By, Anonymous
1 min read
ByAnonymous, Anonymous
Last week, while we were sitting in our succahs, student politics took a worrying turn.
Goldsmiths students union rejected a motion which called to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, as well as other days marking genocides in Europe.
It also became apparent that the National Union of Students had rejected a call to condemn Islamic State, and that the far-right group National Action had made another campus appearance, this time at Warwick.
At a glance, these incidents appear to be coincidental, yet I would suggest they highlight an inconsistency of political stance within the student movement.
The hypocrisy in refusing to condemn IS on grounds that it could be seen as Islamophobic, but permitting a boycott policy to pass even when told by Jewish students that it could lead to antisemitism is a prime example of a movement which fluctuates according to who's saying what.
Grouping HMD in with several other European genocide awareness days is simplistic and it misses the point that HMD does include other world genocides. But saying no to a motion which calls to commemorate HMD does something far worse - legitimises those abhorrent voices who seek to deny the Holocaust ever happened.
The problem is that personalities take precedence over policies. There is a hierarchy of voices in the movement, and only an involved few are trusted enough to make a decision.
That's where it becomes dangerous, because the debate depends on the nuances of the relationships among a group of student politicians who may be ignorant of the complexities of the issues.
So this leaves us where? Well, not withdrawing from students unions and throwing our hands up in disgust.
We fight, like we always have, and we make change happen by mucking in and doing it ourselves. Get involved with your students unions, run to sit on your students councils, become an NUS delegate. Whatever you do, do something.
Maggie Suissa is campaigns director of the Union of Jewish Students