Will Durham’s bubble of apathy ever burst?

THE RECENT DSU sabbatical elections and Gaza referendum have shown that student apathy is on the rise. With only 18.3% of students voting in the sabbatical elections compared to 22.9% last year, Anthony Crowther, DSU Societies and Student Development Officer, has been commissioned to write a report on the issue of participation in student politics.

This term’s results are further proof that Durham students, who generally acknowledge themselves to be ‘living in a bubble’, are less interested in student democracy and campaigning on national issues than their counterparts at other universities.

When asked by Palatinate about student disinterest, DSU President-Elect Natalie Crisp gave her support for investigating why there are such large discrepancies between colleges’ voting rates.

Palatinate decided to explore the factors behind this: geographical, generational, indifference or simply disinterest? Why do students in Durham believe that simply joining a Facebook group is a sufficient means of protest?

DSU Sabbatical Election

When approached by Palatinate, freshly-elected DUCK Officer Alexander Howell put low voter turnout down to a lack of awareness both of what the DSU does for students, and what it could potentially do if it had more support, “The obvious excuse for low turnout is that Durham is collegiate. People perceive the DSU as being less important because colleges provide a lot of the typical union functions.”

However, Mr Howell went on to explain why he believes the collegiate nature of the university makes the DSU more important: “For all their manifold benefits, colleges divide the weight of student opinion on matters like welfare and education, and only a uni-wide organisation like the DSU can pursue things like minimum standards of feedback, welfare in colleges and access to tutor support.”

When asked what he thought could be done to increase voter turnout, Mr Howell replied: “As a future sabbatical officer I think it’s really important not to blame apathy on students. The onus is on the DSU to prove why it is important. In a single sentence: it’s listening more: and listening seriously to every student; it’s talking more: explaining why issues like top-up fees are important, hosting and provoking debate on contact time, and celebrating the progress the DSU has made in improving the student experience.”

Mr Howell also highlighted the similar problems currently being faced by JCRs: “Perhaps we are just not the politically active and society-centred student generation that our parents were.”

Newly-elected Societies and Student Development Officer Ben Robertson expanded on the collegiate nature of Durham affecting union participation: “Turnout overall was worse than last year, but a lot of this has to do with what colleges people are from and what elections are contested. For instance, more people see what the DUCK Officer does compared to the other sabbatical positions, and this makes a big difference.”

Mr Robertson believes the difference in voter turnout between colleges is down to the Senior DSU Reps: “Providing senior reps with more resources is one way to increase voter turnout. Last year the incentive of providing an ice-cream party for the college with the highest turnout worked well.”

Current Societies and Student Development Officer Anthony Crowther, who has commenced his report on the results, defended this year’s figures and argued that they were equivalent to 2006 and 2007. He conceded that the figure was down from last year’s 22.9% but explained some of the contributing factors, which will be included in his report.

Mr Crowther emphasised how last year’s election had a greater impetus behind it because of the requirement for 20% turnout in order for the new DSU constitution to be ratified.

Another factor he highlighted was that different Senior DSU reps are now in place in colleges. While not wanting to devalue their work, he stressed how crucial last year’s higher requirement was. Crowther defended this year’s 18.3%, stating it was comparable to other unions around the country which NUS gathered data from.

However, Mr Crowther accepted Durham’s participation could be higher and stated that DSU officers fully support this: “This year has also been good in that for the first time we have the resources to analyse and report on this. We are going to talk to the senior reps to find out what they did in their respective colleges and analyse college data over the past few years so we can see what gets people voting in different colleges.”

When asked about how voter apathy could be combatted next year, he supported the idea of an incentives based scheme like last years Ben & Jerry’s party. However, this year, much of this kind of sponsorship has dried up.

One suggestion mooted in the past has been to place voting stations in Main Library and colleges as a way of creating more awareness and encouraging voting. However, Mr Crowther said he was concerned that students might be pressured into voting without thinking the matter through sufficiently.

Gaza Referendum

The much-debated referendum on the economic boycott of Israel has taken up a substantial amount of the DSU’s time this term, but was only defeated by 726 to 525 votes. Despite its controversial nature, this term’s referendum prompted only 1,266 students out of 17,186 to log on and vote, equating to a dismal 7.3% of the student population.

The Durham Student Union remained neutral in the referendum due to the contentious nature of the topic, which Mr Crowther believes resulted in less publicity that normal: “The key thing in a referendum is that students should be forming their own campaign teams. The impetus is on supporters to go out and run campaigns in the same way that candidates in an election do.” Mr Crowther explained how funding is available from the union for publicity, but that neither campaign took advantage of this.

One reason offered for the exceptionally low turnout was that whilst the referendum got a lot of people talking, they didn’t necessarily have a strong enough opinion or feel informed enough to actually vote on something external that does not affect th majority students directly.

With the new DSU sabbatical officers pledging to raise awareness and to take a more one-on-one approach, we can only hope that students will feel more inclined to take part when these situations arise in the future.