No democracy is perfect, and student democracies are especially tangly beasts. I reckon there’s not a single perfect one in the country. There are inevitable boundaries: we’re all busy, we’re all perfectionists, and, on the whole, we’re all not fully satisfied with how this University is run. The SU appears to be on the brink of collapse, and I’m worried. From the outside, it seems like nightmare after hellish nightmare has been unfurling from inside University Centre over the last few weeks.

The SU released a statement on their website on Friday designed to explain how the institution is meant to work. I’m glad they did. It’s important students know that their SU is campaigning for the University’s demilitarisation, and that they do in fact have a defined democratic process, that is fully accessible to the rest of us. That’s not to say it always works; in the statement Sabbatical Officers express an awareness of the complete impossibility of attempting to represent every voice at once. The statement doesn’t shy away from what some students really do want to hear from our SU. They chose their adjectives carefully.

“The statement doesn’t shy away from what some students really do want to hear from our SU. They chose their adjectives carefully”

Cambridge’s SU largely functions on the annually refreshed selection of eight sabbatical officers. Two presidents are accompanied by six officers, each with a specific focus: three advocating for students with protected characteristics; two promoting access and participation; and one working to improve the welfare of our student body. Just four of this year’s cohort remain: two presidents, the BME officer, and one of the access and participation officers.

Vareesh Pratap, the Postgraduate president, and one of the four officers still standing, is currently on hunger strike. He is adducing the SU’s failings, nepotistic tendencies, and a collection of arbitrary appointments. He is calling for vice-chancellor Deborah Prentice to intervene and save a student democracy that he deems to be unfit for purpose. Meanwhile, Welfare Officer Harvey Brown resigned last week, expressing his desire for the University and SU to do more to distance themselves from Israel. His resignation came two weeks after that of Women’s Officer Rosie Freeman.

Something in this system is broken. It’s clearly not working for the sabbs, and the sheer lack of involvement from the student body proves that it also isn’t working for us. The problem is’t difficult to spot: bureaucracy has bungled the SU into a perpetual state of ineffectuality. Students don’t reap the benefits of the SU’s work. A recent stream of vapid, apolitical campaigns have had an inevitably minimal impact on what it’s actually like to study here.

The SU is understaffed. Each officer has resigned for different reasons, some entirely unrelated to the SU’s idiosyncrasies. Still, a 50% resignation rate is not a favourable statistic. One can’t help but wonder if the sheer ineffectuality of the SU makes it a rather uninspiring place to work. Sabbs left, right and centre are either working out their notice; outwardly criticising the institution; long gone; or, I would imagine, paddling frantically under the water in an attempt to keep appearances up. It must be a nightmare, and I don’t envy a single one of them. It’s not their fault. Genuine and engaged student democracy is maybe becoming an impossibility because of a really quite growing trend I’ve noticed: bureaucracy induced ambivalence.

“A recent stream of vapid, apolitical campaigns have had an inevitably minimal impact on what it’s actually like to study here”

Students simply don’t care about the SU. They don’t really know what it does, or what it stands for. They don’t know who is representing them, or how to have their own say. Sabbs are enduring a year that I’d guess is a lot less fun than they thought it would be, and there’s no fruit to show for their labour. Students have become entirely apathetic.

It takes a decent electoral campaign to get young people to the polls for anything at all. We can be a tricky group to mobilise, I suppose. I undoubtedly know more people who didn’t vote in the recent local elections than who did. Distant memories of a Michaelmas term plagued by SU reps wearing cow costumes and giving out free pizzas to tempt some poor hopefuls into standing to be a sabbatical officer for the next year resurface. It seemed like a sorry state of affairs, but we’ve got to stay engaged. Our SU is the main mechanism we have to communicate how we want our University to change. We can’t shy away from the potential we might find in this student democracy, if we all actually participated.

Even those directly interested and involved are beginning to shirk the bureaucratic burden. Two candidates have removed their candidacy campaigns for the role of Welfare & Community Officer in the last month. Elleni Eshente’s manifesto, as she stands for the post, mentions that she has “the negotiation skills to stand up for our welfare and needs”. I’m not surprised. The Student’s Union is a democracy, after all. Negotiation is important. Potential future sabbs know what they’ll be up against; achieving anything seems tricky. Twenty, or even ten years ago Cambridge’s SU was a politically involved, important institution. It’s not anymore. All too often it’s sheer, unbridled bureaucracy in the most troubling of forms.

The SU essentially functions on the same founding principles as my primary school’s school council. Elected figures act as an intermediary between us and the University. We say we want the grass on Sidge replaced with a full size outdoor swimming pool, the SU trots from the kids’ table to the adults’ table (a plethora of University councils) who obviously refuse, and the SU gets sent moping back to tell us that a massive pool under the Raised Faculty Building would damage the ecosystems, or we can’t afford life-guards, or that it might be a drowning risk. Or any matter of more meaningful, hopefully more realistic goals. But this process is riddled with motions, committees, emails, paperwork, and by-elections. Maybe it’s not fit for purpose, or maybe it’s as good as it’s going to get. Either way, we can’t turn our back on student democracies. For all their imperfections, they are one of very few options we have for communicating with the University.

“The reality is that my SU is floundering, and I worry for the future of our student democracy”

The reality is that my SU is floundering, and I worry for the future of our student democracy. I worry that it’s becoming a glorified negotiation table with fewer and fewer people interested in taking a seat. I worry that those at the table are frustrated, overworked, and under-trained. Simultaneously, I worry that all those who aren’t direct participants in the conversation are no longer paying attention to what’s being said.

Any true democracy is only as loud as its quietest member, but Cambridge’s political climate is following a trajectory that is beginning to find pre-existing forms like the SU futile. I think about some of the campaigns that I’ve borne witness to here in Cambridge. Students have laboured to rename the Seeley library, to make term a tad longer so we can have a reading week in the middle, and to have a fully demilitarised University. Much to everyone’s frustration (including, I expect, those on the inside) the SU hasn’t always been able to help us.

I long for an SU that can do more, backed by genuine student engagement, and revered by the University Councils we so desperately want them to provoke on our behalf. I fear I won’t see that SU whilst I’m here, and I even fear that that sort of SU is a thing of the past, and that this trajectory towards disengagement is a death sentence for student democracy in Cambridge. We must stay engaged. We can’t lose faith in democratic process. We absolutely have to keep ambivalence at bay.