LS1: News

Seven years of Union neglect

LUU's student parents continue to wait for the approval of a campus-wide policy seven years after the draft was first released

In the midst of the recent Union boycott, subsequent votes of no confidence and removal of those involved, there is a collection of student groups struggling to have their voices heard. Since Leeds Student first reported on the Union’s new proposals for democratic reform (‘Student jury service proposed as Union democracy faces crisis’, Issue 10), it has emerged that such reforms would remove any representation of the University’s student parent, mature and part-time, international, and postgraduate communities.

While issues affecting LGBT, disabled, black and Asian and other racial minority students are becoming increasingly prolific on campus, student parents, international, mature and part-time and postgraduate students have remained consistently on the fringes of Union politics. If the Democracy Review is to go ahead in its current form, however, even this very minimal status could be under threat.

LS talks to LUU's Student Parent Assembly Chairs about the Democracy Review and their community's peripheral role in Union politics...

LS: Do you feel that student parents as a group have been marginalised in the Union’s democratic systems?
HL: I feel that since we’ve got… Continue reading...