Socialist Student Edmund Schluessel has been elected as mature students’ officer for the Cardiff University student union executive by 459 votes to 49 in the university’s by-elections as part of the Viva Cardiff platform.
Viva Cardiff is an alliance of Socialist Students, Young Greens, and campaigning groups such as People and Planet, and Engineers Without Borders. Viva Cardiff now has ten out of 70 student council seats including two executive positions, and is planning a series of progressive resolutions and actions with a goal of building a democratic student union.
The alliance, taking cues from the political experience of its members, operates both within and outside the electoral system, and includes several campaigners from the February 2009 occupation of a lecture hall which led to the university administration’s promise to divest from the arms trade. The administration has since broken this promise and high on Edmund’s agenda are arms divestment, an egalitarian, multicultural and feminist student union advertising policy, pushing back above-inflation fee increases in the university’s daycare service, and union affiliation to the Youth Fight for Jobs campaign.
With the university’s ‘final’ pay rise offer to lecturers a paltry 0.5%, real possibility exists of organised labour action at Cardiff. Socialist Students pledges to build solidarity between lecturers, support staff and students.
