I was in the Student Union earlier on, and bloody hell it’s gone downhill. The Union magazine, Fly, was a reasonably well-done publication a few years back; nowaday’s it’s a single piece of A4 paper folded in half, and the middle "pages" consist of the so-called ‘events’ over the coming week—i.e., the inane reasons they’ve come up with for people to get drunk (half of which aren’t even at the Union, they’re at some random nightclubs in town—what was the point of spending millions of pounds which they don’t have (since they’re in debt to the Univorsity) on doing up the place if they’re going to encourage everyone to go elsewhere?). On the back "page" was the ‘Union News’: half a page of sports results.
Some student unions actually do things; they help their students, they make a difference. Ours seems to exist solely to get its members (of which I am not one this year, since they make it more and more difficult to join for less and less benefit) to spend money on alcohol.
I expect people are going to tell me that since I’m not a member of the Union I have no right to complain. This is bollocks; I’m not a member because of the problems, which have been getting worse and worse in the three years since I started university here.
Something else that really irritates me is the music; they have some crappy music channel playing all day, on all the screens that’re dotted around the place, and over the sound system. Now, musical preferences aside (do people actually enjoy listening to that shit?), it would seem to run counter to the Union’s "Safe Space" policy (which, among other things, bans any sexist behaviour on Union property) to have videos of women being sexually objectified on a big screen in the main room all day every day. Though, come to think of it, the posters I’ve seen mention homophobia and racism, but not sexism; presumably they think that sexism isn’t an issue?