Over a 100 years ago, the UK’s best Student’s Union was established to better the student experience. As a charity led by a democratically elected team of officers, the University of Sheffield’s SU is an integral channel through which students get to advocate for their academic and social wellbeing.
Its status as the best in the country, a title that’s been exclusively held by it since 2018, is due to the commendable work of past SU officers whose efforts have been continued by their successors and the newly elected officers of this year have made high promises to do the same.
But those promises have fallen on deaf ears.
Despite elaborately designed election campaigns involving candidates handing out A4 flyers stating why you should choose them over the half a dozen other candidates, as well as massive banners hanging down into the SU foyer creating a faint hum in the building, voter turnout this year was 21%
21%.
At first glance it appears pitiful, but when you realise it’s the highest turnout in the past few years, it makes you wonder if this is the same SU that has consistently ranked top in student satisfaction.
If you, like myself, assumed the country’s best SU would have an actively engaged student population, you’d be wrong.
On the final day of voting, at the peak of the election buzz, I went around asking people if they’d voted, and the response was underwhelming.
“I’m sure there’s a point to it but personally I’m not that engaged with that side of things,” says an architecture student, who preferred to be anonymous.
She says she doesn’t have enough time to read up on all the candidate manifestos, of which there were quite a few.
“I think when you’re a masters level student there’s less involvement with the union because you’re so busy with coursework.”
Another masters student said she didn’t bother engaging as much with the SU since her course lasts only a year and so she feels the SU wouldn’t have a big influence on her short time here.
Apoliticism isn’t exclusive to the postgraduate community; a significant proportion of first years are just as disinterested in student elections.
Latifa Alzaabi is a second year environmental science student who knows the elections are important, but just not how.
“I feel like some part of me doesn’t understand how the system works and how much influence the students can have. I don’t think I was introduced to the concept well when I first got here.
“I saw the [candidate] pictures around the SU all the time but didn’t vote in the first year,” she says.
Although she did vote this year, it wasn’t because the concept became any clearer.
“A friend of mine is running for a position this year, so I’m helping her out. I also agree with her policies, but I don’t think I would’ve if I didn’t know her.”
So even when students do vote, it’s as a favour to a friend and not necessarily in the interests of democracy, albeit on a reduced scale compared to the politics that “actually matter”, which other students pointed out.
It may appear as if the wider student group don’t really care about student politics, which makes the annual election frenzy seem futile. But the recently-elected SU president, Lily Byrne, disagrees.
Lily thinks it’s normal that not everyone wants to get involved in the elections, citing the politics surrounding it, which have been especially spirited the past few years due to the university strikes and cost of living crisis.
“I did find that some students either didn’t wish to discuss the elections or were unaware they were even going on,” Lily said.
“I think the largest cause of apathy towards the elections is a lack of understanding of what the SU and officer team actually does or can do for students.
“I’m often asked ‘what do you actually do as SU President?’, and even throughout the campaigning process I was continuously learning more about each aspect of the role.”
Lily also notes that the young student population responds differently to elections and politics than the older generations, and that understanding this is key to engaging a wider percentage of them.
She is determined to continue the legacy left behind by her predecessors and has plans to improve student participation with the services provided by the SU.
“I believe that increasing the awareness and the ability to implement positive change through continuous transparency will improve student engagement.
“The visible positive changes the current team have implemented to support students has amplified student awareness of the potential for future change. I would like to further what the current team has done by increasing the transparency of the roles and what the officers are implementing and tackling on a day-to-day basis.”
SU elections may not seem to have the greatest significance when our lives are overrun with uni work and the many, many tribulations of adjusting into adulthood. But they do affect us as students more than we think.
As the epicentre of student life while in university, the SU is there to get our voices heard and in order for it to do that, we must first give it our voice.