On Tuesday next week, your Students’ Association has its annual general meeting. It is your chance to come and find out what we have been doing over the last year and an opportunity to ask eusa anything. If you have a burning question, or you just have always wondered why we don’t sell fish food in our shops, then email us: ask.anything@eusa.ed.ac.uk. We will give you an answer at the meeting.
But questions aren’t the only thing that happens at a general meeting—it is the place that you, our members, get to come and decide what your Students’ Association does and says—until, that is, you tell us differently!
This year we have a range of policies, brought by ordinary students, to be discussed and decided on. Should we ban the BNP from our campus? Should we boycott and impose sanctions on Israel? Should we improve energy efficiency in flats? Should we ban the sale of tobacco products in all EUSA outlets? Should we ban internal flights and discourage flying? Should we have bibles in every room in Pollock Halls?
This year, perhaps more than ever, the policies focus on restricting your choice. Sometimes in the past you have decided it is a good thing (that’s why we don’t sell KitKats in our shops—a general meeting decided we should boycott Nestle). Sometimes you have decided that it isn’t (a general meeting decided not to ban Coca-Cola products).
The point is, though, that it’s your decision. You have to be there to make it. If you find next Wednesday that you turn up to buy a packet of cigarettes and you can’t, you bear part of the responsibility for that decision. You’re a member of EUSA; it’s you, the student body, who call the shots.
Sadly, general meeting policy is the stuff that grabs the headlines. But, in reality, that it is not what we spend most of our time doing. While banning things might be controversial, it doesn’t compare to the other things that we do for the rest of the year. Your Students’ Association spends it’s time fighting to improve your feedback; to get better facilities and resources for societies; to secure longer opening hours in the libraries; to get more buses to KB in the morning; to reduce the price of rent in university accommodation; the list goes on. But the point remains: EUSA is only what you make of it. The more you engage in our campaigns, our academic representation and our external lobbying, the more we can achieve for students.
So please don’t be put off if you don’t like what the motions say. I’d encourage you, instead, to come and speak out against them. But it’s worth remembering as well that what we do goes well beyond two meetings a year. In EUSA you, the students, have a powerful voice. Make sure you use it.