Jewels in the crown or rough diamonds – what universities miss about their SUs

Despite my reputation, I didn’t spend my birthday at the Charity Commission’s annual meeting, but I did take the opportunity to read through Julia Unwin’s comments to that event a few days later.

She mentioned the importance of charities to community cohesion and economic growth, noted – as if it was possible for it to go unnoticed – the decline in infrastructure supporting charities, and set out the role of the Commission in terms of oversight and regulation.

Students’ unions have been classed as charities for over 50 years and registered for the last 15, and what struck me was the importance of SUs in providing several of these roles on campus – community cohesion, supporting economic growth, and the infrastructure for others.

Holding communities together

It’s the economy, stupid, and Unwin uses this in relation to community cohesion.

economic growth requires more than commercial investment capital. It requires social trust, flexible skills, healthy communities and people who are able, and willing to participate in society.

Not everyone has a career based on being given the chance to look at their SU’s byelaws back in 2004 – I was a bureaucrat even then – but I’ve lost count of the times a radio DJ mentions their student radio station or a university staff member mentions their origin story involves being a course or liberation representative.

This year I’m aware of three SUs working on volunteer accreditation programmes. While not a charitable act in itself, in the middle of a youth jobs crisis the fact that many SUs are maximising employment options for students, and considering how they can be given supervisor experience, is morally right. SUs are at the heart of the employability agenda without a sense of lip service or selling out on their principles.

There’s rightly been much written on the importance of belonging at universities for individuals. Students rocket up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs because of the scaffolding presented by SU groups and societies.

It’s often the SU sports team that gives the lonely student a sense of purpose, and the struggling learner the sense of achievement that helps them through a difficult term. Unwin points in her speech to charities fighting loneliness and inequality, and this is work that student groups undertake naturally.

To participate in society means to reach across difference and different groups, and SUs have a big role in this. It could be debates among opposing political societies, interfaith work that looks for similarities rather than division, or collaboration to get the best possible venue with the Indie Band group and the Rock Soc – music, not geology, climbing, or caving, but then again…

SUs can and should be spaces for bridging connections rather than just building our own safe spaces.

I’m also struck by the importance of social trust in the SU relationship. If a student council is the “highest decision making body of the union” then its impact should be felt by staff, trustees, and students – after all, we’ve told them that this is the case.

Similarly, we need to be careful about what we say when things aren’t clear cut – whether that’s for election candidates or our transparency on financial pressures at a student members’ meeting.

The scaffolding behind campus life

Aside from the activity run by students themselves, there’s also a strong infrastructure role in our higher education institutions (HEIs) provided by SUs.

First of all is the external view on processes and procedures that student representatives bring in spades, helping universities contemplate and improve their work. People can disagree on where the emphasis is put on “critical friend,” but I expect everyone can agree this is something that’s needed.

University complaints processes wouldn’t work without expert input from SU advice centres – we can see what happens when this is replaced by AI slop. Having citizens who know their housing rights because of the information from these valued staff is clearly useful.

To return to student groups, while the community aspect may be provided by students themselves, the support of membership services colleagues in keeping people safe and offering guidance is essential.

While it’s the people that make our organisations, we shouldn’t underestimate the physical space provided. The SU social space may be the only one on campus open late enough for the part-time student course to avoid the dark – something I really appreciated when doing my MRes – because SUs are driven by something more than just pure profit.

From jewels to gold

Regular readers will know I’m a fan of a metaphor, and Unwin played with the idea of the charity sector as the UK’s “Jewel in the Crown” but ultimately rejected it, explaining why in her view the image doesn’t fit.

charities are not an adornment where there is already wealth, stability, strength. They are, in fact, among the ingredients from which the very gold of our society is forged.

To what extent in our university communities are SUs seen as the nice-to-have extra, rather than something that provides the belonging, development, structure, and support that students need? Are we doing enough to recognise their place in our HEIs and explaining the benefits they bring?