WHERE NEXT?
I will be sharing my direction for our NUS Graduate Students' Society starting with the incoming 35th EXCO and beyond. If it speaks to you, join me and let us make it a reality together.
context
2020 has not been easy for anyone, and 2021 and beyond is set to be especially challenging as our communities attempt to recover amid the urgencies of these multiple interlocking crises ahead of us.
We graduate students come from a whole range of lived realities that expose each of us to the combined effects of these crises.
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Our NUS GSS has to act with us and bring our diverse communities together to collectively care for one another and work together towards a recovery that will leave the necessary foundation moving forward and leave no student behind.
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In other words:
we’ll cari on.
vision
Our NUS GSS
shall endeavour towards a
Co-created,
Accessible,
Representative, and
Intersectional
approach to ensuring
Opportunities and
Necessities for all.
mission
Towards this end,
we shall work to advance
Ground-up,
Sustainable
Solidarity
with fellow grad students
in all that we do.
what this means
A vision and mission's got to mean something beyond merely being another assortment of buzzwords! Here's how I unpack specifically what the key ideas in my direction entail.
Co-created - direct participation in decisions that affect us
Accessible – proactive elimination of barriers to equal access
Representative - representation by each, not just majority
Intersectional - accounting for disparities in lived realities
Opportunities – expanding possible options within our reach
Necessities – making preconditions for decent living available
Ground-up – bottom-up collective action by our communities
Sustainable – with a view towards long-term continuation
Solidarity – mutual support for each other’s well-being
In other words:
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Our NUS Graduate Students' Society shall proactively work towards expanding the range of possible options within our students' reach and making preconditions for decent living available for every student. This is the crux of what it means to safeguard the interests of students.
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In the process of working towards this goal, we shall make it a priority to engage students to directly participate in and represent themselves in the making of decisions that affect us, in a manner that proactively eliminates barriers to equal access faced by any student.
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As we engage our communities, as well as University administrators, on policies, we must account for how our lived realities will differ based on our experiences and situations, rather than only accounting for a majority experience that will definitely not be shared by all of us.
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In all that we do, we shall explore how we can most effectively support bottom-up collective action by our communities working together to act on the issues affecting us and offer mutual support for each other’s well-being, with a view towards long-term continuation.
What does it mean to “cari on”?
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Some of you may recognize the reference from the chorus of the song Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance:
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“We’ll carry on, we’ll carry on,
and though you’re dead and gone,
believe me, your memory will carry on”
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Perhaps we’re not “dead and gone” on the outside yet – but let’s keep in mind how John Maynard Keynes warned that if we rely on our problems solving themselves automatically in the long run rather than acting now, by then we may indeed be “dead and gone”:
“This long run is a misleading guide to current affairs.
In the long run we are all dead.”
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So here’s the thing: in a multiple crisis of extraordinary proportions like we’re facing today, we may well be dead in the short run if we don’t act together now.
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As a community organizer, I know that it takes our NUS GSS proactively bringing together our many different communities into a broader coalition for us to be able to act decisively in solidarity.
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