My exams have finished, I've been awarded my final degree classification - M.Eng. Computer Science/Software Engineering 2:1 Class Honours (yay!) - and I have recently begun my full-time job as a web developer. I do not officially stand down until 1^st August so this is not quite the end...not just yet. I'm writing this blog to provide my constituents with the full picture of what's been happening these past few months, and how things will work from now until I officially step down.

Handover and Succession

As many of you know, Emma Cooper was elected to succeed me as LGBTQ Officer in the 2010/2011 academic year. We began a gradual handover process almost immediately after Results Night which has continued through to this day. As Officer-Elect, Emma has been shadowing me, working with me, attending meetings with me and has been good enough to fill in for me when the demands of my final year became so great that I was unable to fulfil my officer duties.

Similarly, the new LGBTQ committee under the leadership of Dan and Emma have settled in well to their job and are doing a good job of regularly updating the LGBTQ website and are well on the case for Freshers 2010.

Bottom line, Emma is more than ready to take on the role at any point. I'm in the middle of producing a final handover document and preparing a handover meeting which will wrap things up (will upload it here when done). As the demands on my time have rendered me no longer able to effectively fulfil my duties as an active officer, Emma is now effectively the LGBTQ Officer/

Blog and contact details

When I find the time (no promises!) I will continue to update this blog up until the 31^st, at which point my leaving speech will be automatically posted. I haven't quite finished it yet...and by "finished" I really mean "started"; but plenty of time left!

The Guild and LGBTQ Association will arrange for all contact details to be redirected on 1^st August.

I have to admit I thought I'd be better than I have been at reporting on the outcome of Guild Officer Group meetings and individual sessions of Guild Council. However I'm content that reporting on the highlights on a case-by-case basis throughout the year has worked quite well.

The last meeting of the 2009/2010 Guild Officer Group took place on Monday 7^th June; Guild Council a week later on Monday 14^th.

My Motions

I successfully submitted four motions through June Guild Council:

• Fight for the Right to Party - part of the LGBTQ campaign and heavily based on our research.
• Face to a name - Non-Sabb Visibility - not the first time I've tried this, but this has committed the Guild to ensuring that future Non-Sabbatical Officers are made more visible, and that it is easier for students to contact them; particularly in the case of liberation officers.
• Lacking Autonomous Liberation - this mandates a review of the current Guild Officer Elections system, via a consultation with the new liberation officers, VPW and VPDR.
• Q-Chat Beer Mats - Following up on our work with the Counselling and Guidance Service towards Q-Chat, this motion mandates the Guild to support them in distributing all advertising materials that would reach out to as many students as possible.

For more details, check out the motions themselves (click on a title to access one).

Leaving speeches

Traditional for the end of the year for Sabbs to, definitely worth staying for. I was quite content to be on tissue duty for when it got emotional just to stick around and see them all.

Emma gave a heart-warming and well-thought speech and some really nice introductory comments on her successor. Katie's speech was passionate, emotional, and she made sure that everyone got a "thank you". Johnny's speech wasn't strictly necessary as he has been re-elected but he went to a great deal of effort to deliver one anyway. Ed, I think, surpassed all our expectations of the inevitably humorous and witty - yet strangely inspiring - goodbye speech he was to deliver. Similarly, Tom was as charismatic and witty as we have come to expect in delivering a speech ensuring that the unrecognised many in the Guild staff and election candidates received the due credit they rarely receive. Brigid gave a good effort reflecting on her significant successes - and that of the entire Sabbatical Officer Groups - with a pretty funny edge. And Fabian...well, I will never understand how you can improvise good speeches like that; although I was kinda hoping that someone taped it and put it up on YouTube as six ten-minute videos (anyone who watched should get the reference :P).

As for us Non-Sabbs...well, we'll say goodbye in our own way. I made a brief speech on behalf of myself, Edd, Anna, Jo, Allan and Claire but I am working on a speech that will appear on here and on Facebook before the end.

GOG/GC in general

Throughout GOG/GC I have received two commendations, it's only nearly gone violent on three occasions (two of which were Palestine-related) and Edd has never failed to make it interesting. I never thought I'd say that I miss it, but I'm sure I'll hit that point before too long. In the meantime, I wish the future Officers, Guild Councillors and Independent Chairs the best of luck.

I haven't had much time in the last year to write up this summary before, but our recent victory at the 2010 NUS LGBT Awards and the relatively short amount of free time I now enjoy has prompted me to clear this off my rather long to-do list.

As many of you know from blog posts and various publicity at the time, myself and Kitten worked tirelessly since December to make LGBT History Month 2010 as successful at it could possibly be, which began with a productive meeting not long into the Xmas holidays with tea and cake.

The crux of this work was to resurrect Coalition West Midlands and be sure that it never collapses as it did before by following a core ethos: we scratch their back, they scratch ours; we have nothing to lose from trying.. In the past too many people have adopted the extremely subjective "what have they done for us" approach; naturally, Coalition quickly collapsed last year as a direct consequence. In hindsight, our new approach has been highly succeesful on a number of successful joint ventures including - but not limited to - History Month.

The Opening Ceremony

“Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.”

George Santayana

The opening ceremony was hosted by Coventry LGBT+ on Monday 1^st February in Cathedral Square, Coventry and was fairly well attended by representatives from Coventry, Warwick and Birmingham. There were candles set up in the form of the trans symbol and speeches delivered by Birmingham and Coventry Officers; namely myself and Tom.

My speech began with the above quote and a summarised history of the struggle for LGBT equality; historic religious oppression, the Holocaust, the Stonewall riots and, more recently the blood ban. More importantly, the speech then went on to describe the hugely progressive steps made toward equality in recent years; I used the Faith and Sexuality project this year as a keen example. Click here to see my rather ad-hoc speech notes.

Tom's speech presented a summarised biography of Alan Turing, one of the greatest scientific minds of the 20^th Century whose forced hormonal treatment lead him to suicide. The well-delivered speech led to a two-minute silence in memory of those killed for their gender and sexual orientation, and conclusion of the ceremony.

Talks

"As long as society is anti-gay, then it will seem like being gay is antisocial."

Joseph R. Francis

There were three talks hosted by Coventry LGBT+ over the course of the month. The first, entitled "Red in the Rainbow", was a talk on Gay Liberation and Marxism with guest speaker Geoff Dexter and took place on the 10^th.

The second talk was on Civil Partnerships and took place on Monday 14^th, just after Valentines weekend. It was delivered by Ian Dunn, current head of the Faculty of Engineering and Computing at Coventry University. It was informative, constructive and well-delivered and served to provide unique insights beyond just the subject matter.

Finally, a faith talk by Rev. Jen Croft of Coventry University Spirituality and Faith Centre took place on Tuesday 16^th. It was similar to our own Faith and Sexuality event in December and our ongoing collaboration with the Chaplaincy here, in that it gave LGBT* students in attendance the chance to look past the incorrect perception of all religious groups as inherently oppressive, and to acknowledge that faith and sexuality are not mutually exclusive aspects of one's identity.

I myself was only able to attend the talk on Civil Partnerships, but from that experience and what Tom told me, they were well attended by representatives from all four Coalition partners.

Workshops

I organised a Trans and Queer workshop during Monday 22^nd, in the final week of February, delivered by our very own Kai Weston and Patrick 'Poggy' Murray, then-Black Students' Rep on the NUS LGBT Committee. Sadly this was quite poorly attended and only by Birmingham students but I certainly like to think it was informative. ^_^

The big workshop-related event was the Dissident Disco and Drag Show that took place in Kelsey's bar, Leamington on Saturday 20th.

It was an incredible day of action during which participants took gender way beyond binaries in the most fabulous and horrific fashion, making clothes to dress women as butch men, men as monstrous queens and a bit of mixing and matching inbetween. The workshop was followed by a disco/party at the same venue which lasted until 2AM. Again, well attended by LGBT* students from all four Coalition partners and overall, a huge success.

Coffee Afternoons and Safe Space

We at Birmingham continued with our weekly Wednesday Coffee Afternoons, but each with an individual and unique social/political theme.

• Wed 3^rd: Introductory Coffee Afternoon and discussion of what LGBT History Month is and what it aims to achieve.
• Wed 10^rd: Guycons and Dykons - discussion of LGBTQ icons throughout history.
• Wed 17^th: Showing of Batty Man with BEMA, and ensuing discussion of faith and sexuality.
• Wed 24^th: Queer Identities & Disabilities with the then-Disabled Students Association (now DAMSA).

Similarly, Coventry LGBT+ continued running their Safe Space events every Thursday in their SU building. It was good to see guests from other Universities attend each other's recurring events and further strengthening Coalition.

Film Showings

Coventry and Birmingham took a forefront with this; again, good overall attendance across Universities. The following LGBTQ films were shown to celebrate History Month:

Wilde (1997) View Trailer	Goldfish Memory (2003) View Trailer
Transamerica (2005) View Trailer	The Laramie Project (2002) View Trailer

The main event in this respect was the showing of Milk (2008; click here to see the trailer) in the Vaughn Jeffries Lecture Theatre, Education Building on Birmingham Campus. This was hosted by myself and Emma.

Homophobia is Gay 4

As many of you know, the big main event intended to wrap up History Month was postponed from Friday 26^th February until Friday 12^th March.

Honestly, HIG was the event that I really wanted to run this year, if nothing else. Homophobia is Gay has been running since my first year (in fact, I dug out this old photo of myself, Fabian and Ed from the 2006/07 HIG barcrawl; bit of nostalgia :P) and it is a tradition that I insisted on continuing, despite initial resistance from certain others.

I maintain that the barcrawl itself was worth the number and scale of organisational disasters that happened during the barcrawl's organisation, and that it was an amazing success despite these nearly-disastrous challenges. The barcrawl had three groups covering Missing, Eden, the Fox and the Gale. Coach travel from Joes was provided and T-shirts were made available to those who had bought T-shirt tickets. If you have me on Facebook, feel free to check out my HIG photo album.

In summation

History Month marks one of the largest collaborative efforts between University LGBT groups, a major milestone in Coalition's development and hopefully, the first of many such collaborative events.

On Friday 7th to Sunday 9th May 2010, seven delegates, including myself and the Officer-Elect took part in the annual NUS LGBT Conference at the Britannia Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool. This is my report on the outcome of Conference and the events that took place within.

As part of my ingenius plan to mitigate £140 of Guild travel expenses, we travelled to the Conference by car and completely avoided the M6; definitely deserving of kudos. ;) The two hour drive gave delegates who weren't driving (everyone except me and Dan) ample time to read through the various conference documents, familiarise ourselves with the motions and ensure maximum preparation. We designated drivers had a chance to review the motions the day before.

Elections

LGBT Officer (Open Place):	Alan Bailey
LGBT Officer (Women's Place):	Vicki Baars
Open Reps:	Lev Taylor, Sky Yarlett, Hanif Leylabi
Women's Reps:	Sarah Burton, Emma Kerry, Kelly McBride
Trans Reps:	Kai Weston, Beth Evans
Bi Rep:	Tami Peterson
Black Student Reps:	Khaled Hamed, Bisi Alimi
Disabled Reps:	Elis Stephenson,
Further Education Reps:	Lucas Abedecian, Neesh Gibney-Thomson

Congratulations to our very own Kai Weston for hard-fought and well-earned election onto the NUS LGBT Committee.

Motions Overview:

Here's an executive summary of the outcome of each motion, with an indicator of how our delegation voted in general. For more details please refer to CD08 Final Motions Document and the minutes of the Conference when released by the NUS LGBT Campaign.

200. Welfare Zone: (Click to expand/collapse)

Motion	Our Vote	Result
201. Fighting the BNP	For	Passed
> 201a. Stop the BNP	For	Passed
> 201b. Support the right to work	For	Passed
202. Keeping the faith	For	Passed
203. HIV Treatments	For	Passed
204. Support LGBT workers	For	Passed
205. Experiencing work, not discrimination	For	Passed
206. Healthy FE	For	Passed
207. Trans Inclusive	For	Passed
208. Liberate Prisons Now!	Mixture; Personally: Against	Passed
> 208a. Prison Abolition	Generally: Abstained; Personally: Abstained	Passed
209. For a sensible approach to drugs	Generally: For; Personally: Abstained	Passed
210. Supporting Queer Homeless Youths	For	Passed
211. Welfare Not Arbitrary	For	Passed
212. LGBT Personal Care	For	Passed
213. Homophobic Bullying	For	Passed

300. Society & Citizenship Zone: (Click to expand/collapse)

Motion	Our Vote	Result
301. Reclaim Pride	For	Passed
> 301a. Brighton Pride	For	Passed
> 301b. Pride London matters	For	Passed
> 301c. Pride without Borders	For	Passed
302. Love without Borders	For	Passed
> 302a. No Borders	For	Passed
> 302b. Palestine	Generally: For; Personally: Abstained	Passed; Parts deleted
> 302c. Liberation NUS Occupation	For	Passed
303. Rainbows not War	Generally: For; Personally: Against	Passed; Parts seperated
304. Donation not Discrimination	For	Passed
305. Vote with Pride	For	Passed
306. Votes at 16	For	Passed
307. Recognising non-binary gender identities	For	Passed
308. Buggery! We won't take it lying down	For	Passed
309. Positive trans media	For	Passed
310. Pope Action	For	Passed

400. Strong and Active Unions: (Click to expand/collapse)

Motion	Our Vote	Result
401. Defend Diversity & Democracy at Annual Conference	For	Passed
402. For a feminist campaign	Generally: For; Personally: Against	Passed
403. LGBT Campaign Training	For	Passed
> 403a. Lets get lobbying	For	Passed
> 403b. Trans training	For	Passed
404. Committee Commitment	For	Passed
> 404a. Committee Commitment	For	Passed
405. LGBT in FE - creating a more representative and diverse campaign	For	Passed
406. A safer future for LGBT Youth	For	Passed
407. Discrimination in Societies & Sports	For	Passed
408. Fight for the right to Party	For	Passed
409. Poly People	Generally: Abstained; Personally: Abstained	Passed
410. Increase Communication - Utilising Officer Online	For	Passed
411. Stronger Nations	For	Passed
412. Trans Involvement	For	Passed
413. Mainstream Identities - Inclusion not discrimination	For	Passed
414. Because We're Hyper-Diverse	For	Passed
415. Uniting with Jewish LGBT students	For	Passed

500. Education: (Click to expand/collapse)

Motion	Our Vote	Result
501. No Compromise on Free Education	For	Passed
> 501a. No to Education Cuts	Generally: For; Personally: Abstained
502. Defend EMA	Mixture; Generally: Against	Passed
503. Equality & Diversity in the FE Curriculum	For	Passed Parts deleted

100. Reform

101. Policy Process, Debating Policy & the Drafting of Motions (and all amendments):
Our delegation generally agreed with all of these and our votes fell within the majority.

102. The LGBT Officers & National Executive Representation (and all amendments):
Our delegation engaged in a mixture of votes, generally in favour of or abstaining.

103. Additional Caucuses (and all amendments):
Mixed votes; I personally voted in favour of all but the Faith and Asexual caucuses, and the additional committee places. Almost all of these fell.

104. Adding 'Q' to the LGBTQ name:
Mixed votes; I personally abstained.

The Gay Men's Caucus Motion

There was a motion to add a Gay Men's caucus to the official caucuses that took place at Conference. Of our delegation, myself and one other voted very much in favour; three abstained and another two voted strongly against. I felt that the argument of a men's caucus being demeaning to women was extremely childish and hypocritical; serving only to promote women supremacy as the cornerstone of women's liberation campaigns and non-conducive to equality. So much so that they aren't even willing to attempt running a gay men's caucus and see how that went. Another example of how the angry-minority-oriented approach popular in the NUS completely undermines a progressive movement.

Backlash from NUS Conference and the Durham Incident

Another motion was a drawback of the circumstances that led Durham to disaffiliate from the NUS.

I've been hearing more and more about this issue since the NUS National Conference in April; did a bit of background reading on blogs and news articles across the Internet. The wording of the letter sent to Durham by Bell and Daf was clearly hostile and they most certainly deserved to be censured for it. My only grife is that they should have both been censured together; I never really saw the logic in censuring them seperately as they were both equally responsible for writing that letter.

The emergency motion put forward at LGBT Conference mandated a condemnation of Bell's censure, on the basis that we should "stand in solidarity with our black students' campaign"...and that was pretty much the only reason. An amendment to this motion also mandated a censure of Wes Streeting simply because he voted in favour of censuring Bell. Those speaking in favour of the motion and amendment made it sound as if the Bell/Daf censure should never have taken place because attendees at the conference weren't guaranteed to be self-defining black/LGBT students. They seem to either forget - or completely ignore - the fact that the recipients of the Durham letter weren't either.

I personally found the entire debacle disgusting. The NUS LGBT is perfectly fine with elected officers writing abusive letters but they seem to think that we can use autonomous liberation and "historic discrimination against black/LGBT people" as an excuse to hide behind the consequences. It's an incredibly childish and petty attitude that is unbecoming of a National Union of Students. NUS Liberation Officers are just as accountable to the entirety of the NUS as I, Claire, Allan and Esther are to the entirety of Guild Council, regardless of self-definition.

I helped a colleague from Edinburgh prepare a speech against the motion that she gave to the conference, quoting the Durham letter in the defence. She delivered it quite well and argued the point strongly. In the end, myself, and two others voted against both the motion and amendment; very strongly in my case. One other voted in very strongly in favour and the remaining three simply followed suit. The vast majority of conference also voted in favour of it and in doing so submitted to this low form of retaliation; definitely a low point of the conference.

Caucuses at Conference

Bisexual Caucus - I was the only attendee. At the caucus, we elected a new Bisexual Rep to the NUS LGBT Committee. We also voted unanimously to change "bisexual" to "bi" and inclusively allow people who use other self-definitions such as "pansexual" to attend bi caucus. It can't really get much simplier; "bi" is a two-letter, one-syllable word and the implicit inclusion makes everyone happy. ^_^

Women's Caucus - Kitten, Emma and Sarah attended this; the only business at the caucus was to elect the LGBT Officer (Women's Place) and three Women's Rep positions on the NUS LGBT committee.

Trans Caucus - this was attended by Kai. As with above, this caucus main served to elect the Trans Reps to the NUS LGBT Committee but to .

We also ran our very own caucus for Coalition West Midlands, at which the LGBT groups of Derby and Gloucestershire have now joined! :)

NUS LGBT Awards

The NUS LGBT Awards took place on the Saturday and recognises the work of one or more LGBT Society this year. Specifically:

• LGBT Society of the Year (FE) - Won by Basingstoke College of Technology LGBT Aware
• LGBT Society of the Year (HE) - Won by University of Essex LGBT
• LGBT Campaigner of the Year - Won by Colum McGuire of Kent Union LGBT
• LGBT Campaign of the Year - Won by University of Nottingham LGBT and their Network Campaign.
• LGBT Event of the Year - Won by Coalition West Midlands, i.e. us! (Birmingham, BCU, Coventry and Warwick LGBT groups) for our joint LGBT History Month; a successful joint venture for such a large group of Universities.

In summation...

Aside from the not-so special nature of most motions, and the infuriating backlash of the Durham situation, Conference 2010 was a success. In particular, it was an excellent opportunity for our friends from the various Coalition Universities to get together as friends and colleagues and really achieve. As a consequence, Coalition is now well-recognised as a hugely successful collaborative group of Midlands University LGBT group and will continue to expand and enjoy greater successes long after I'm gone.

As with my Conference report I've wanted to put this up sooner, but exams, family events and job interviews have delayed me significantly. Regardless, he's my followup to my pre-election post and some thoughts for you to consider; some of which you may or may not know. Again, apologies if this seems biased but please remember...these are just thoughts. :)

I woke up on the 7th May to leave for Conference and switched on the TV, somewhat surprised and horrified that the Tories - at that point - had a majority vote, heading towards an overall majority. I was also disappointed that people spoke big about the strides made by Lib Dem leadership in the past few weeks, but when push came to shove, they didn't have the constitution or the courage to reflect their words in their vote. Ultimately, many prophecies of a hung parliament were fulfilled.

Over conference I was quite out of the loop but somewhat surprised to hear of a potential Tory/Lib-De coalition government. Especially considering that their constituent MP's, councillors and members seem to differ significantly in ideology and, indeed, voting records. I'm not a fan of David Cameron; especially after his poor attempt at wooing the LGBTQ community. However, as I said in my previous post, I'm confident that the two parties will keep each other in check, and collectively, they are aware, liberal, pragmatic and practical; generally speaking of course. With the nomination of suspect cabinet members such as Theresa May - with her well-known voting record on LGBTQ rights - we, as responsible representatives of students, have a duty to lobby the coalition government on important issues in a fair and responsible manner.

The Labour hacks in UK student politics condemn the Lib Dems for "shopping around" as opposed to making a snap decision. What they don't know is that Labour had no intention of forming a coalition with the Lib Dems. It wouldn't have achieved a majority and they preferred the opposition. Not to mention, they faced a particularly pressing leadership issue which has still not been resolved.

"Labour Students organise in student politics because we believe that the student movement must be guided by Labour values."

[src]

The Labour hacks condemn the Lib Dems for finally entering into coalition with the Conservatives. If there's one thing that the Conference made abundantly clear to me, it's that the NUS and Labour have been in coalition for a lot longer. A major and very accurate criticism of the NUS is that it is dominated by Labour students, which diminishes it's ability to act impartially in the interest of students. Regardless of what Labour have done on behalf of minority groups during their twelve-year tenure, we do not answer to the party, however we are answerable to our students. As my brother quite brilliantly put it, we should dismantle the NUS and in it's place create a National Union of Students.

I witnessed some vile behaviour from Labour hacks during my term in office (particularly over the election period): arrogantly denouncing any non-Labour views, tearing up Lib Dem publicity in Joes; the list goes on. A Facebook group was created the day after Cameron and Clegg assumed office by angered Labour students. Some even had the audacity to flood Facebook with public statuses inviting Lib Dem students to embrace "progressive politics"...by joining the Labour Party. To be completely honest, I'm looking at this overall behaviour as nothing more than a temper tantrum; it was easy for Labour hacks to be arrogant while their government was in power and now...not so much. Reject the childish acts of these political opportunist traitors to the student community; who have no ground to stand on now that the extent of Labour's financial abuse is now well-known. It is our responsibility to accept the outcome, move on and start working toward a prosperous future.

That being said, the student community should be very concerned about the "tuition fees" part of the coalition agreement. The Lib Dems have always stood against HE tuition fees and, before the election, announced their six-point plan to eliminate them completely if elected into power. They signed an NUS pledge to scrap tuition fees; not to sit on their hands if they can't accept the Tory reaction to the Browne report and let Tory and Labour MP's marketise higher education. Liberal Youth have already taken a stance against this unacceptable concession at their recent conference and voted overwhelmingly to petition the Deputy PM to renegotiate this part of the agreement. More on this as it develops.