by working on a project. The great thing about ICS is that all you have to do is fundraise £800, and all other costs are paid for. Something I’m desperate to do once I’ve finished university is to volunteer at a yoga and surf retreat. These are found all over the world (I want to go to Sri Lanka!), and usually say if you work in a cafe/restaurant for free, then you have access to surf equipment and yoga classes at their facility. If you want to volunteer while on the move, you can work for bed and board. This includes WWOOFing, (a popular option in Australia) or working in a hostel in return for free accommodation.

Backpacking: There are so many organised tours out there, visit STA or look on Google to find some of the most popular tours for solo travellers. These are great for the first couple of weeks as they give you a good feel for a new country, whilst keeping you totally safe. Downside is these are a little more expensive. If you don’t fancy a tour, just rock up to a new place having pre-booked a popular, suitable hostel and researched a bit about the area and what you want to do there, and start making friends! People are much friendlier in hostels than they are anywhere else in the world — I promise. If you’re more organised, then plan your journey and your accommodation in advance. If you’re more spontaneous and get a thrill from last minute decisions and not knowing where you’re going to end up, then just book the first few days and see where life takes you.

So hopefully you now feel equipped with a wealth of knowledge about how to plan and implement your solo travels. Good luck! Find yourself, lose yourself, take lots of selfies — don’t be scared to ask strangers to take your picture — and take care.

Proofreading companies: right words, wrong idea

Do you ever get tired of having to use certain words in your essays that create sentences which are grammatically correct and work together to build up a paragraph where, hopefully, each sentence makes sense and relates to its neighbour sentence in a harmonious way? I find this task of organising clear and logically constructed clauses really rather arduous.

If you have frequented the library recently, you’ll have noticed that a proofreading company is here to help, announcing itself onto the scene by means of flyers proliferating eerily here and there. I look to the left and see two flyers entitled ‘Wordsmiths: Experience You Need. Results You Want’. I look to the right: ‘Wordsmiths’. I look back to the left and there are now three flyers despite no one else being in at this time.

I begin to consider whether the overly sombre night-shift library staff member is in on the game, as he paces the perimeter in his characteristic slow, measured severity. I fear that talking to him would be to break some essential rule of courtesy, like waking up a sleep-walker or interrupting an ancient religious ritual.

Looking back down at all these words I am trying to jam into sentences like a square peg through a square hole that is too small, I feel compelled to find out more about the ones they call the Wordsmiths.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I find that nothing screams ‘this is not dodgy at all and you shouldn’t feel ashamed about using this service’ quite like the proviso ‘100 per cent Confidentiality’. It is a badge of consummate honour and can be found elsewhere — most notably in the payment conditions of online porn subscriptions. And people say I don’t do any research before writing these articles…

Well, the Wordsmiths proof-readers urgently promise 100 per cent confidentiality, in a sales technique reminiscent of someone who once approached me saying “do you want to buy this bike?” before almost instantly qualifying his question by assuring me: “I haven’t stolen it.” I saw this Wordsmiths flyer as I then saw that attempted bike flogging: with doubt as to the product but with sure knowledge that I would write about the situation sooner or later.

It should be said that any editing service is primarily aimed to help those for whom English is not a first language. And anyway, how different is sending your essays to professional editors from simply having a friend or family member read through your work?

For my part, I don’t tend to have others read through my essays, but these Mancunion articles go through an editing process. This is a case where there are benefits from an outside perspective looking over my writing, as I derive great pleasure from the inventive experimentation which goes into the spelling of my name. The unceasing creativity of the editing team has yielded some absolute gems, and I do hope for the much sought after T. S. Eliot variation this week. (My own version shares the stage with the likes of Missy Elliott and those portaloos you see on building sites, the latter providing evidence that almost all Elliotts lead to the waste land.)

The Wordsmiths flyers on my left, which now have amassed in their hundreds, tell me that the cheapest of their services is the proofreading package at a tenner per thousand words. I have yet to enquire whether it would be possible to offer them a sole penny for one word you are having particular difficulty in spelling.

This service, it says, acts as “your second pair of eyes.” Above this description is a picture of someone doing some proofreading while wearing glasses, thus generously doubling up on the company’s initial claim.

Proofreading is a fairly unobtrusive process, but it is the more expensive services which may offer cause for concern, such as a paraphrasing service at £45 per thousand words for those who “have the right ideas but have trouble finding the right words.”

That people might pay this much for their essay to be rewritten further illustrates the trend of money pervading all areas of higher education. Your assignments can now be seen as monetary investments, rather than intellectual investments, where you will see a return in the earning of a job that has been rewarded on the basis of your degree. All the things which we are encouraged to tell employers about studying an essay subject — those skills of argument, analysis and communication — won’t actually have been accrued if people choose to have professionals do it all for them.

With four years of essay-writing under my belt, and with the knowledge that the skills of writing essays are now dying out, I think I’d better give Wordsmiths a call and ask for a job, offering them a CV of attributes that their own organisation has now proved obsolete.

Applications from EU graduates to UK jobs decline by 18%

The effects of Brexit on UK businesses are already becoming apparent, after research done by LinkedIn revealed that the number of EU graduates looking for jobs in the UK fell by 18 per cent between May and July 2016.

The same report, based on data from three million people, also showed that 14 per cent of all job searches are UK graduates seeking work abroad.

Josh Graff, President of LinkedIn, speaking to The Australian Business Review, stated that “this should be a warning to British businesses that face not only a critical skills gap but also what I would call an interest gap. Domestic and international talent is starting to look outside the UK for job opportunities.

“Whilst there remains a great deal of uncertainty about what Brexit means for UK businesses, our findings make one thing clear. If British business leaders don’t act now to shore up their talent pipelines for a post-Brexit age, they risk facing interest and skills gaps in the future.

“It’s therefore vital that businesses work closely with the Government to ensure that Brexit negotiations prioritise businesses’ access to top talent from across the globe,” he added.

Separate research released by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and The Adecco Group has shown that, as reported in The Independent, specific sectors in UK businesses dedicated to EU graduates are already experiencing a shortage in labour.

The CIPD report, based on the accounts of 1,000 EU employers in the UK, has revealed that many workers want to leave their jobs this year and have considered moving out of the country.

Gerwyn Davies, labour market adviser for the CIPD, has proposed that if job positions are unfilled it could “act as a brake on output growth in the UK in the years ahead”.

Chief executive at The Adecco Group UK John Marshall said that the after-effects of the historic Brexit vote are starting to make an impact on the UK jobs market.

Marshall said: “Whilst the outcome of Brexit negotiations is still uncertain, employers’ access to EU migrant workers is likely to change. Investing in young people is a solid long-term strategy, but employers also need to face the facts and prepare for a situation where they might lose access to significant numbers of skilled EU workers in the near future.

“It is encouraging that some employers are beginning to look to new solutions for their future workforce with investment in retraining and apprenticeships, but many more need to begin this planning and investment in their workforce,” he said.

Say hello to Fuse Food

Sophia, a Drama and Screen Studies student, recently decided that the University of Manchester’s large international make-up was a culinary opportunity just waiting to be explored. This, after some serious brainstorming, led to the idea of Fuse Food.

Fuse Food is a new show coming to Fuse TV which will have student chefs cook simple, healthy and tasty dishes to inspire other students to save pennies and get back in the kitchen. The show is looking to encourage students to be inspired by different foods and diets and ultimately open students’ minds up to healthier dinner options.

Fuse Food will enjoy a different chef each week that are experts in a particular cuisine. This is where Sophia saw the chance to celebrate Manchester’s enormous international student body. Sophia felt that it would be a wonderful opportunity to have students from all over the globe cook a delicious and healthy meal that they can share with other students.

The idea is to not only include different cultures and cuisines, but give all students a new insight into cooking and encourage them to try some fantastic recipes that they might otherwise not have tried or have deemed too complicated.

The show will include a variety of different cuisines, including Spanish, Indian and Caribbean. However, there will also be a focus on different diets, to suit any taste. Many dishes will be vegetarian and a whole episode is dedicated to veganism.

Another factor Fuse Food looks into is nutritional eating for physical and mental health, to boost students in the more stressful parts of the semester. The first episode is Vegetarian, and our student chef will be making a potato and onion frittata.

The first episode is available now through Fuse TV’s Youtube channel.

Preview: Seamark founder speaks at Manchester Enterprise Centre

Manchester Enterprise Centre’s impressive speaker series, Entrepreneurs@Manchester, continues on the 15th of February with Iqbal Ahmed OBE, Manchester graduate and one of the UK’s top entrepreneurs, who will be speaking at the event.

Entrepreneurs@Manchester is a platform for the region’s most successful entrepreneurs to take to the stage to inspire students and empower the next generation of start-up founders.

Iqbal Ahmed is the founder of Seamark, one of Europe’s leading processors, exporters and distributors of frozen food. Founded in 1976 and headquartered in Manchester, today it boasts a range of over 1,000 products, spanning its traditional seafood and a variety of fish, poultry, dry and finger foods.

Born in Sylhet, Bangladesh, Ahmed moved to the UK aged 15. Since then, he has built Seamark into an international business with a turnover of nearly £60 million, supplying some of Europe’s largest retailers, including supermarkets Carrefour and Costco.

In addition to his success with Seamark, Ahmed also owns Manchester restaurants Vermilion and Cinnabar. He also features in the Sunday Times Rich List.

The event will showcase Ahmed’s huge success, and is aimed at inspiring Manchester’s next generation of entrepreneurs and business leaders.

Host Manchester Enterprise Centre, based within Alliance Manchester Business school, is a leader in enterprise education and aims to inspire, educate and develop enterprising individuals and enable them to positively impact the growth of dynamic organisations.

Iqbal Ahmed OBE will be speaking on 15th February at 5pm in the Roscoe Building, Lecture Theatre B. For more information on this free event, visit the Eventbrite page.

Interview: Jenni Smyth – Women’s Officer

When I sat down with Jenni she was deep in midst of the preparations for this year’s Reclaim the Night, explaining that “not just about organising one march, on one night, on one street — there’s a lot of preparation that goes into Reclaim the Night itself,” adding that “it’s definitely [her] most busy time of the year”.

However, Jenni’s role is not just about Reclaim the Night, as much as it may dominate her time as an officer. Her biggest achievement in her mind has been her ‘Sticks and Stones’ campaign launched last year.

She explained that she set up the domestic abuse campaign for students, centred specifically around emotional abuse and coercive control, as she had witnessed from being involved in the Women’s campaign that there are lots of students who have been in abusive relationships, and she wanted to “let students know what that looks like, that’s it’s not OK, that it’s unacceptable”.

When asked about the challenges she faced, she said that while the biggest challenge for her is probably expected to be the many students coming to talk to her about issues such as sexual harassment and violence on campus, she was prepared for that. Instead “it’s more the logistics of the job, the board meetings, finance meetings, and the things I wasn’t aware of” that challenge her more, she tells me.

Jenni prefers “getting [her] hands dirty working with the students, being out there in the community, and empowering students”.

One example of how Jenni pledged to work with students was around consent education for students, however such proposals have created controversy on other UK campuses, with students refusing to attend or staging walk outs calling the workshops patronising.

Jenni acknowledged that the workshops need to be very carefully packaged so as not to appear patronising and her plans to achieve this are to incorporate “some element of active bystander training into this”.

She believes “you can’t have one without the other,” and that by teaching students how to be active bystanders, giving them the ability to recognise when sexual harassment or victimisation is occurring, this will necessarily mean they gain a greater understanding of consent.

Another topic of debate which often surrounds the role of Women’s Officer, is why there is not also a Men’s Officer. On our current Exec Team there are seven women and one man. I asked if this meant that men lacked representation within the Union.

She admitted that at the level of the Exec Team and staff and students at the University there is greater or equal female representation, however the higher you get up that ladder to senior levels it is still dominated by men, claiming “yes, we have a female Vice-Chancellor, but she is surrounded generally by men”.

However I suggested that one of issues is that while people accept that men at the top of society have more privilege, at the bottom with students, men are more likely to have mental health issues and have higher suicide rates. Is there not more we can do to represent these students?

Jenni argued, however, that these issues have grown out of precisely what she is trying to tackle: “I feel it isn’t about lack of representation for men but this feeds into patriarchy, studies show how toxic masculinity feeds into the issue”.

Although she thinks that “in the same way women’s campaigns have been championed by women […] men’s campaigns need to be championed by men”.

While she continues to work on these issues, Reclaim the Night still dominates most of her time: “For about six weeks of the year you just become: eat, sleep and breathe Reclaim the Night”.

I asked her why she believes it has become such a big event within the Students’ Union calendar, with Manchester hosting year after year the biggest Reclaim the Nights in the UK.

Jenni explains that what makes the march special is that it brings people together who may have previously been involved in feminism, or women’s empowerment, and then they “come along to events such as Reclaim the Night and feel really inspired by them”.

Which in her mind is what Reclaim is all about, “not only is it about sexual violence, using our collective voices to say ‘no more’… it’s also about bringing people together and to start, perhaps for the first time, to facilitate those conversations and getting people interested in the values of Reclaim the Night”.

When asked if she imagines a time when marches like this will no longer be necessary, she simply said “in a dream world — yeah”. This is when the interview inevitably turned to Trump.

“There’s now a president in America that openly brags about perpetrating sexual violence, so if anything it’s needed more now than ever”, she argued, adding that “a lot of progress had been made, but now it’s almost like a slap in the face”. However, Jenni hopes that this will mean more people will get involved as so many have been involved in the recent women’s marches.

Speaking of the women’s marches I raised the criticism that the protests across the world against Trump’s inauguration might seem simply ‘self-indulgent’, and an example of simply talking within an echo chamber unlikely to change the minds of those who voted for Trump.

Jenni conceded that she understood some found the women’s marches more “self-indulgent than a call to action”.

I asked if she had any ideas as to how women’s campaigns could better talk to those we need to persuade rather than those already on our side. She suggested that it’s a difficult issue to tackle as Trump supporters had been socialised — particularly by the communities they live in and the politics they’ve been brought up with — to not see the behaviour displayed by Trump as wrong.

Although she said that did not mean you shouldn’t have those conversations, as “quite a lot of women are introduced to feminism at university, but not everyone has the privilege of going to university”.

Now and then she believes she will be able to talk with people to get a few eureka moments about victim-blaming and other issues, however ultimately she said  “there’s no definitive answer” as to how to talk to those not already feminists, “let’s just hope we can”.

Finally, with the deadline to stand looming, I asked why students should stand as Women’s Officer.

“There’s no other 9 – 5 job, even if you are in women’s services, where you would be stood there at the front with 3,500 people behind you”.

Interview: Tamara O’Neill – Activities and Development Officer

The second Pangaea of the year was just around the corner when I spoke with Tamara, her time dominated by décor and marketing meetings with the students who help bring it all together, in her own words a “very very busy time” for her.

As the interview went on however, it became clear that anyone who thinks the role of Activities and Development Officer simply requires knowing how to throw a great party would be sorely mistaken. In just the first few weeks of term Tamara was involved in the many events, including the first ever Societies Conference, the Refreshers’ Fair and the planning for the Give it a Go campaign running throughout February, to name just a few.

However, she did not seem to mind how much she was balancing, telling me that “it’s a very fun time at the moment”.

Something she did seem to struggle with however, was deciding on what her biggest achievement was. Instead she settled to describe what she had most enjoyed — her involvement in developing more support for student enterprise.

Tamara explained that this had been “quite unexpected because I hadn’t planned to get involved with enterprise at all”. The interest, she explained, had sprung out of attending a university meeting about employability and graduate destinations for students, where she discovered that only two students graduated last year and went on to set up their own business.

This sparked her engagement in the project, claiming that “there was a massive gap in the market”. She went on to set up the Student Enterprise Christmas Market and is looking to develop more projects around the subject this semester.

She seemed genuinely excited talking about the subject, as she spoke of how in her mind there are many students who want to set up their own business “but there doesn’t seem to be an easy and accessible platform”.

After chatting about the areas she enjoyed about her work we moved on to the challenges she has faced. She was much quicker to settle on a choice for this question — Fund It.

Fund It is the new method by which societies can gain Students’ Union funding, implemented, as Tamara explained, because it is “a lot more democratic and transparent”. Societies pitch why they want funding and then those in attendance vote. But apparently, democracy and transparency do not come easy to student society, as Tamara revealed that at early events students were found cheating during the voting process.

Apparently getting 35 societies to both bid for the funding and then listen to those bidding against them is “very challenging”.

Tamara explained that they now have new rules in place and a limit on societies who can attend, making the last one “really calm” with no evidence of cheating.

Something I imagined was less calm was the organising of Pangaea, the largest student-led festival in Europe.

I wanted to find out if her manifesto pledge of a ‘Pan-DAY-ea’ was still in the cards. The last Pangaea, while it was able to go ahead in the Union, was disrupted by the ongoing building works, but the summer one will probably have to move elsewhere.

Tamara couldn’t give much away in the interview however she heavily hinted that it could be moved off-site for a day party, “meaning a much bigger event”.

On the subject of events, I questioned Tamara as to whether she had been able to fulfill her manifesto pledge to make the “Union as the place to go on a night out in Manchester”. She admitted that the market is saturated but still insisted she thought “we could put on a night here [and that] it would be successful”.

However she admitted her focus instead had been on the gap she’s perceived in the market for non-alcoholic events, the inspiration behind her ‘Café Sessions’ nights, evenings of societies showcasing their talent in the Union café .

We then moved on to discuss her thoughts on us, an odd move in an interview — but looking after student media falls within Tamara’s job description, so was hard to avoid.

I asked what her thoughts were on the criticisms many make that the close relationship between student media and Students’ Unions restricts the content produced and is harmful generally to the notion of a free press.

She quickly admitted that “it’s a really difficult relationship”, due to its lack of clear definition and used the election period as an example of a time she believed we need to “have a lot more free range”.

Speaking of The Tab, she said “you can see that it must be so much easier for them” without having their publishers as the Students’ Union, however she suggested that the resources we get from the SU mean that “that’s something we have just got to deal with”.

In general however she believed that the closer the relationship is the easier it is to “get clearer expectations of where we’re both at” and added that personally she felt there “should [be] the freedom to write whatever you want to write”.

To finish of our interview, with standing open for students to put themselves forward to run for her position, I asked why she thinks they should consider it — “because you get to pretend you’re still a student”.

Interview: Ilyas Nagdee – Diversity Officer

“I don’t think anyone can say I’m particularly silent on issues, I’m quite a gobby person”. With his interview at almost three times the length of some of the other Exec’s, you get the sense that Ilyas wasn’t lying.

Despite this self-confessed “gobby” nature, Ilyas paused when trying to pick just one event from last semester that stood out for him as his biggest achievement, instead listing Welcome Week, Global Fest, and Islamophobia Awareness Month among some of his “favourite small little moments from July to December”.

In contrast, he did not struggle to answer when asked if he had encountered any challenges: “I’ve definitely encountered a lot of personal challenges […] I didn’t realise how deeply I was going to throw myself into it”. He spoke of his struggles to find a sustainable work/life balance, but claims to have now found a work level that means he is “actually functioning and not just thinking I’m a robot”.

I don’t think anyone can deny that Ilyas has thrown himself very “deeply” into his role, with his passions for student politics often made apparent on social media, where he regularly passes comment on issues and debates surrounding the NUS.

One such debate grew out of the exposé that revealed a Vice-President of the NUS was working to undermine the President. Richard Brooks, Vice-President  of the NUS, wrote after the news broke that the “documentary shows [him doing] politics and disagreeing with the far left”.

I asked whether this incident could just be put down to the fact that people in politics have different opinions, even in the NUS, to which he said, something he repeated often throughout our discussion on the issue, that “this was never an investigation into the NUS”, which he thinks people forget.

“This was an investigation into a foreign embassy that led to the NUS, and that in itself is an issue”, he added, arguing that as far as he was concerned “this is beyond differences of opinions or factionalism within the NUS. This is an active attempt to try destabilise the NUS while the Higher Education bill is making its way through Parliament”.

Brooks had also stated that his actions were due to the fact the current leadership is “ineffectual and damaging”, and I suggested to Ilyas that it may be fair for people to organise in this way if there are students who believe this, so was Brooks not just acting as a voice for these views within the movement?

Ilyas responded by arguing Brooks’ statement had been “vague”, suggesting that “it’s easy to paint yourself as a moderate, wanting to be perceived by people as the rational person or the person who’s on the centre ground,” but claimed that Brooks still needs to outline exactly what has been ineffective about Malia Bouattia’s Presidency.

Another NUS debate that Ilyas has been vocal within was the black student walkout over institutional racism, after the report, now released, took over a year to be published.

The report revealed that the the “NUS as an employer has seriously failed to support Black staff”, something Ilyas said he “absolutely endorsed”.

“The organisation has seriously failed not only the Black Students’ campaign, the volunteers, full-time officers and the staff within the organisaiton”.

When asked whether that now the report had finally been released he was confident of change, he said: “I genuinely can’t say that I’m confident until I see what happens […] I just want to see a massive change in behaviour”.

A criticism of this report however, was its lack of scrutiny into anti-Semitism, despite the Home Affairs Select Committee saying the NUS had failed to take the issue seriously. This is particularly relevant in Manchester, after BDS was backed in senate, despite Jewish students voicing that they would not feel welcome or safe if it was passed.

I asked Ilyas whether this motion passing meant he had failed in his manifesto pledge to make sure the “Union was an inclusive and accessible place for all students”.

He claimed he was aware prior to the debate that it was always going to be “a very emotional conversation”, but that he wanted to sure the people in the room felt confident that they were able to have an opinion on the matter, and that conversations are being had with students in the room on that day to ensure that the Union remains an open space for everyone.

When asked if he accepted that anti-Semitism is on the rise on UK campuses, and if so whether he thinks more could be done to take the issue seriously, he recognised it was an issue and said: “I think there is a lot being done, if people want to see more being done, I hope they’re making their views known”.

Everything we had just discussed was painting a very unstable picture of the current state of the NUS, but when I asked whether the NUS can continue in its current form, particularly in light of various disaffiliation campaigns, Ilyas’s response suggested many students may be oblivious to such NUS instability.

Ilyas spoke of his experiences campaigning on three different campuses for Students’ Unions to remain affiliated to the NUS — Warwick, Essex and Nottingham. “So many students thought of the NUS as nothing more than a discount card”, arguing that this is directly due to the NUS’s top-down approach.

“We’ve done the top-down approach for 15 – 20 years now and we’ve lost so much.

“We have lost so many battles in the last few years, and it can’t continuously be these battles or factions or things like that, there just needs to be a genuine commitment to working bottoms-up because top-down has just failed”.

He was passionate that change was needed badly, arguing that in going round the country he had heard many valid criticisms, such as when the NUS conference voted down fighting for the EMA.

I asked whether this was the heart of the issue, that they are not fighting for things that affect students in their everyday lives, concentrating instead on international political issues like BDS, which fails to engage many students, to which Ilyas replied: “I think there is a lot of work being done on issues that affect all students”.

But he repeated that there “need to be a better way of communicating that to members because so many people still view it as a discount card”.

Finally, I asked Ilyas why students should put themselves forward to be Diversity Officer, to which he warned: “If you think this is going to be a nice break or a chance to think about what you want to do next — I can’t say how much it is the complete opposite”.

However as a positive, he said: “You will have so many examples for that interview question of ‘can you think of a time when you were in a challenging situation?’”.