This is what democracies look like!
In 2014 NUS published Democracy is dead! Long Live Democracies! The report outlined research
conducted across ten students’ unions into students’ attitudes towards democracy. As the title
suggests, the research found the typical model of representative democracy used in students’
unions to be out of touch with the preferences of a majority of students. For example, most
students didn’t want elected representatives to make decisions on their behalf, they didn’t feel they
could hold representatives to account and so wanted to be consulted before they made decisions.
Instead, most students wanted more direct and deliberative decision-making, whilst at the same
time making it more inclusive; favouring more consensual processes over majority rule and
broadening the democratic latitude to include financial decisions. Ultimately therefore, “Democracy
is dead! Long live Democracies!” was a challenge to students’ unions to experiment with new, more
diverse forms of democratic innovation to engage their students.
This report focuses on two students’ unions that have bravely accepted this challenge and broken
from the norm to trial new ways of making decisions with their members, the new democratic
vanguard: Liverpool Guild and Leeds Trinity Students’ Union (LTSU). This is not to say that
everything these students’ unions have done is perfect, they are not (yet) a utopian democratic
paradise, but rather they are trying something new for the benefit of their members and, by
sharing their journey, the rest of the student movement.
The first chapter of this report will outline the broad changes that Liverpool Guild have made to
their democratic system. So comprehensive are the changes that it is possible to use the Quality
Students’ Unions Democracy criteria to evaluate how ‘good’ these democratic innovations have
been. This criteria is based on four principles of a ‘good’ democracy: inclusiveness, transparency,
popular control and considered judgement, alongside a consideration of the efficiency of the
process based on the amount of staff time and resources it requires1. The second chapter will focus
specifically on a specific democratic innovation called participatory budgeting (PB) used at both
Leeds Trinity and Liverpool Guild. PB, first used in 1989 in Porto Alegre in Brazil, is a type of
democratic deliberation that aims to give the public more control over part of a municipal budget.
The perceptions in this report are based on observation of a Guild Summit (GS) in Liverpool on
Thursday the 26th of February 2015 and a participatory budgeting event at LTSU on March 10th
2015, supplementary interviews and data gathered at both events. Rather than focusing on what
specific problems these innovations are attempting to address, the analysis will focus on what is
‘good’ about these innovations so far.
1
These principles are based on a book called Democratic Innovations: Designing Institutions for Citizen
Participation (2009) by Professor Graham Smith, head of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at
Westminster University.
Chapter 1: The Guild Summit and Preferendum
Summary
Any student at Liverpool can submit an idea using by filling out a ‘change it’ form on the Guild’s
website. In the first instance, the four full-time officers decide if an idea is straightforward and
uncontroversial or more contentious and needs further consideration. Any ideas the officers deem
straightforward are implemented by the Guild. These are generally ideas that do not involve
competing interests. For example, the Guild received a proposal to put allergy information on food
in their new catering outlet. Placing allergy information on food does not disadvantage students
without allergies. So the Guild can implement the idea without further discussion because the
actions required to benefit one group of students (with allergies) do not compete with another
(who do not).
More contentious ideas are referred to the GS which is held four times a year in October,
November, February and April, plus an extraordinary GS to approve NUS national conference
motions. A week before each GS all the ideas that have been submitted by students are published
online. Once online, students are invited to submit evidence for or against each idea. This evidence
is collated and provided to fifty students who are selected at random to participate in the GS. The
Guild use data from the university to ensure that the gender mix, level of study, mode of study,
ethnicity and age of these fifty students reflects that of the wider student body.
At the GS, participants are assisted by external facilitators2 to discuss each proposal in turn. The
participants are spread across a number of tables to give everyone a chance to have their say on
about the idea. Following the discussion, there are three possible outcomes; participants can agree
to approve the idea (with or without some changes), reject the idea or, if a consensus cannot be
reached, send the idea to preferendum. Preferendum is similar to a referendum, a campus wide
ballot when everyone has the opportunity to vote, but rather than giving students one option and
asking them to vote yes or no, a preferendum presents students with a number of options and
asked to rank them in order of preference.
If a decision is made at the GS that students at Liverpool feel more people should have been
involved in, they can trigger a preferendum on any idea by getting 1% of the student population to
sign a petition. Once a decision is made, either at a GS or preferendum, the idea goes to be signed
off by the Guild’s Board of Trustees before the Officers get to work implementing the ideas.
Inclusiveness
Inclusiveness is assessed through measuring two forms of political equality: ‘Presence’ and ‘Voice’.
Presence is about who is in the room when decisions are made. For example, if a meeting only
involved white people then, in terms of ethnicity, we could not say that there is an equality of
Presence as it only involved people from one ethnic group. Whereas Presence is concerned with
who is there when decisions are being made, Voice is concerned with who speaks. For example, a
meeting could be attended by people from a range of different ethnic groups, but if only the white
people speak then we could not say that there is an equality of Voice. So, an evaluation of
inclusiveness is concerned with the question: do students have an equal opportunity (in presence
and voice) to affect decisions?
2
The Guild intends to facilitate the meetings themselves once they become more experienced in the consensus
process.
Liverpool Guild try to ensure equality of Presence at their GS meetings by randomly selecting
students to participate whilst making sure the mix of students’ gender, level of study, mode of
study, ethnicity and age represent that of the wider student body. By asking participants at the GS
to fill out a form after the Summit they are able to evaluate how effective this has been in ensuring
a diverse range of students participate in the meeting. As the data held about students’
characteristics by their university becomes more sophisticated then so too will the selection.
However, the GS observed by NUS on February 26th 2015 involved 38 participants including
mature students, LGBT students, international students, disabled students, black students and
students with dependents. So Liverpool Guild tries to guarantee a high level of inclusiveness in
terms of Presence by using personal data to invite a diverse range of students to participate in the
meeting.
In terms of equality of voice: six students volunteered to act as spokes people during the meeting,
three, men and three women, three of whom were white and three black. In the feedback forms,
91% of women and 88% of men said they spoke at the GS. 87% of black students and 75% of
international students said they spoke. The most common reason cited by participants for not
speaking was, “I don’t feel strongly about the issue”, suggesting that, if they wanted to share their
views they would have been comfortable doing so. This may explain why only 2% of participants
didn’t feel represented when decisions were made at the GS. So, by giving students the
opportunity to discuss each idea in small groups, the Guild enabled a high level of inclusiveness in
terms of Voice. Participants seemed to recognise the intrinsic value of this approach; 63% of
participants fed back that the table discussions were their favourite part of the meeting (compared
to only 10% who mentioned the pizza), typical responses were, “Smaller group discussions were
most valuable, gained everyone's opinions and could debate issues better” and “The group
discussion is very impressive - really got everyone involved”.
Decisions at the GS are also structured to be more inclusive as they are made by consensus rather
than majority vote. This reduces the extent to which the views of a numerable minority can be
overruled by a majority vote and removes ‘the tyranny of the majority’ from the decision making
process. This is not to say that everyone has to agree with the decisions 100%, the facilitators
helped participants to understand that to ‘consent’ to a decision is to say, ‘I can live with that’.
In order to make their preferendum process more inclusive, Liverpool Guild use the Modified Borda
Count method to determine its outcome. Named after the political scientist Jean-Charles de Borda,
this voting system is similar to STV in so far as voters number the options in order of preference
(hence the name preferendum), however the Modified Borda Count places less emphasis on the
importance of first preferences. The number of points given for a voter's first and subsequent
preferences is determined by the total number of options/candidates they have ranked rather than
the total number listed. This counting method is considered more inclusive as an option/candidate
that is strongly opposed by a minority of voters is unlikely to win even if it/they have a majority of
first preferences. Instead the most preferred option/candidate is more likely to win again,
promoting consensus and avoiding the tyranny of the majority.
Popular Control
This ‘good’ has its roots in the literal translation of democracy, or Demokratia, as demos “people”
kratos “power”, or “the people hold power”. In other words, the will of students as expressed
through their participation in decision-making must be acted upon; otherwise their participation
(however inclusive) is meaningless. Students must control not only the outcome of the decision,
but also how the decision is made. There are four steps in the decision-making process where
students can exert power: problem definition, option analysis, option selection and implementation.
Translating each of these stages into traditional students’ union decision-making terms: problem
definition could be done through writing a motion, option analysis through a debate, option
selection through a vote and implementation lead by elected officers. However, it is rare that all
students have a say in how this process is designed, or necessarily understand how to participate
in each stage.
Overall, Liverpool Guild has aimed to remove power from elected representatives and distribute it
across the wider student body. Any student can submit an idea for how to make things better via
their website. The Guild has seen the number of ideas submitted by students increase tenfold
under this system and popular control over the ‘problem definition’ stage is high. Both ‘option
analysis’ and ‘selection’ is done at the GS. Although symbolically representative of the wider
student body, power is limited here to the fifty students who are randomly selected to attend.
However, giving the membership the ability to sign a petition to force any decision made at a GS to
a preferendum, whereby every member is awarded the power of a vote, ensures popular control
can be exerted over this stage. This is a good example of combining democratic innovations i.e.
the GS ensures inclusiveness while preferendum ensures popular control. The GS is also different
to a traditional student council as it also gives as many as 250 ‘regular’ members of the student
body (50 students over 5 GS meetings) a deeper experience of making important, high quality
decisions that, unlike a focus group, directly set the policy agenda for the organisation. It may be
too early in the process to measure the power and control students wield in implementing the
decisions. However, after the GS only 5% of participants didn’t believe the Guild would, “Listen to
and implement the decisions made at the summit”. Nevertheless the Guild recognises it has work
to do to develop the means via which the officers report on their progress implanting the ideas and
students role in the process.
As covered in chapter 2, Liverpool Guild have also placed more power in the hands of their
students by giving them direct control over how to spend £20,000 a year.
Considered Judgement
In order to make considered judgements two things must be present; firstly technical information,
e.g. if there is an proposal to close a students’ union bookshop, then financial information would
need to be provided to inform the discussion. Secondly, however, just as important is the
opportunity to listen to and understand other people’s, more subjective points of view. So with the
bookshop example, if students felt really strongly that there should be a bookshop on campus, this
would also be important to consider when making the decision. Professor Graham Smith refers to
this process whereby deliberation enables people to consider the impact of decisions beyond their
own subjective, private conditions as “enlarged thinking”.
Therefore, the partisan rhetoric that often dominates political discussion has limited value in terms
of making considered judgments. At the GS, the ‘technical’ information to inform the discussion of
new ideas is submitted by students via the Guild’s website. This evidence is sent to the 50 students
randomly selected to participate in the Summit in advance to read. Before each idea is discussed,
there is an opportunity for a short speech before and against the proposal. The discussion of each
idea then occurs on six tables of around six or seven participants each with a member of staff who
acts as a facilitator. The discussion on the table as well as the speeches act to ‘enlarge the
thinking’ of the participants. Following this discussion a spokesperson from each table volunteers to
take part in a ‘fish bowl’ conversation. In a fish bowl, six chairs are placed in the middle of the
room to create an inner circle and each spokesperson takes it in turns to summarise the discussion
they had on their table. A debate is then facilitated within the circle to identify where there are
opportunities to reach consensus. If any participants on the tables feel misrepresented by their
spokesperson they are encouraged to interrupt the discussion and clarify their position. This fish
bowl exercise is just one of many facilitation techniques that the facilitators are free to experiment
with in order to help arrive at a consensus.
The feedback suggests that the quality of the deliberation at the GS was high. As Figure 1 shows,
the discussion made around three quarters of participants think twice about their view on an issue.
79% of participants agreed the discussion helped them make up their mind on an issue, as shown
in Figure 2. Figure 3 shows that 83% of participants agreed that the discussion helped them to
understand other students’ points of view which is crucial to making considered judgements.
Finally, Figure 4 shows that 66% of participants felt the evidence they were given about the
motions helped them discuss the issues with others. This, relatively low figure, is not necessarily
explained due to a lack of information. On the contrary, one participant commented in their
feedback that, such was the massive volume of evidence submitted on the Palestine/Israel
proposal that, “an abstract from each side of argument would be good rather than a 53 page
report”. Nevertheless, to reach a consensus on a complicated and divisive subject with a diverse
group of students with varied levels of understanding was a great achievement. In terms of
considered judgement, students were certainly enabled to understand other people’s subjective
points of view and use a high quality discussion to arrive at a decision. The evidence could have
perhaps been improved by providing more technical information; for example, a concrete list of
what the Guild would boycott should the motion pass and any financial implications.
The discussion made me think twice
about a view I previously held
5% 8%
Strongly Agree
18%
Agree
Neither agree nor
disagree
Disagree
68%
Strongly
Disagree
Fig 1.
The discussion helped me make up my
mind on an issue
Strongly Agree
5%
16%
18%
Agree
Neither Agree nor
Disagree
Disagree
61%
Strongly
Disagree
Fig 2.
The discussion helped me understand
other peoples' points of view
Strongly Agree
8%
5%
21%
Agree
Neither Agree nor
Disagree
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree
66%
Fig 3.
I was given enough information about
the issues to help me feel able to discuss
them with others
Strongly Agree
3% 8%
Agree
24%
32%
Neither Agree nor
Disagree
Disagree
34%
Strongly
Disagree
Fig 4.
Transparency
This democratic good has two dimensions, internal transparency and external transparency.
Internally the main aim is to ensure that participants are aware of the conditions under which they
are participating. This includes the long-term and short-term impact of their participation, for
example if a student votes in a referendum do they know a) how the issue was selected, b) when
the result will be announced c) when the decision will be implemented and d) what its implications
are for their students’ union. External transparency relates to the extent to which students can
understand why decisions were made and how. This dimension of transparency has clear links to
accountability, as it creates a focus on the extent to which transparency enables students to
scrutinise the actions of their students’ union and/or representative(s). For example, students can’t
hold officers to account for implementing policy or manifesto pledges, unless officers provide
opportunities for students to question their work and if necessary remove them from office.
In terms of internal transparency, Figures 5 and 6 suggest that transparency at the Summit was
relatively high. 79% understand where the ideas they were discussing came from and 74%
understand the consequences of their participation. As Figure 9 shows, after the meeting,
participants rated their understanding of their role at the GS and the consensus as high (4.14 and
3.97 out of 5 respectively).
Figures 7 and 8 show that only 50% agreed that they understand what happens after the GS and
42% felt fully prepared for their role by the training they received. However it is worth noting that
only 18% and 22% disagreed with these statements respectively. Although perhaps not
recognisable as formal ‘training’, having all the participants in the room together awarded the
facilitators the valuable time to explain how the GS would work, how consensus is about cooperating, finding common ground and making sure everyone’s views are heard. They also
explained what it might feel like to participate, that there is likely to be a ‘grown zone’ in the
middle where there are lots of different ideas before they’re clarified and a decision can be made.
In this way the facilitators can help participants know what to expect emotionally as well as
technically in terms of what their participation in the process involves.
In terms of external transparency, the Guild posts what participants at the Summit decided about
each motion on their website. The Guild broadens the external transparency by sending an all
student email outlining what decisions were made at the Summit, what happens next and what
students can do if they disagree with the decision i.e. how to petition for a preferendum. The email
also outlines how students can submit their own ideas. As a preferendum has not yet been held by
the Guild it is too early to analyse how transparent the process is, though internally on average
participants in the Summit rated their understanding of a preferendum as 4.08 out of 5 (see Figure
9).
Officer accountability is another area the Guild is working to develop. Under this democratic system
the officers take primary responsibility for implementing the decisions made at the Summit and
Preferendum, however the extent to which there is sufficient transparency for students to hold
them to account for this work is questionable at this stage.
I undersand where the ideas we discussed
came from
16%
13%
Strongly Agree
Agree
5%
Neither Agree nor
Disagree
Disagree
66%
Fig 5.
Strongly Disagree
I understand the consequences of our
decisions about the ideas
8%
16%
Strongly Agree
18%
Agree
Neither Agree nor
Disagree
Disagree
58%
Fig 6.
I understand what happens next after the
Summit
18%
13%
Strongly Agree
Agree
37%
32%
Neither Agree nor
Disagree
Disagree
Fig 7.
The training I recieved fully prepared me for my
role in the Summit
11%
Strongly Agree
5%
11%
Agree
37%
37%
Neither Agree nor
Disagree
Disagree
Strongly Disagree
Fig 8.
Please rate how confident you feel in the following areas from 1 to
5, with 1 being not confident and at all, and 5 being completely
An understanding of what a
preferendum is
4.08
An understanding of the role of the
students officers at the Guild
3.59
An understanding of your role at the
Summit
4.14
An understanding of consensus
deicision making at the Guild
3.97
An understanding of the governance
structure at the Guild
3.65
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 Fig 9.
Efficiency
It is worth noting that deliberative democratic innovations such as the ones used at Liverpool Guild
and LUU (see appendix 1) are resource intensive. The quorum for participants at the Guild is 38.
Unfortunately, the first three meetings failed to reach this quorum with 30, 33 and 35 students
attending respectively. In the absence of quorum, the Guild’s Trustee board ruled that the ideas
should be resubmitted to the next GS in the hope that the next meeting would be quorate.
Recruiting participants requires a great deal of staff time, participants are emailed and phoned
numerous times to secure their attendance. Furthermore, each participant is given £20 towards
covering any costs incurred through attendance, e.g. missed earning from doing paid work or
needing to find childcare. Although consensus discussion making is high quality and inclusive it also
takes a lot of time and energy. Each GS takes around three hours including the training time (5.30
– 8.30) meaning the Guild are also required to feed participants. However, by no means does this
mean the cost of the process is ‘too high’. Arguably, democracy is the means through which the
Guild establishes its legitimacy to take a position on important issues both with the university and
beyond. So as long as the cost is within the means of the Guild, it would be difficult to argue that
the price of legitimacy is too high. The process also has multiple other benefits, not least inviting
students who may have never set foot in the Guild to take a central role in their decision making
process. For example, 71% of participants said they’d like to get more involved with the Guild after
taking part in the Summit.
Chapter 2: Participatory Budgeting
Leeds Trinity Students’ Union probably has one of the smallest budgets of any HE students’ union
in the country. However, this didn’t stop them giving their students direct control over how nearly
10% of their block grant (£10,000) is spent using participatory budgeting. As they also have a
small staff team, two student interns were recruited to run the ‘LTSU £10K Give Away” project with
the support of PB specialist Jez Hall.
Students at Leeds Trinity were invited to submit proposals for how they would spend up to £2000.
In total 8 proposals were submitted: money for a piano and drum kit, money for a women in
leadership speaker series, money for seeds and materials to convert green spaces into space for
growing vegetables, money to set up a 7-a-side unisex touch rugby society.
A meeting was held in the university bar to discuss the proposals. Firstly, the students who
submitted their proposals were given two minutes to explain their idea before answering questions
from the floor. After the presentations, the students in attendance were asked to vote in order of
preference. Each student was allowed up to five preferences.
At a meeting, every student who submitted a proposal received two minutes to explain his or her
idea. Students in attendance then voted for the proposals in order of preference. Following the
vote, the meeting was adjourned while the votes were counted. The second half of the meeting
started with a financial quiz, questions included “how much money does the university get in fees
from students every year?”, “how much from research?”, “how much are the university senior
management paid?” and “what percentage of the university’s budget is given to the students’
union?” There were also questions about the local council budget, for example, “how much is spent
on youth services?” After the answers were announced and the winning quiz team collected their
prize, two groups were set up; one to talk about how they would spend the council budget and one
for the university. These groups then laid out their proposals on tables and participants were given
fake pound notes (with LTSU’s President’s face on it) to put on the proposals they thought were
most important. Finally the results were announced and the money was awarded to the most
popular projects. However, a representative of Leeds University Union also attended the event and
offered to fund an additional project, increasing the pot to £12,500 meaning five out of the eight
projects received the necessary funding.
Liverpool Guild have introduced a participatory budgeting process for their clubs and societies,
inviting their members to submit proposals for how they’d ‘spend it’. The £20,000 previously
allocated by staff and officers is now split into four £5000 pots of funding which are allocated at
four PB meetings, spread across the academic year. If clubs or societies want funding they present
their funding proposal at the meeting, outlining what the money is for and the impact it will make.
A committee makes the decision about who gets the money. The committee is made up of one
member of each society that has submitted a funding proposal alongside other members of other
clubs or societies at Liverpool.
Following the presentations from each of the clubs and societies the proposers leave the room and
the committee debate each of the proposals. The committee can amend, merge, approve or reject
the proposals. At the end of the meeting all the proposals are stuck on the wall and each member
of the committee is given five sticky dots that they use to vote for the proposals that they feel
should receive the funding. The proposal with the most dots is awarded the up to £5000, if there is
money left over then this is awarded to the second most popular proposal, if there is still money
left then this is awarded to the third most popular proposal and so on. If some of the proposals
receive the same number of votes then the pot is split equally between them. Members of the
committee are not allowed to vote for their own society’s proposal. Informal feedback about the
scheme has been highly positive, participants have highlighted how it’s helped them understand
more what other clubs and societies are doing and led to far more collaboration and mutual
support.
Appendix
Nef Fellow and Founder of Open Up UK, Perry Walker wrote the following summary about the
changes that Leeds University Union (LUU) made to their democratic system in 2011. Although not
a consensus model, there are obvious similarities with what Liverpool Guild have implemented and
LUU’s democratic innovation still remains relevant within the context of the Democracy is Dead!
Long Live Democracies! report.
Over the last fifteen years, I have kept an eye out for institutions in Britain that have tried to
become more democratic. Total number of such institutions found: one! This is the students’ union
in Leeds, which took a couple of years to think out what they wanted their democracy to do and
how to design it so that it delivered what they wanted.
Previously they had a cliquey system, with power centralised and held in the hands of a few. There
was a traditional elected council, with low turnout in elections, and low participation in meetings
that demanded motions to be proposed and seconded, a procedure both incomprehensible and
unappealing. They had assemblies for various constituencies, such as for international and for parttime students, but engagement in these was low too.
The union asked people what they disliked about the old system, with the jargon of ‘motions’ and
the ‘union council’ one clear example. But they also asked people what they liked. When students
said they liked the discussion in the union council, even though the council itself was scrapped,
they made sure plenty of discussion was included in the new arrangements.
The redesign also involved thinking about the functions of democracy, about what would not
happen if it were taken away. Three functions emerged:
•
A forum for decision-making
•
Holding elected representatives to account
•
Co-ordinating and communicating student views
•
They then thought about how best to deliver these functions.
The third contributor to the redesign, apart from consulting people and thinking about the functions
of democracy, was observation. They noticed that how students affiliate with each other was not
the way that was assumed by the constituency assemblies. Rather than demographics, these ways
are revealed by the questions that freshers ask each other: “Where are you living?” and “What are
you studying?” They began to build new assemblies based on the understanding that students build
affinities around what they study, where they live and their lifestyle choices and interests.
They now have three forums, based on what the students’ union aims to achieve: a Better Union, a
Better University and a Better Leeds. Instead of ‘motions’, all members of LUU are invited to
submit ideas online for how to make the Union, University or city of Leeds better, outlining what
they think should happen and why. Ideas can be submitted all year round, but two weeks before
each forum the ideas are gathered up and emailed to all students. The email outlines where and
when each idea will be discussed and the contact details of their representative who will present
their views if they are unable or unwilling to attend the forum themselves. Every school in the
university has a school representative who consults students in their school before the Better
University forum and relays the different points of view held within their school about the ideas.
Similarly community reps (based on postcodes in Leeds) and reps from each hall of residence
consult students where they live and represent these views at the Better Leeds forum. At the
Better Union forum, a representative attends from each category of club and society (e.g. the
dance societies or sports clubs) who hold meetings with their clubs and societies before the forum
to gather their views on the ideas. The role of the representatives at the forums is not to be a
decision maker but an enactive spokesperson, relaying the different points of view to inform the
debate of each idea.
A student is recruited to be the forum facilitator who invites representatives and other participants
to ask points of clarification, then ask questions and offer points of view on each idea. Rather than
elected representatives making the decisions, each forum has a demographically representative
decision-making panel of 16 students, chosen by random selection3. After the debate, if 75% of the
panel vote in favour of an idea, it goes through. If it gets less than 25%, it fails. If it gets in
between those figures, it goes to a referendum. This last provision is because students said they
wanted referendums for the contentious decisions. It is therefore only once an idea becomes
divisive that a more adversarial decision-making process is used. Until then, the emphasis is on
more unitary decision-making. The students who submitted the idea can be asked by other
students to make changes to their idea to their idea to make it more mutually agreeable.
Sometimes the idea holders make changes to their ideas themselves or occasionally withdraw their
idea having changed their mind during the course of the debate.
In case people feel that 16 is too small a number to decide on something, a referendum on an idea
that has either been passed or failed can be triggered by a petition of 600 people. This provision
has not yet been used in practice but exists.
In the first year of using this system (2010/11), 91 ideas were submitted. 31 were rejected, 54
passed by the panel, and 6 were passed by referendum. The number of ideas has tripled since the
days of union council, and the ideas are much more relevant to students. Under ‘Better University’,
for example, one idea that passed was a survey of postgraduate students who teach. It found that
a high proportion were not paid to prepare for their teaching. The university has now introduced a
code of practice to ensure that they are paid properly and given worker status.
The ‘Better Leeds’ forum identified the fact that there was one part of the city where there were
lots of students, all with Virgin Broadband. Virgin only supplied a fixed bandwidth to the area, so it
got used up very quickly. Virgin subsequently both increased the bandwidth and sent out letters of
apology to students.
This assembly also campaigned for cheaper transport. This led to the introduction of a £1 fare
between halls of residence and the campus, benefiting everyone who used the route.
Once ideas are passed they become the responsibility of the elected sabbatical officers to enact as
union policy. These officers are split equally across the three forums, two at each, to answer
questions and inform the debate. At the end of each forum the officers are held to account by the
representatives for policy passed at previous forums. If students at Leeds are dissatisfied with one
of the officers they can force a cross campus ballot on their position using an online petition.
The ‘leadership race’ used to elect these Officers is now attracting 10,000 students to vote, three
times as many as before these reforms. Representatives are now clear that their job is to represent the views of students and that winning an election is the beginning not the end of
becoming a representative. In this new role, they have made or inspired over 800 changes in the
university. Psychology students, for instance, have organised their own lectures, inviting to give
them the lecturers they want to hear from.
3
There are 15 forums per year (5 Better Union, 5 Better University and 5 Better Leeds), so over one academic
year as many as 240 students take part in making decisions as part of the student panel.