Nottingham University students to vote on splitting from NUS

A university with one of the highest numbers of Jewish students in Britain will hold a referendum on disaffiliating from the National Union of Students following the election of Malia Bouattia as its president.

Nottingham University could become the fourth institution to leave the national body in less than two months after the vote from June 1-9, following Lincoln, Newcastle and Hull.

Hull University voted to leave to the national body today by a large margin, with 811 students in favour of disaffiliation and 476 against.

Cambridge University is currently holding a referendum, the results of which will be released on Friday, while Oxford University’s referendum is set for May 31.

Blake Purchase, the Nottingham student whose petition attracted more than 660 signatures to secure the referendum, said that frustrations had been building in the student body before Malia Bouattia became NUS president.

“Her election is indicative of the direction that the NUS has been going in for a long time - a direction of general illiberalism and intolerance that isn’t reflective of students, who are by and large very liberal.”

The undergraduate, who is general secretary of the university’s Conservative Association and whose petition has the support of Nottingham’s Jewish society, said that students had also become “disillusioned” with the issues discussed by their national representatives.

“For too long the NUS has been focusing on things which aren’t relevant to students, like Israel or condemning ISIS.

“Students care about things like tuition fees, and they’ve had enough of the NUS imposing things on them which they shouldn’t be, from motions relating to the use of (messaging app) YikYak to how much alcohol prices should be.

“Those sort of motions don’t actually help students.”

Ms Bouattia attracted criticism after she described Birmingham University - which has one of the largest Jewish societies in the country – as a “Zionist outpost,” and referred to the “Zionist-led media”.

Mr Purchase said he found Ms Bouattia’s comments “extremely peculiar”.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “The conversation is a very strange one to have as the national representative of the NUS, and if she has a specific problem with Israel, why is she not criticising Netanyahu or his policies?

“Why is she instead talking about Zionism, a very broad term which can easily slide into being perceived as antisemitism?”

A minimum of 836 votes must be cast at Nottingham for the referendum to be legitimate.

At Warwick University, more than 10 per cent of students have voted against a motion condemning antisemitism.

The motion, which was passed with 72 per cent of the 1,800 votes cast, called on students to “treat antisemitism with the same severity as any other racist offence” and urgedthe student union to “organise at least one event per year to educate students and remember the Jewish and other victims of the Holocaust”.

The Warwick SU voted last week to remain affiliated with the national body by a large margin, of 63 per cent to 34 per cent.