Surrey Ethics and Equality officer denied NUS Conferenece place for not being black

Surrey Students’ Union’s Equality and Diversity Officer (E&D), Peter Smeed, was unable to attend the NUS Black Students’ Campaign (BCS) Conference last month because as the NUS put it, he does not ‘self-define as black’.

NUS then asked whether Surrey had a student that does ‘self-define as black’ who would like to attend the conference.

The BSC promotes the welfare and development of students who define themselves as being ‘black’.

Under the BSC rules anyone who is of an African, Caribbean or Asian heritage as well as those of an Irish or Romany ancestry may be defined ‘black’.

Peter Smeed said “Well, I just felt let down with the NUS as I wasn’t allowed to speak up for the students I was elected to represent. Discrimination is wrong in all respects and I think the NUS needs reminding of this.”

VP Welfare at Surrey Students’ Union, Dave Halls, who NUS had contacted in regards to this, stated: “Pete was democratically elected by all students across campus, including all students who fall in the demographic of a ‘liberation group’... so it is absurd that the NUS would actively encourage someone who wasn’t elected to perform that role to take Surrey’s place, purely on the basis of their ethnicity.”

‘Liberation Groups’ as defined by NUS include the black students campaign, LGBT, disabled and women’s campaign.

Whilst the Surrey Students’ Union is fully supportive of these groups, it can be argued that this is still discrimination based on ethnicity.

When this issue was raised to the NUS, it came to light that the disabled and women’s’ students’ conferences use the same discriminatory self-defining admissions policy.  It was only the LGBT conference, from the among the largest, that allowed people of all demographics to attend.

NUS President Liam Burns also discussed the issue with Mr Halls and explained the reasoning for why you have to self-define within the group: if you do not, you can only sympathise and not empathise with those students.

Mr Halls disagrees with this statement: “I would argue, however, that by attending these conferences, an E&D officer is able to enhance their ability to empathise with these students’ concerns.”

This discriminatory policy was also brought to light at other unions and the response to this varied significantly. 

Some unions suggested that Surrey should simply play by the NUS’s rules and send someone who self-defines as black, but was not elected – one union even suggested that in order to get around this problem, they ensure that only ‘black’ students are allowed to run for the E&D position.  Other unions were intrigued to see what result Surrey gained from challenging NUS.

Students’ unions pay a substantial amount of money to NUS in affiliation fees every year.  Therefore, many believe that they should be entitled to resources for training and representation that would benefit all students. Thus by excluding someone from attending a conference, they are essentially excluding those students from the most effective representation on a national, and local level.

The NUS has recently opened up the Disabled Students conference to ‘disabled students, equality and diversity officers, welfare officers, and anyone with an interest in furthering the representation of disabled students.’