Why I’m running for CUSU president

A story of satire, jam and promoting engagement.

The face of change, the face of jam.

So, if you’ve been following the CUSU elections at all this year, you might have noticed my satirical manifesto and campaign video.

This has led some to brand me as a ‘joke candidate’, which I don’t really think is fair because, aside from the fact that canals would help us corner the market in 19th century freight, this campaign is satire and, like all proper satire, it does actually have a point.

That point is this: CUSU is currently like an obscure, long-forgotten utensil at the bottom of that drawer in the kitchen that doesn’t close properly, nobody really knows what it does or how to access it.

I’m now in my fourth year at Cambridge, and I’ve seen CUSU go from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again so many times that people have ceased to take any interest in it, and this isn’t because it doesn’t do some important stuff, it’s because it doesn’t engage with students or make any real attempts to mandate its efforts. It’s for this reason that hardly anyone votes in the elections or cares about any of the candidates.

I will sing to you if I have to.

So why am I running? Well, it started out as a group of us thinking I could just break through the dull, featureless landscape of candidates nobody has heard of by running a funny campaign.

But then it became a lot more than that, because planning the campaign we realised that, if elected, I could actually work to solve these engagement issues by making CUSU half-way interesting and focusing on some issues that matter to the daily lives of students.

CUSU needs to consult its students more and take action based on their needs, rather than on its own suppositions, and also publicise what it is doing in a more interesting way.

I’ve spoken to loads of students in the past few days who previously were actively disengaged with CUSU but now want to vote because down-to-earth policies like Wednesday afternoons off for sport, free tampons / sanitary products, a referendum on a reading week and a consultation to improve the intermitting process really appeal to them. They also like free jam sandwiches, why has nobody done this before?

A friend came up to me today and said that everyone in her college is talking about my campaign and CUSU, and she’s never heard anyone talk about CUSU there before — so if that isn’t engagement, then what is?

If people are going to believe that we need a students union, we need to make it representative and something they want to take part in.

So I am mocking the CUSU elections, but I’m doing it with an actual intention to improve CUSU. If I win, I’m going to do this job and do it well. I’ll hold more consultations and, as a comedian and occasional self-publicist, present CUSU more engagingly and excitingly than ever before; but most of all, I’ll just focus on talking to students and trying to work for things that there is a consensus behind and will actually make some tangible difference to the lives of the majority of students, while continuing the important representation work it does with minority student groups in need of more specialised help.

Deep in thought.

I’m not a politician, I’m not an evangelist and I’m not the messiah (I’ve come to accept that now), but I do care about making CUSU plausible.

So do really vote for me and I will really do it and hopefully make a tangible difference.

Vote because it’s funny, vote because I care and vote because I have literally nothing better to do next year.

We can do this, and even if you don’t, do.