On NUS Extra ...
I spent most of Monday in a car with Sam and Steve on our way to and from Carmarthen. We went to an information day kind of thing about these new NUS Extra cards.
For those who haven't been following NUS Extra, here's what it is. Basically, at the moment NUS cards are free and entitle holders to discounts in big chain shops like HMV and Topshop. But NUS has lots of debt, so they're trying to find a way to squeeze more money out of students. As a result, they've come up with this NUS Extra card. The card costs £10, and is the new discount card. The old card is now just a 'democracy' card (i.e. you need it to vote).
In theory, nobody who doesn't have an NUS Extra card can have discounts anymore. In practice, people will probably continue to give discounts to students with normal NUS cards.
Now, this NUS Extra card also contains all the benefits of the current ISIC card (especially useful for cheap travel) which costs .. oh I can't quite remember, it's either £8 or £9. So that's a good start on the value-for-money road, because now all the extra goodies the NUS Extra card theoretically provides only really cost £1 or £2.
But this is where the NUS Extra card falls short. When the card was being sold to us as a concept, it was claimed that the card would have a whole load more discounts than are currently available. NUS was even trying to negotiate a discount with Tesco, which really would have been worthwhile. But none of these major discounts have materialised. In fact, it doesn't seem much different to the normal NUS cards at all.
Now, of the £10 students pay for the card, £6 goes to NUS and £4 goes to the student's own Students' Union. So if we sold 5,000 next year we'd get a nice little £20,000 extra income. Nice little earner.
But do we want to sell these cards? We need to either do it whole-heartedly or not at all, because the sale of the cards will take an awful lot of resources. There are three ways to sell the cards:
1) fill in the cards and application forms by hand. I don't like this idea because it means having loads of people sitting there filling in forms and it means the students don't get a particularly nice card; cards ordered on the Internet are MUCH nicer.
2) order the cards online through the SU. This would mean having lots of PCs set up somewhere on registration day so people could just sit down and fill in the form themselves, but since it's through our server (or maybe the Uni's) NUS knows for certain that they are members of our SU. Also, this allows us to override the payment thingy so people can pay by cash.
3) order the cards individually in your own time. This is quite nice and convenient because it doesn't require any Union staff (except when people come to collect their cards) but in all probability not many people will get around to doing it this way.
Now the really irritating thing is that the website used in options 2 and 3 doesn't have a Welsh version. English-only. I find that incredibly annoying. Sure, Gerallt can approve it anyway, but I think it's completely the wrong message to give Welsh-speakers as soon as they arrive in Bangor. How hard can it be for NUS to translate the site into Welsh?
So I don't know what to do. The money generated from the sale of NUS Extra cards could go into things like giving Canoe Polo the money they need, or paying for the increased cost of printing Seren fortnightly, or something. But there's a really large amount of paperwork to be done, we'd have to invest quite a lot of resources into making it look like an attractive offer and into actually selling the card, AND you can't get the snazzy online-only card if you want to order it in Welsh. Thoughts?
15 comments:
We won't sell 5,000.
I quite fancy not selling them at all.
I feel an Emergency Council Meeting being called.
Sam will tell you I was sceptical of the NUS extra card and was only tempted into them when I heard that Tesco's might be involved.
As it is, you've said that not many of the big names have signed up, and those that have are probably not on the Bangor High street anyway.
Anyway, the more council meetings the better.
Not that we'd get the minimum number of councillors needed ...
The money would be good - but there must be better ways to make this cash? The only major interest group in them must surely be the international students who would be interested in the ISIC. But I don't think we have 5000 students who would want it for this purpose.
I think it would be great to see this discussed by students, instead of student reps. I like the idea of council. We must be able to try and get minimum councillors - snag reps now, we've got 7 indies already, so 13 depts and these 7 and we're there. Thats ignoring groups like storm, and seren, who already have elected....
we could do this, no prob
ISIC is pretty pointless. Certainly on the continent most discounts are by age not by student status and student translates really well so your home uni card was often good enough, of course those on uni placements have the local student card anyway, problem solved. That pretty much negates the ISIC argument in my book.
The discounts seem pretty pointless too, I guess it just depends on whether you'd forsee yourself using them and getting your money's worth. I generally disagree with the principle though. It's also bad that they're not doing it in Welsh. NUS usually seem pretty good.
We've not handed over so I'm still a councillor and up for an ECM. It's worth a go, worst case scenaro - you tried. Can't say fairer than that.
How do we call an ECM? Sam, you do it. I'm not going to be back in Bangor til the 1st and (as one of the three people who attended this event) I'd like to take part if possible.
Could we invite any interested parties to come along to give their opinion despite not being able to vote? It's really hard to make a decision on this without the opinion of the general populace. I don't want to inconvenience anyone who really does want an NUS Extra card, but I don't want to waste Union resources if nobody wants it.
I'd provide the option otherwise really it begs the question why NUS at all? yet again.
NUS need to get their arses into gear on the extra discounts, its a total insult to assume that people will want to pay £10 for a card that offers nothing more in terms of discount. The chances are, as you say, most places will accept the normal ones anyway!
Perhaps just promote the cards and their "benefits" You wont get much, but then, as Sam says, I doubt you'd get that much anyway.
I apologise if my thoughts are a bit scattered, my brain is fried!
Well people can still use Option 3 to sign up if they want to. We could put up the promotional material and assist/answer queries if needed, without pushing the sale of them or providing extra staff/facilities to sell them. And if it looks like we're disadvantaging Bangor students, sure we can have a big selling-NUS-Extra-cards week later in the year.
I never needed an ISIC card on the continent last year.
but the extra income from them would be rather handy!
odd it isn't a bilingual site, as someone said, NUS are usually rather good at that.
ECM would be fun!! pourquoi pas?
I don't like that argument at all - we can't sell out on our students because we think a little extra money would come in handy!
I believe a GM needs a majority at cancel or a referendum so I'd guess council could be referendum or a majority at exec maybe. I recycled most of my union related stuff last weekend but Sam must have a constitution somewhere.
Go on...do it
There are no EGMs any more, because a GM can only ratify.
An ECM needs 2/3 of Exec or Council to agree to it, or a petition of 250 members.
I was going to try and keep it quiet for a few days, but I'm going to call one for the afternoon of the 2nd June and hopefully 2/3 of councillors will say yes.
so glad i handed steering over a few days ago. the new steering committee can decide if its all constitutional and can do all the work for it.
i would go with the option of the union not really pushing it, but letting students know that they can buy on online if they want to.
Then wait till next year when all the big shops are on it. not that we have any of thoose in Bangor, and the fact that most shops will give you student discount if you look like a student! (ie are wearing a hoodie)
I dont think there is any point in getting excited about the money.
where will this card actually be useful? are any of these places in Bangor, let alone N. Wales?
on the ISIC front, i completely agree, I haven't needed it over here at all! The lovely crappy 'cardboard' student card works fine, despite its unavoidable deshevelled (spelling?) look!!
it really is daft on Tesco's i think, they could have done very well out of it i think! ah well
trying to distribute them in freshers week would be awkward, as it is such a busy time anyway! some people's heads may just explode if you added marketing/floggin these too! and that would just be messy!
did i get it right that even the cards aren't bilingual? what about publicity material? all english??
10% off at Topshop, 25% off at Specsavers is all that you can get in Bangor.
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