A student called Jeremy raised the issue that currently University of Manchester Students' Union media (including the Mancunion, Fuse FM, Fuse TV and the Riveter) are open to being mandated by the Union's decision making structures as they are centrally funded or they are funded by the Students' Union Campaigns budget. He feels that this leaves them wide open to a range of issues, including the possibility of stifling the voice of  liberation campaigns, to enforcing the use of large amounts of limited space in the student newspaper for campaigns.

Jeremy feels that it should be impossible for Council, Executive, General Meetings, or any other democratic decision making structure to mandate on the content of centrally funded union media, and re-introduce freedom of the press.  While the Union page can be filled with whatever it's sub-editor and the paper editor agree on, this does not amount to mandating content, as these individuals are accountable to the students.

Please sign below if you support Jeremy's idea and you feel the Students' Union should be working on his idea.

*UMSU Bright Ideas has been created as part of the ‘Students in Charge of the Union’policy to try to enable more students to be able to create change and development within the Students’ Union.

Ideas can either be practical suggestions that may have a positive impact on operational factors or some may have an implication for policy or require a certain amount of resource. Any ideas that affect policy or have a substantial resource implication need to be decided by a General Meeting and as such these ideas will be treated in the same way that motions have been previously been treated. This means that these ideas will need to gain the support of at least 30 students to be put forward for the General meeting. To enable this to happen the Students’ Union has created online petitions that enable students to show their support and gain the required 30 students in support of the idea.

If more than six ideas gain the support of over 30 students by the end of Thursday (6th October) then a priority ballot will be held in the Students' Union this Friday to decide which six ideas will make it for discussion at the meeting. If your Idea is chosen as one of the final six then we will ask you to come along to the Bright Ideas Have your Say meeting and put your idea forward. If you feel uncomfortable about this we can contact all students that have completed the petition to ask if any of them would like to present the idea.

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