SU22 – Owain Phillips for Students' Union president

 Owain Phillips

Queen's University Belfast is run for one sole purpose: profit. Despite all the flowery advertising, management does not care about the student experience. It does not care about research quality; it does not care about educational rigour. It cares about taking money from you hand over fist.

If you're feeling dejected by that, you can take comfort in the fact that students aren't alone in being bled dry. Management doesn't care about staff either. It cares so little about staff in fact that they pay teaching assistants less than I earn at my minimum-wage bar job. It cares so little about staff that they expect them to work unpaid through reading weeks.

Why does management not care about the conditions, experience or output of students or staff? Surely, a university should be concerned about their outcomes? It doesn't care because it has already got your money. It will take it in tuition fees and rent, whether you are happy or not.

If it's so bad, why not go to a different university? Because every university in Britain and Ireland are exactly the same. They are all neoliberal universities. Every university on these islands is a front for what seems like a property development firm on one hand, taking eye-watering amounts of rent from students, and a monetising operation on the other, built to funnel money to investment firms like Blackrock, and make massive profits investing in less than moral ventures that contribute to Israeli apartheid.

So, what is our reaction to this state of affairs? Surely, the university is too big an enemy to actually oppose? We can just tinker around the edges like the Students’ Union and reformist political parties have done for decades now. We can make this slowly boiling pot slightly more comfortable and pretend we aren't cooking.

Alternatively, we can do something meaningful. What good has acceptance and toleration of this situation won us? It has meant ever-rising rents, astronomical tuition fees, and English as the only accepted language on campus. Our tolerance and willingness to cooperate with management has got us to this exact moment. The solution isn't more cooperation, more meetings with management, more discussion. It is action.

I am running for Students’ Union president, not because I want a career in the NUS-USI, or because I love the lengthy debates about nothing at all that always come out of student politics. I am running because it gives me the opportunity to spend a whole year actively frustrating the management of this university. Whenever student demands have been presented to the Students’ Union or management they have been either met with immediate refusal or such a lengthy process of watering down those demands it was pointless making them in the first place. Why are we asking anymore?

As president, instead of putting in requests and attending lengthy meetings, I will act first. For 20 years, students have been demanding the Irish language be given its rightful place on campus signage. Every time it has been requested it has been refused outright. Rather than requesting, as president, I will have the signs made and put them up myself.

The university has continued to charge inordinate fees during the pandemic, despite the fact that online teaching is a vastly inferior product. The economic research group London Economics recommends a 30 per cent tuition fee refund for students who were moved online during the pandemic. As president, I will present this demand to management, and when they inevitably refuse, militant student action will have to be the response.

The university is hiking student accommodation rent 3 per cent above the rate of inflation, despite itself boasting about having a £25m operational surplus in 2021 alone. As president, I will demand a return to the September 2021 rate of rent. Again, when the university inevitably refuses, we in the student body will have to engage in radical action to force their hand.

The student body has had enough of asking for what we are owed. Now we should take what we deserve. Vote Owain for Students’ Union president on February 28th and the 1st of March.

To see all the candidates running, visit the QUBSU website