In some ways I think the epic battle between Finland’s Käärijä and Sweden’s Loreen for the Eurovision 2023 crown can be seen as a battle between personality and perfection.
I have my own reasons for quietly cheering for Loreen – which are mainly about her win in 2012 with Euphoria being one of the few I never saw live (Baku was just too long a return flight) and the fact that popular culture does very little to celebrate queer BME women in their 40s – but in the venue on the night, Käärijä was clearly the people’s champion.
His popularity with the public took lots of people by surprise. Tattoo was in many ways a piece of Swedish perfect pop perfection, written by Eurovision songwriting veterans to tick all the usual boxes. No wonder it won with the juries.
But Käärijä’s Cha Cha Cha was quite a divisive entry – it’s hardly as if its fans on the night are listening to that sort of music in their usual playlists, and even the performance itself was simultaneously both too aggressive and cheesy for most tastes.
Yet in the venue itself, and I assume homes around Europe, he was the clear winner – with the polish of Loreen roundly booed, which carried on as it became clear that he’d lost on what many saw as a voting system technicality and an imposition on the people by the elite juries. It wasn’t that they loved everything he said or did – but he was theirs, you know?
For die-hard fans, Cha Cha Cha was also a story about becoming – the translation is about overcoming anxiety and using alcohol to build confidence and courage.
Holding the drinks with both hands like
I’ve been thinking about that battle a lot over the early part of the summer, as I traverse the country meeting new sabbs. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a subconscious model in my head of what a perfect sabb is – a little deficit model in my head nagging me to smooth off some rough edges here, and boost up the benefits of some tactics there.
Back in my pound shop svengali days at NUS when we had 21 full-time officers to support, we’d do it all the time. They were in charge of course, but like Cowell fiddling with the lighting on the X Factor, we’d frown if the lefties got too radical and we’d smile when the polite ones got a little angrier about things.
It’s how assimilation into organisations work – there’s a role here, and we want you to play it. Here’s how the good ones do it, and if you don’t fit, we bodge the square pegs into the round holes until they do.
Over the years that idea – closely linked to the idea that officers are representing the charity as much as they are representing students – has got stronger. Modern students unions operate in environments bombarded by graduate attribute frameworks and role descriptions and HR policies and officer hats and 360 appraisal schemes commenting on how far away a given individual is from the Stepford sabb we imagine represents perfection.
Of course to some extent, they demand it too. New officers want to know how how to do a good job. 360 feedback sheets and the odd nod from a supportive CEO or VC replace political accountability. They’re used to meeting the marking criteria and they want to fit in. That is what success has come to be.
But I have come to worry about it all a lot.
Time to demolish this icy shell
When we talk to senior managers in universities at Wonkhe about their first encounters with new officers, we can broadly discern four types of response.
The first is a kind of cruel laughter – where the leader knows the ineptitude on offer can be easily dismissed. We’d all be keen to avoid that.
The next is what I call being “allocated”. The officer may be new but the list of priorities and the title is familiar. They know how to handle these ones – they know which middle manager to allocate to that issues they raise and they know that the things being discussed can be slotted into the energy sapping mundanity of the university committee cycle.
The third is “noticed”. Think of this like the hooks side of velcro rather than the furry side of “allocated”. This is someone switched on, raising uncomfortable issues and setting standards for senior managers. They talk with passion and purpose about the university – assume they are part of it – and raise real questions about how well it’s meeting that purpose.
And then there’s the “threats” – the screamers, the protesters, the permanently negative crusaders whose social media and committee contributions constantly cause the university to be brought into disrepute and “need to be neutralised”. There’s precious few of those these days – and the ones that do exist often find the systems to shut them down so powerful as to make winning the election pointless.
The reason I worry is that I think if we’re not careful, our induction processes promote being politely allocated rather than the assertiveness of noticed. And I think that’s a problem – because it sets sabbs up as cheerleaders and bit-part players in the drama of decision making, rather than the assertive and autonomous agitators in the student interest that stars of the show are, and that students need them to be.
It creates Loreen’s Tattoos, which charities that need funding and universities trying to cope with chaos think they need. But students need Käärijä’s Cha Cha Chas – those that change things, command popular support and rub people up the wrong way just enough. Tattoo won the contest as its rules are. In time, Cha Cha Cha will be seen as entry that changed the contest.
And talking gets so hard when this other side of me takes control
This isn’t just about working with and accentuating the talents that are there rather than endlessly addressing those that aren’t, moulding then into what we think they should be. It’s about voice and debate. Almost certainly the most impressive elected officers I’ve seen over the years are also the ones that wound people up.
It’s not that everyone agreed with everything they said, or did, or believed. But students knew where they stood. They commanded unusual levels of respect from both friends and foes not because they did their job well – but because they provoked debate. They looked powerful. And rather than ask for things, they set standards for university managers and ministers to meet.
They were talked about much more than they were liked. They listened and responded. They caused others to question what they were doing, or what they believed – took care to explain what was driving their positions – and had unusual levels of humility for ones so young when they (often) changed their mind.
Today, I still talk to student officers every week. So many have views, and opinions, and talents that in truth, they hide – because we tell them how to influence the university, or communicate with students – and it’s rarely about doing that. I watch their intro videos and read their blogs and I know they’re nice, and friendly, and caring, and even what they want to do for me. I rarely learn why, or what they believe, or what they think is wrong with the world. I say. They do.
And I’m not scared of this world no more
Already, we know that risk-averse readers of the free speech bill are advising sabbs not to be too controversial – Toby Young might come for you, and it’s best to try to appeal to everyone, eh. Couple that with the fear of being cancelled for saying something controversial and the pressure from university managers implying that the Block Grant will be cut if they don’t play the game and we get what we get – people that we never needed to elect at all.
The truth about the polished, practical lists of manifesto objectives and the awareness weeks and the projects is that they’re more often than not driven by experiences and injustices that need to be interrogated, surfaced, analysed and prevented. But that’s hard when they’re given no platform on which to stand.
So as the England free speech act’s implementation phase rolls into view, I’m calling for a resurgence of controversy. If those codes of practice call for debate, officers should generate it. If something’s wrong, we should help officers say so. If students have rights, we should help officers communicate them. Because if students can see their sabbs speaking up and speaking out, they’re more likely to do so too – even if they disagree.
Students need to know that they can challenge authority, act against what’s wrong and tackle the injustices in the world around them. And so those of us supporting sabbs need to do all that we can to help them become not servants of students, but their authentic and powerful voice.
