Popped collars, a surplus of second names, and a scary Canadian: it’s Bristol University’s Union Elections!

March 21, 2009
By Kat Highbury

Bristol’s Student Union is, apparently, the most apathetic in the country. There’s some statistics to back it up, but I’m so apathetic I can’t be arsed to find them. Hopefully this demonstrates the point adequately.

However, turnout this year at the Union elections was reasonably good. There are probably many reasons for this – being bombarded with emails from the Union is one, and the complete overhaul of the sabbatical structure another. For the first time, students were able to vote on posts as bizarre and non-descript as ‘Vice-President: Welfare’ and ‘Vice-President: Community’.

The Presidency was won by the favourite, Owen Peachey, having spent a year as head of societies at the university. With a slogan as predictable as ‘Isn’t life Peachey’ and few if any policies, the man seems to have all the relevant mediocre character traits to make a Union President.

Elsewhere, James Ashton-Bell was elected as VP: Community.

Check the popped collar and smirk at the end – no wonder he was popular with the electorate. Just weeks earlier, Ashton-Bell came in for deserved criticism in the Epigram, the university newspaper, in his position as Chair of the AGM. Ashton-Bell repeatedly chose ‘unsuitable’ speakers to present the opposition to motions he wanted passed. Amongst the most ludicrous examples was his decision to choose well-known ‘character’ Aaron Hugh Ellis to speak on an ‘against’ platform, only for Ellis to promptly vote for the ‘pro’ platform. (Numerous students walked out in protest, and the end result was that the quorum was not reached and the whole day was rendered pointless.)

Ellis is most noted for his short-lived ‘Union Policy Forum’ pressure group, his ‘New Establishment’ newspaper which never saw the light of day, his insistence on challenging Epigram Comment writers to ‘public debates’ over issues he disagrees on, and finally, for claiming on his Facebook page that ‘every time I look into the mirror, I find it hard to believe I’m not Foreign Secretary’. The unfortunate consequence of Bristol students’ apathy is the fact that the likes of James Ashton-Bell and Aaron Hugh Ellis (three names are not yet mandatory for union ‘figures’, but I’m sure they’ll find some way to pass the motion) are able to form alliances and gain ‘power’ through 2% of the electorate voting for them.

Elsewhere, the election had everything you expect from a student election:

A slightly scary Canadian girl:

Two girls running for the LGBT position with a manifesto consisting solely of acronyms:

And a small Welsh boy who didn’t seem to have much of a clue what was going on:

There was also the usual high proportion of young Labour Party activists amongst those elected, all promising to ‘put pressure’ upon the people they aspire to be working for in a year.

The outcome? Little will change. No-one will use the union, the university will continue to delay plans to change the location of the union (first proposed in 1991) and basic services such as a bus to Stoke Bishop halls – two and a half miles from the uni – won’t be provided. What are we paying them for, again?

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