Owain Phillips' QUBSU Presidential Manifesto

This election is an opportunity for students to voice their dissatisfaction with management's exploitative treatment of both students and staff. By voting for Owain as president, you wont be voting one person into the Student's Union leadership. You will be placing a voice for yourself at the highest position within your students union, someone who will represent your views and fight tooth and nail to get your demands met. For too long management has run Queen's as a money-making venture, an insitution of financial extraction from all those who are "privaleged" enough to attend it. We need a militant Student's Union, ready to bring the fight to management's door and demand firm changes.

If elected, we will:

• Demand a 30% refund of tuition fees for all time spend distance learning due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Why should students pay the same rate for a vastly inferior product? We demand a refund of tuition fees at the rate recommended by London Economics. This proposal is fully costed, and fully affordable, considering Queen's recent boasting about a £25 million surplus in their budget last year alone.

• Demand a return to the rate of rent charged to those living in student accomodation in September 2021. Management will be introducing a rent hike 3% higher than the rate of inflation for all those living in student accomodation, despite themselves admitting to running a huge budget surplus. There is only one word to describe this rise, greed.

• Demand full representation for the Irish language on campus. All signage and services should be accessible in both English and Irish. This is a demand that has been put to management time and time again by the Irish speaking community at Queen's, and every time it has been met with derision and ridicule, with management going as far to descrive the Irish language as "offensive and intimidatory". This is a racist attitude to hold and it is shameful that it exists anywhere in society, let alone amongst the management of one of the premier higher education institutions on this island. As president of QUBSU, we will fully bilingualise services offered by the Student's Union, and we will demand Queen's do the same.

If you agree that these policies are the bare minimum that Queen's students deserve, if you agree that we need a militant, fighting union to take our demands to management, if you want to see your representatives fight and win for the changes you need, Vote Owain #1 for SU President.