NUS LGBT Spring ConferenceBirmingham University Guild of Students
27-29 April 2007
And so begins what could well be my last NUS LGBT Conference report - I enjoy and gain so much from attending these conferences, and so it is with half a tear in my eye that I begin a recount of the weekend.
FridayAfter a disappointingly short journey to Birmingham we rocked up at Birmingham University Guild of Students (BUGS) and registered ourselves before a quick roam about the quite lovely Birmingham campus, complete with massive clock tower.
After some Conference Training, we kicked off with a great talk by Finn Grieg of Sci:Dentity on trans issues within the LGBT movement. Finn was a great speaker and encouraged us all to speak with trans people as the best way of understanding more about this fairly misunderstood yet massively important issue.
A few dull reports later we moved to Regional Meetings, and it was nice they were early on in the weekend to aid with networking and making useful friends! The room wasn’t particularly conducive to discussion, and we ended up splitting into smaller “North West”, “Yorkshire” and “Geordies” groups to discuss and plan meetings we could do together. Alan Bailey and I reeled off some stuff about Student Pride and it was agreed that we would make this our Regional Event. We talked about campaigns together, including helping local FE institutions and the success of Liverpool institutions collaborating for their Donation not Discrimination campaign effort.
Overall the meeting okay but I think it could have been improved with a bit more structure and clear leadership. Whilst it was useful and necessary to split into smaller groups, it was a shame because we had almost all already met within those groups. However, it was good for me to be able to advertise for Student Pride to the group of people most likely to come (
www.studentpride.co.uk)!
The afternoon/evening session consisted of Open Place LGBT Officer and Committee Reports. It was a bit weird that Scott wasn’t there to read his support but his excellently crafted speech was read by fellow Scot James Alexander. The room cheered loudly for Scott in recognition of his hard work and extra-ordinary efforts in the past year, as well as in support for him as he recuperates from an operation.
We discussed two motion “zones” that evening: Education and Welfare & Student Rights.
The first zone - Welfare & Student Rights - was reasonably sedate. Motions that were almost totally supported included ones about promoting sexual health and tackling hate crime.
We then came to an important motion which I strongly believe in, entitled Gender Neutral Toilets & Trans Rights. I’m thrilled to report that NUS LGBT is now mandated to help push for consideration of trans issues when it comes to provision of toilet facilities. This should hopefully help us bring this about in Manchester over the next few years.
Another area which took a long time to debate regarded the opposition of fascism & racism. This motion was submitted entirely by NEC/NUS LGBT Committee Members and as such, the debate was largely between a group of people who all know and no doubt regularly antagonise one another. Others did get involved, but their impromptu speeches looked amateur in contrast with the polished ones delivered by the newly dubbed “conference celebrities”.
The debate ultimately (and perhaps inevitability) became so heated that delegates were asked not to shout at Conference floor.
It was then, perhaps with some amusement, that we fairly easily raced through a motion to work to reduce the scale of “body fascism” rife within the LGBT community. I for one am a strong believer in the power of the media and it possibilities for both damage and benefit. A well chosen photo can so easily alter a person’s viewpoint that the change in self-image is almost subconscious.
With a few deep breaths we moved on to the second zone. This was my least favourite - Education. It’s my least favourite as I feel the debates tend to be more about wider student issues as opposed to LGBT-focussed discussions - and this shows in the number of NEC (National Executive Committee - the NUS ruling body) members who speak on these issues of which they are passionate about. It’s not that the issues aren’t important, but the debates can often feel like a rehearsal for larger NUS-based debates. In any case, we affirmed the campaigns’ dedication to the eradication of homophobic bullying, before moving on to a lengthy debate about the future of funding education.
My personal view was that the notion of “free [HE] education for all” is outdated. I don’t think it is possible to increase the numbers of HE students without introducing costs to those students. I don’t think £3000 a year is a bad deal when the actual cost of that degree is more than triple that amount (or, for my Medicine degree, 16 times more…)
I do, however, believe that the Student Loan available is woefully out of touch with the living costs required by today’s students, but I don’t see why a system of loans only repayable (at a phenomenal “real” rate of 0% interest) when a decent salary is earned is unfair.
Nevertheless, as my own rant shows, this debate is largely about something that affects ALL students and not really LGBT students. And I feel that as NUS LGBT students we should hope that the NUS could more effectively campaign for such issues rather than the far smaller NUS LGBT organisation.
The evening was spent getting some alcohol and preening ourselves at the hotel before heading back to BUGS for the evening social where I had fun chatting to lots of different people, and it was nice evening to catch up with old friends from Liverpool Hope, UCL, QMUL and elsewhere. Other highlights included watching Will from UCLAN & Laura from QMUL get more and more off their faces, and Lee from Steering Committee fall into a flower bed. I remember skipping down a main road with Will at one point before we tried to go climb the Birmingham Uni tower, before we got lost (even though it is massive). Excellent.
SaturdayAfter our croissants and juice at the Etap, Saturday began with Women-only reports, before we concluded a few of the debates from the previous night. We then got to go to my favourite bit of Conference, workshops.
Natalie and I had signed up to the Trans workshop the night before, and then, without realising, the other 4 Mancs had done the same after us. As it seemed a little silly to have all 6 of us in the same workshop, we moved to the Feminism workshop instead. The other 2 options were about fighting the BNP, and another about Florence, a lesbian facing deportation back to Sierre Leone.
In all honesty, I wasn’t all that thrilled about going to a workshop about Feminism, but the outcome of the session was that I was pleased to have gone. It was led by Kat Stark, the NUS Women’s Officer, and we had some fascinating group discussions about different feminist ideals. I had bravely outed myself as a non-feminist at the start of the session, and I think this might have given the impression that I think women are subservient to some, but in all honesty I was genuinely interested in just feminism was, considering it different from anti-sexism (how wrong I was). I was pleased that my group got to discuss the statement “GBT men can be feminist but heterosexual men cannot” as we talked a lot about the media’s influence, the nature of interpersonal relationships and how feminism kind of combines the ideas of anti-sexism with a pride of women.
After a mad rush for our lunch bags, we moved into Motions Zone 3, which was my favourite zone: “Strong & Active Unions”.
The first motion in this was about Governance Reform in the NUS LGBT Campaign. We voted to replace Winter Conference with better regional events to strengthen the Campaign, as well as making a commitment to consider Mature Students and ageism within the campaign. It was also affirmed that the NUS LGBT Committee should endeavour to attend as many Fresher’s Events as possible, and mobilise the Campaign early so that it can be promoted at such events.
The next motion was the biggie of Conference and was entitled “Queer Liberation”. The original motion intended to allow self-defining Queer students to attend Conference, and to create a permanent Queer Caucus. An Amendment sought to “clarify” – although stated that “Queer” would include various supposedly-undesirable groups, and so defined Queer as those who were LGBT but chose not to use those words. The debate was rocked throughout with much vocal audience participation (especially from the NEC members – perhaps rather inappropriately), which climaxed in a procedural motion that called for all self-defining Queer students to leave Conference. Once things had settled down, Emma Persky, who had opposed the Amendment, surprisingly changed her mind and then spoke for it. This led to a very confused voting audience! With the Amendment passed, the main motion then passed, but without the two-thirds majority necessary for it to become policy. And so our LGBT Campaign rather timidly works its way to a Queer-er future? Perhaps.
Other motions in the zone that passed were: Better supporting disabled students; working harder to include FE within the campaign; supporting Student Pride (thank God!); and allowing sponsorship from reputable companies.
We unfortunately id not get to discuss two motions regarding Conference Delegations, talking about gender balance and inclusion of non-LGBT delegates.
The next sessions were the elections for the Open Place positions and Steering Committee elections. It was interesting to hear what the candidates had to offer, although it was bit odd that you couldn’t ask questions – audience whispers led to the conclusion that some people weren’t being entirely honest in their manifestos!
After an amusing session in which we were asked to reject the yearly Finance Report to show NUS how woefully wrong their estimates were, we moved to the final motions session.
Motions Zone 4 was “Society & Citizenship”. We discussed motions welcoming the protections offered by the new Goods and Services laws, supporting free childcare in Universities, and our support to the international LGBT campaign.
We also voted to “affirm our commitment to internationalism in the struggle against LGBT oppression”, although a section that called for us to campaign for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq fell.
Saturday ended with the Manchester Cru heading to Nando’s in the BullRing for our dinner as we weren’t too impressed with the free meal provided the previous night. We then got ourselves ready and went for some drinks in Birmingham’s gay area. Jennie and Carly (still rough from the previous night) went home early, whilst Danny and Stuart headed to Nightingales. Natalie and I stayed in the Loft Lounge, drinking cocktails and looking at the fit bar staff, as well as Anthony from Blue and Dr Truman from Eastenders. 5 cocktails later we headed home to dance on the bed before actually going to sleep at something like 5am… oh dear.
Sunday
After pressing “snooze” far too many times, Jennie, Carly, Natalie and me made it into the Guild for the Queer Caucus. This was a really positive experience, and we welcomed the fact that Queer students were now recognised by the LGBT Campaign (even if not quite in the way we all had envisaged or desired). It was affirmed that we would endeavour to build on this and introduce queer activism into the campaign.
We spent the rest of the morning chatting with various other students about what had happened so far, our views on certain motions, and also we Facebooked to the max on the Guild computers.
After lunch, we completed the motions zone 4 debate, and moved onto an excellent session given by Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson. These two women were married in Canada, and tried to challenge the UK into recognising their marriage as a marriage (and not a civil partnership) - in line with rules for heterosexual marriages made outside of the UK. Their story was fascinating and they succinctly provided us with good arguments as to why we should campaign for equal treatment. The couple received more than one standing ovation for their efforts.
After their session, they then presented the awards for the LGBT societies of the year. It was wonderful to see Liverpool Hope win the HE award. I’ve gotten to know Liverpool Hope over the year and I have really taken a lot from them. A tiny institution with no money, Liverpool Hope has rattled off a massive list of activities that really and truly puts Manchester to absolute shame. If they had our resources, Liverpool Hope could have achieved anything!
The final session was for Emergency Motions - there was a single one submitted by NUS LGBT Steering regarding a change in the way motions were submitted to Conference. It called for future motions to be submitted by Constituent Members rather than individual representatives. After some speeches by NUS representatives (from LGBT Steering, NUS Steering, i.e. Danny, and NEC members) the motion was not passed. I voted this way, because I feel that it would be largely impractical in our Union to follow the rules as specified - we can barely cobble together more than a handful of people to help us with Awareness Week - never mind get groups together to formulate motions!
And so, after some Closing remarks by Claire, we raced off across campus to get our train to New Street, before heading back home to Manchester (via Nando’s in Fallowfield).
In the week beforehand we had a lot of fun painting the banner (I did the "D!" in Violet), and then getting to maul Rachel, Bev and Natalie who were wearing the white hoodies, which we then adorned with handprints. Ian, Stu and I had a great laugh running about the Union with paint-soaked hands. Thanks to everyone that came and helped - I won't namecheck you all again and risk me forgetting someone (with, I imagine, heinous consequences if I do), but I hope you all felt freaking proud seeing the banner up in front of the Union. Mina (Welfare Officer) commented that it looked like a professional banner, so well done guys!
The stall looked great, and I know Natalie and I had lots of fun running about campus in our hoodies and rainbow umbrellas. We certainly got noticed (as it was, (1) rather sunny and also (2) the wind kept blowing our cheap umbrellas out resulting in many comedy moments where we had to wrestle them back into shape).
Friday's rainbow group hug was amazing. The aim of it was to get Manchester to see that there is still a campaign for LGBT equality, and it was also quite an important thing that LGBT people could be open and proud in public. I won't be wearing a rainbow cape every day, but it was important for people to see that LGBT students still have to fight for true equality. 
