Hustings for the Union’s elected representative to the NUS and its own 
Executive bye-elections failed to attract candidates, let alone an audience, this year, maintaining the event’s notoriety for being under-publicised.
Eyewitnesses reported that there never more than 10 people at the event at any one time, including candidates.
For the first time, the Returning Officer responsible for all the Union’s elections this year, Jenny Martin, is an appointed member of external NUS staff, rather than a member of the Union Executive. She has been cited by many as reason for the lack of success although it would seem the low turn out is consistent with previous years.
UMSU Academic Affairs Officer, and candidate for NUS delegate, Kate Little failed to show up. She told Student Direct: Mancunion: “As a candidate I wasn’t even aware that the hustings were taking place. It was very badly publicised.”
Hustings is a forum for candidates to speak to potential voters. Another candidate for NUS delegate, Melanie Haslam, did not feel the need for this, she said: “The whole elections have been so badly publicised that the only people who would turn up were hacks who already knew who they were voting for so what’s the point?”
Martin declined to speak with Student Direct: Mancunion.
The hustings also covered a bye-election for the non-sabbatical Executive role of Engineering and Physical Science Faculty Officer and vacancies for three Post-graduate General Members. The polling took place over a period of three days last week.
Little was not the only member of the Union Executive Committee unaware of the hustings. Another said that Martin was required to deal with the entire of the North of England in her role as a regional organiser for the NUS, so it was unsurprising that she had not had the time to publicise the event.
The NUS elections for the academic year 2007-2008 also failed to draw an audience. The event held in February 2008 attracted just one non-candidate. The Returning Officer and Communications Officer at the time, Alex Castro, was also blamed for what was described as “a complete farce”. Castro said that the candidates were in no way proactive enough themselves.
“People need to get active and participate,” Castro said. “Candidates, in particular, should go out and talk to students.
“The best way to have a wicked hustings is for all the factions to work collectively.”
November 9th, 2009 at 15:32
I only knew about the hustings because I’m friends with 4 of the candidates. It was atrociously publicised, but then I’ve been finding that with a lot of the important events that the Union puts on – societies get their publicity everywhere. Everyone knew Chomsky was appearing athe union the week before reading week because there were signs everywhere – I’d estimate that around 150-200 people showed up. But then there was a General Meeting a couple of weeks before which failed to have enough participants to be able to continue (I believe they needed 300). The Union needs to work far harder to publicise their own events which will directly affect student experiences. One banner over the entrance to Steve Biko is not enough to get people to turn up!