EUSA AGM: A wasted opportunity

It's the end of February, the sun is shining in its sky and yet another inquorate EUSA AGM has passed by without too much undue attention. This great annual tradition has become the bane of a EUSA sabbatical's existence – the perfect opportunity to gauge just how little interest the student body has in anything you have to say.

But something in the tone of this year's recriminatory post-match blame game has deviated from the usual talk of student apathy: rather than seeking to blame your everyday student for his lack of interest in the complex machinations of EUSA politics, there is genuine talk of change. Yes we can! President Adam Ramsay favours an internet voting system; services vice-president George Thomas reckons we could do the whole thing on Facebook; some even dared to expose those run-of-the-mill constitutional amendments as “boring”.

It is certainly refreshing to see some real soul searching going on in the bowels of EUSA but the problem of student disinterest cannot be laid squarely at their door. This year, complaints concerning inadequate contact time in humanities subjects became so vociferous as to prompt affronted undergraduate tutors to write a defensive open letter to their charges through The Student. Bemoaning their low pay and overwrought schedules, the tutors demanded their predicament be considered before students engaged in such venomous grousing.

Yet, come AGM time, presidential hopeful Liz Rawling's excellent motion calling for a final solution to the perennial issues of insufficient teaching time and coursework feedback failed to draw the crowds of well wishers that it warranted. Even if the precise details of the proposal are not universally supported, the sentiment is one that has been uttered in every seminar room, every café, every pub on campus by a number of students that is certain to exceed the paltry 300 needed to grant an AGM significance. Both other leading presidential candidates tabled motions aimed at improving the experience of students at the University of Edinburgh, but still, the student body failed to bite.

The copious inconsequential moves to ban this or that product from EUSA shops over past years have no doubt done a certain amount of irreparable damage to the institution's image in the student body's collective eye. But considering the volume of publicity that surrounds the event in modern times, it must be considered incumbent upon students to attend a discussion of propositions that so clearly serve their interest. With change so high on EUSA's agenda, the reconnection of student head to body is a stitch closer.

It's students themselves who must be the ones to move next and reinvigorate their interest in student politics. The failure to engage at this year's AGM has precluded students from calling for a higher standard of tuition in the coming year; there is no time to make the same mistake again.