Malia Bouattia wins NUS Presidency

Current NUS Black Students’ Officer Malia Bouattia has been elected President of the National Union of Students at their National Conference.

Bouattia beat incumbent President Megan Dunn who has served as NUS President for one year. Despite a number of Union Presidents including Hertfordshire SU’s, Bath SU’s and Keele SU’s supporting Dunn, Bouattia beat Dunn by 371 votes to 328.

Malia will become the first-ever black woman President of the NUS since its creation in 1922.

Dunn promised in her manifesto to create a fund to defend Unions from government cuts and took an official pro-EU position for the NUS. Bouattia promised to bring minority groups to “the heart of everything we [NUS] do.”

At the University of Manchester Students’ Union’s NUS primaries, Bouattia was picked as the delegates’ mandated choice for President. The other candidates picked were Sorana Vieru (re-running for VP Higher Education), Shelly Asquith (re-running for VP Welfare), Sahaya James (running for VP Union Development), and Samayya Afzal (running for VP Society & Citizenship).

Bouattia has been at the heart of discussion recently over past comments she has made about Jewish Societies and Zionism. These concerns led to the Oxford University Students’ Union deciding not to vote for her in the Presidential elections, though this loss of support was not enough to lose her the election.