It’s true that it’s paid back slowly and steadily when you are earning over £15,000 a year but interest starts from day one, and as interest does, just keeps growing. Is it right that our government are sending young professionals out into the working world saddled with this expense? Some say that students choose to go to university, but is it in fact, as I’ve mentioned before, that students are pushed into further education, and only go because everyone else does? Does that relate back to society making going to university the done thing? Is it right that the government, who enforced tuition fees and maintenance loans as opposed to the grant system, went through education and benefitted from said grants? I think not.

Living as a student is hard work – and its expensive. Not just to support the drinking habits or pasta and pot noodle diets, but to rent accommodation, buy essentials – notebooks, pens, text books, laptops, contents insurance. The list goes on. And on.

I’m all for tuition fees. Why shouldn’t universities get money for training people to do careers that will help them to provide for themselves for the rest of their lives? I understand that the government massively subsidise the fees we pay, but why not bring back maintenance grants? Why not put all of the governments spending for higher education into one big pot and split it equally between all students? Just because parents earn it doesn’t mean that they are capable of giving it to their children.

My mother set up her own business last year – so I feel guilty asking for money when her company is still teething. As a result of my mum leaving part time employment and going self employed, I’ve benefitted from the income assessed maintenance loan but it doesn’t seem right to me that I’m getting more than my course mate sat next to me, or someone on the same course 200 miles away. And I’m careful with my money, but I’m still struggling, so how are the people on less money than me finding living as a student?

Going back to it (before I get tomatoes and rotten veg thrown at me and the crowd begin to get restless and start to swear at me) as far as I’m concerned the Labour government suck at university funding in the UK.

*I appologise to my fellow students who come from other far more exciting places than the UK who are probably reading this and thinking how stuck up I am, as I know that they have to pay substantially more than we do for tuition fees alone. I can only imagine your aggravation is far more than mine.

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Yes, talking about politics with some students is like keeping a sleep-deprived sloth awake. And how this image tars the rest of us. Everything, from McCain chips (with their student newspaper advert: “Students Get Back To Doing Nothing Quickly“) to this blog, gives an ironic wink to the stereotype of the dosser student.

As the Independent columnist, Mark Steel, wrote a while ago: “The youth of today – they just don’t show no disrespect“. It’s the “quasi-proverbial, and not wholly undeserved, reputation students have cultivated over the years for extreme political apathy”, according to Hicham Yezza writing in The Guardian. Even the system is against us. Yezza continues: “Many universities have now grown to see their task as that of churning out generic, malleable clones for the consumption of ever more regimental recruiters…they view the very act of students engaging with the wider reality of their world as a subversive phenomenon to be nipped in the bud before it infects the rest of the student population”.

Talking about politics with some students is like keeping a sleep-deprived sloth awake. This image tars the rest of us.

No, we don’t have the freak banner of a modern day Hendrix, or the geeks and one-eyed midgets of Dylan. “Change” happened in America and the recent Greek student protests happened in…well, Greece. And there are some apathetic dossers out there: “Do we really care?”, one student commented on a York University newspaper website article that detailed the amount of money uni‘s invest in the arms trade. “Worst front page ever. So incredibly boring” another student put. One cheerful soul typed on a ‘Campaign Against the Arms Trade York Uni’ Facebook group: “The vast majority either don’t care or support it”. It seems being a student radical is so 1992.

But positives change happens regardless of negative perceptions. In recent months, over 20 universities were occupied by student activists, demanding action over Gaza and uni arms trade investments. The occupation of Queen Mary’s, University of London, caused the university to withdraw investments in the arms trade and review it’s ethical policy. The School of Oriental and African Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London and Bangor University have also withdrawn investment from arms companies after student pressure.

Sit-ins are one off demonstrations. Nevertheless, at York University at least, there is a healthy political student community. We have a model UN, Labour Society, Liberal Democrats Society, Conservative Society, Amnesty International Society, Oxfam Society and Friends of the Earth Society. Then there is all the independent groups like Gig For Gaza and The Campaign Against The Arms Trade. There are regular film showings on everything from The End of Suburbia to The Zionist Story .

Both the university newspapers have thriving politics sections, featuring interviews with Nick Clegg, Mozzam Begg, George Galloway and more. There are countless talks, always so popular that everyone from Hilary Benn to The Prince of Jordan enjoys a full house. Oh, and as for the “System”, York’s large Politics Department and the Centre for Applied Human Rights would have something to say about it’s production of “malleable clones”.

Why must the student activist always be on the defence against the stereotypes of the student radical and the student apathetic? We don’t want either Project Mayhem OR two-for-one drink deals. So what does your average politically active student sound like?

“Do we really care? Clubbing tomorrow night instead. And, yeah I’ll be going to the talk on Gaza tomorrow, no need to cook, just re-heat some leftover pizza. Send me the link of the Amnesty group over Facebook, I’ll see if I can make the meeting. My essay isn’t due in ‘til next week, so should be fine. Don’t wear a keffiyeh tomorrow, you’ll look like a twat. Pub?”

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He maintained his buccaneer character – ‘’ahoy’s’ and all – throughout his campaign. The Cap’n secured the position – and it’s £10,000+ salary – to a great uproar of anti-Cap’n petitions and talk of no-confidence votes. So this year YUSU elections will be reported in a purely straight-faced, factual manner in an attempt to instil a sense of proper decorum amongst the candidates. The student newspaper is as dour faced as ever, with a special supplement packed with all those serious student politics facts. This is student politics damn it, not a sketch show. Serious stuff.

So what can be learned about the serious candidates from their extensive (read a poster on nearly every window on campus) serious marketing campaigning? With fliers, leaflets, posters, t-shirts, Facebook pages, billboard, sandwich boards and…plain boards, what do the serious candidates’ serious campaigns have to say?

The political paradigm that one sinks by levity and rises by gravity has been turned on its head

Paradigm seems to be all the rage this year. Rhianna Kinchin has used the Kellogg’s Special K font and trademark K to suggest a candidate that is handy with Photoshop and/or is obsessed with low fat breakfasts cereal. Whether Rhianna is edible is undisclosed. Rory Shanksis another potentially edible candidate, opting for plagiarising the packaging for Kellogg’s pop tarts. Are we to believe Rory has a warm, gooey centre of strawberry paste or that he will be popped into a giant toaster prior to every YUSU meeting? Again, this is undisclosed.

However the nutritional pie chart on his flyers tells voters he is high in policies, low in salt. Rory’s arithmetic seems as lacking as his salt content; his flyer outlines 5 policy plans but advertises “8 SOUND POLICIES”. Could the unexplained three policies be cereal/breakfast bar/Kellogg’s/strawberry based? Is a Kellogg’s collation to be formed between Rory and Rhianna? Even more worrying is the flyers declaration that Rory’s net weight is 400g – how can a man the size of a Borrower work a toaster? It is even possible for him to hold one of his own flyers? Time will tell.

George Papadofragakis (so glad this isn’t a podcast) has chosen to create a Wikipedia page to print off as his poster. Campaigning with a website know for its factual inaccuracies and heavy handed opinions (I was once told Chaos is “Your Mum!!!”) is a daring move, especially when the poster declares “The neutrality of this article is disputed” and says “citation needed” after certain facts. George’s Wikipedia page has been now deleted, so any changes made to the article will have to be made with marker pen.

Ed Durkin has decided nothing says perfect candidate for the Democracy and Services position like…erm, Monopoly. Ed’s flyer and poster campaign sees Ed’s face representing the whole of Islington, with the tactical choice of leaving the Jail tile off the board – which begs the question as to whether Mr Durkin has something to hide. Worryingly, one of his policies takes up a “Chance Card” tile; will Ed be relying on a dice and card set up to make executive decisions? Again, time will tell.

Other plagiarisms include Dave Sharp’s ingenious “Fix Up, Vote Sharp!” tagline (Dizzie will turn in his grave when he dies) and Mandi and James ‘I heart NY/MJ’ logo. These raise just as many questions as the other candidates campaigns, but one thing is obvious from the campaigns; the best candidates have learnt from the Mad Cap’n’s madcap success.

The political paradigm that one sinks by levity and rises by gravity has been turned on its head; student politics doesn’t have to be dryer than a digestive biscuit holidaying in the Sahara. Politics is too important to let politico’s bore people into disinterest. Take advantage of student’s love of pop tarts. Monopoly themed flyers is barely pushing the boat out. It’s OK to break the suit-and-tie dress code. Cry a-vast once in while. Student politics may be serious, but students sure as hell aren’t.

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Had it not been for Israel’s attack on Gaza in December the talk probably would not have been so popular. In the fevered atmosphere, Norman Finkelstein – a polemicist and ardent critic of Israel – was a major draw. Finkelstein did not disappoint. His contempt for Israel manifested itself in a calmly spoken, but passionately felt condemnation of Israeli actions in the West Bank.

He called Israel a ‘Satanic State’ and asked the audience to remember the ‘incinerated’ children of Gaza, ‘since Israel has made their whole business out of provoking passions from the Nazi holocaust’. The people clapped. He was even given a standing ovation.

But it dawned on me as I was walking out, surrounded by people nodding in righteous anger: what had changed? Hundreds of people had come together and merely had their prejudices confirmed. Those who disagreed with Israeli policy still disagreed, while the few supporters of Israel present shrugged their shoulders at another anti-Israel evangelical. Put simply, the polemical nature of Finkelstein’s arguments rendered it useless.

Finkelstein had not helped his cause because his argument did not allow moderates with unformed opinions to be taken in. The overly emotive rhetoric left little room for any thoughtful analysis of the situation. Calling Israel a ‘Satanic State’ will cause some to nod in approval and others to anger, but it leaves the rest cold. Finkelstein simply preached to the choir, convincing no one other than the already convinced.

With an issue already as heated as the Israel-Palestine conflict, polemics are simply unnecessary. A rant will never convince, it will merely reinforce. A lesson that George Monbiot – an upcoming speaker during U of A’s international week – would do well to learn.

Monbiot, an outspoken environmentalist, does little to help his cause simply due to his penchant for ridiculous, over the top statements that can be dismissed out of hand. In 1999, Monbiot wrote that ‘flying across the Atlantic is as unacceptable, in terms of its impact on human well-being, as child abuse’. Rather than engaging frequent flyers in a debate over the impact of their actions, he compares them to paedophiles.

Statements such as these do nothing to win over sceptics. Even more damagingly they cause those who may agree with Monbiot’s sentiments – that tran-Atlantic flight is unjustifiably damaging to the environment – to actively disengage with the environmentalist movement as a whole, simply because loudmouths such as Monbiot are its most vocal exponents.

The same goes for Finkelstein. Israel is not a ‘Satanic State’, and saying so was simply a Reagenesque platitude designed to pander to an anti-Israeli audience. Israel needs to be criticised for many of its actions in the recent conflict, but criticism must be thoughtful, rather than emotive.

Men like George Monbiot and Norman Finkelstein should be a credit to their respective movements, but instead they are a liability. They drag the debate to the fringes of the extreme and in doing so leave behind the majority of public opinion. Whereas they could use their intelligence and charisma to engage, they use it to exclude and alienate those less radical than themselves. Some might say that, without men like these, their respective causes might not be heard. These men might be heard, but they are not listened to.

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