NTU Labour President says students feel ‘let down’ after Nottingham Trent Students’ Union (NTSU) refused to sign an open letter demanding a ‘no-detriment’ policy to be implemented.
This was after Nottingham Trent University have confirmed that further changes in the examination process such as introducing a blanket measure will not apply this year.
NTU Labour Society set up an open letter in response to university’s decision.
The letter, which has over 7,300 signatures, demands immediate deadline extensions, a no-detriment policy and professional mental health support for NTU students staff.
After a meeting held on Wednesday (January 13) to discuss the initiative, however, the NTSU said they will not sign the letter.
NTU Labour President Sam Harris, said: “The meeting went fairly well with the SU reading out points made in my letter.
“However, they seemed to disagree with universal deadline extensions and argue that many students didn’t want this – despite more than 7,300 saying they do by signing our letter.
“Additionally, while they seemed to generally understand our points, the responses they gave were very vague and gave no solid commitments to pushing or supporting any particular issues.
“As the meeting went on I felt more and more disheartened with the responses given by the SU and finally asked them whether they will be supporting our open letter or not.
“They then said: We are not signing the letter, but we support the points in the letter.
“We feel let down and this is not how a SU should be acting.”
However, the leader of this initiative is committed to send the letter to the university as promised.
He added: “Our next steps will be to send the open letter to NTU without the support of the SU unfortunately and wait for a reply.
“We will have to ramp up the campaign if action is not taken to implement our demands.”
Platform reached out to Nottingham Trent Students’ Union for a comment about this matter.
They said: “The Students’ Union understands that its members want action on housing, academic safeguards and mental health.
“NTSU has worked since the start of the pandemic to lobby the University on these issues and more, it will continue to do so.
“Our Students Deserve Better campaign outlines our work on ‘no detriment’, mental health and rent refunds.
“We were happy to see that the discounted rents in NTU Halls were a direct response to the SU’s dialogue with NTU.
“The University has also agreed to approach other student landlords, jointly with NTSU in the coming days to ask them to follow suit.”
By Olimpia Zagnat
Lead image: Olimpia Zagnat.