Palatinate Comment: Speaker's Corner - Absurd JCR Decisions

Originally published in Palatinate Comment, 8/3/11 and available online here.

It can often almost feel childish to comment on college politics. Especially in Durham, it’s easy to be as involved or uninvolved in a college or society as you want to be, and our interest can dwindle at the same rate as our remaining time as students. Still, it’s also worth remembering that our JCRs do more than just offer free STI tests and a room with sofas, as recent events during the Josephine Butler executive elections show.

I still have to wonder, though, how slow a day it must have been when the executive summoned a student to a hearing with the threat of suspension over a Facebook status.

The finalist had posted a status which read “Hmm, dull, dull, and, oh look, dull. Must be Butler’s JCR election season again!” The following day, he received an email from the JCR Secretary asking him to remove the status. Refusing, he posted an excerpt from the email as a comment on the original status, prompting some comments about freedom of speech.

Later, he was contacted by the JCR Chair who insisted that the constitution had been breached and that the student had shown “alarming contempt for the conciliatory manner” in which they had originally tried to resolve the matter, while threatening a request for his suspension from the JCR unless he acquiesced. Still refusing to remove the status, the student attended a hearing the following day at an Executive Committee meeting – to which he was not informed he could take a witness – at which he was given an ultimatum: remove the status, or be suspended. The situation was resolved when he resigned his membership of the JCR. The section of the constitution thought to have been breached is article 7.2.14, which reads:
“Candidates are not allowed to ask others to campaign on their behalf. If candidates become aware of any individuals campaigning for them, it is the candidate’s responsibility to notify steering immediately. If someone does canvas on behalf of a candidate even without having been asked to, it may reflect negatively on the candidate”.

The claim of the steering committee, headed by the JCR chair, is that the status campaigned on behalf of RON – Re-Open Nominations, the option which voters select if they are unhappy with all of the available candidates.

The most glaring problem with this argument is that RON is never afforded the status of a candidate. RON is a course of action taken when none of the candidates are felt to be suitable; it is not a candidate, and as such cannot be subject to any rules governing an electoral campaign. More ridiculous, perhaps, is the visible misinterpretation of the remark. I find it bizarre that a   statement which says nothing except that JCR elections are boring can be interpreted as a suggestion that none of the candidates are suitable for the roles for which they are standing.

It’s obvious that such a statement is an endorsement for no-one, including RON. Instead, it makes the perfectly reasonable and valid point that college politics – and, I would argue, student politics as a whole – fails to engage much of the student body. That fact has been long accepted in Durham. While there is ample scope for debate over why this is so, it is part of a separate discussion. Freed from its unfairly attributed associations, the student’s comment becomes a valid and legitimate statement which cannot rightfully be censored by anyone.

In fact, it is that censorship which has proved to be self-defeating for the JCR executive. Had they not felt the need to take such action, the status would have been ignored by most of those who could see it, and forgotten quickly by the rest. A Facebook status is hardly inscribed on a stone tablet and displayed in a museum. It was quite clearly a throwaway remark without any serious intention behind it, but the controversy created by the executive has ensured it will have an effect, by casting the executive in an extremely bad light. I have the utmost respect for the JCR and the executive, who do work extremely hard, but at the same time I find it difficult to accept that seventeen people could not collectively come to a less absurd decision – and it is as a collective that the constitution insists they must be responsible. Even in the localised sphere of Durham college politics, it holds true that some rules, even when misapplied and misinterpreted, should sometimes be quietly ignored.