Is the clock ticking for sabbatical officer roles as we know them?

It’s time for students’ unions to take a radical look in the mirror

You cannot be serious?

Here’s an unpopular opinion - I don’t think having a sabbatical officer structure is the best approach for every single HE SU in the UK, or maybe even most of them. I know, I know, urgh, how awful! What a terrible and unthinkable thing to say. It’s almost taboo or heresy; at least that’s how it feels. I set up my consultancy, Alkhemy, to respectfully challenge the status quo and try to bring some polite disruption to encourage innovation and creativity in the student movement. I think I’m taking somewhat of a risk by writing this article but I do hope you will please bear with me as I try to explain myself.?

Whenever I take a Belbin? test I often am revealed as a “plant”, someone that is creative and easily distracted by shiny new ideas. So, when I see SUs reviewing their democratic structures and they go straight to copying off other SU structures it annoys me a little. It annoys me because there’s very little creativity but they also blindly assume that we have to have sabbatical officers and quite simply, I do not think we do. Where is the creativity and innovation at the core of what SUs are about? I’ve often wondered what the student movement would look like if some SUs decided to go wild and not have full time officers - what could this kind of fundamental change achieve for students in HE? Could we refocus resources on grassroots organising as a core theory of change rather than an added bonus? Could we pay liberation and part-time officers for their physical and emotional labour? Imagine the possibilities - could we fund something entirely different that we have yet to think up? Could we invest in quality listening, research and insight resources (not just surveys!). I talk a lot about the need for democracy revolutions within SUs because, let’s face it, for a heck of a lot of SUs, democratic representation is not resulting in quality student participation and engagement. This is not all SUs, quite a few have seen an increase in engagement and participation, but it seems participation is down for the most part.

Last summer I was conducting a democracy review for a SU and I remember meeting with the incoming President, and it was here where we discussed some of the pitfalls with the typical sabbatical officer structures. They were very candid, as was I and by the end of the meeting I was convinced that this SU should not have sabbatical officers - that, given the resources of the SU and the make-up of their members - a different model could work better. This led to a great debate with the officers, students, and staff about the utility of sabbs and at one point a “sabb-less” structure was on the table. Alas, it did not happen - it just wasn’t the right time to be so revolutionary. But, I haven’t been able to get the idea out of my head since.

A little about me

For over 10 years, I worked in four very different SUs. This was as a two-year sabbatical officer, coordinator, middle manager and senior manager. I’ve not had the perfect career; I’ve made mistakes and let people down, but I’ve also got a track record of achieving high participation from students. I now run a consultancy where a significant portion of my work and earnings come from the student movement. I get it, I speak “SU” and I know, as organisations, SUs are supposed to be student-led, democratic and representative. But, I guess what I’m saying is that the reality of the sabbatical officer paradigm does not necessarily result in SUs being student-led, democratic and representative. For many SUs this is now a distant aspiration as opposed to the bread and butter of what they do, and it’s difficult to see a way back. Are we too "sabb-focussed' as opposed to student focussed?

“Honestly, some of my best friends were sabbs…”

Here’s what I’m not saying - I’m not saying all Unions should scrap sabbs (a “scrapabbitcal”, if you’d allow me a clumsy portmanteau). If it’s not broken then please don’t try to fix it, if you can say hand on heart that the sabb structure is working for you then congrats and keep going, please consider Alkhemy for your officer induction training needs. But if you’re curious about this idea then read on.?

I have worked with some amazing sabbatical officers in my time; very committed, highly skilled, incredibly capable, with an infectious energy to bring about positive change for students. However, for every amazing sabb there are more that are not getting the support they need to exceed, that develop bad habits early on in their term and that are then written off by their staff. There are also full time officers out there that are working incredibly long hours, who are not supported well enough to take that time back and are genuinely experiencing burnout. This is not said or recognised enough. Instead we normalise this, we talk about the “different hats of an officer” at inductions and can sometimes shy away from talking about the very real risk of burnout when trying to juggle these multifaceted roles.

The Emperor's new clothes

There are some full time officers that aren’t given any real constructive criticism. I hear staff say, “it’s not my job to challenge officers”. How can an organisation survive if the people leading it are not constructively challenged? It doesn’t matter how senior you are on an organisational chart - nobody is infallible, every single leader in any organisation will benefit from radically honest constructive feedback, particularly those that, in the main, are lacking in full time work experience. The challenging thing is building a culture that respects their role as political leaders but encourages useful and creative conflict to balance their lived experience with the expertise and knowledge of staff. We also see SUs that are led predominantly by staff, particularly senior staff - with the enthusiasm drained from officers and reps alike with “we tried that x many years ago and it didn’t work - so no”.? Too many organisations representing students fail to achieve the right balance, and in their inertia in dealing with the problem are willfully blind to the fact, it’s… not… working.

Sabbatical officers and wellbeing

I was lucky enough to work as a senior manager for Student Minds, the UK’s student mental health charity, before becoming a full time consultant. During that time I was very fortunate to be given a platform to lead on creating the SU programme that the charity currently runs. As a part of that I co-wrote the charity’s assessment framework for what makes a “Mentally Healthy SU”. This gave me a great insight into just how SU democracy and wellbeing interrelate.

A survey, the results of which are not widely promoted, of the 2017-2018 cohort of sabbatical officers in the UK student movement (L Dickens, Full Time Officer Support Survey, August 2018) found that work/life balance (or the lack of it) was a large problem. 147 respondents were asked a number of questions about their wellbeing and in response to being asked how they would rate their work/life balance 50% responded with either “poor” or “very poor” with only 30% indicating “good” or “very good”. This response is very alarming, in the years since this survey there has been the coronavirus pandemic and also the launch of a number of support programmes for sabbatical officers, therefore it would be interesting to find out how this may have changed in the last few years, I will also wait to see the results of the NUS officer wellbeing survey that has been promoted recently.

Anecdotally, myself and a number of colleagues have reported seeing an increase in the number of sabbatical officers leaving their roles early for reasons related to the impact that roles have on their wellbeing. To demonstrate, here is an example from an officer exiting their role and posting about their experience on Facebook (TW: alcohol abuse):

“At times, it was impossible to clock-off, so for a period of 3 months the only way I could fall asleep was to knock myself out with alcohol. I have collectively overworked enough hours to cover 2 full months…” - Outgoing Sabbatical Officer 2020/2021

This is quite alarming and deeply upsetting. This SU is one that has a large block grant, 50+ full time staff and yet, even with a lot of organisational infrastructure and resource; we still see this occurring. This former sabb is not alone, far from it.

Officers and representatives are also having to deal with mental health disclosures at all hours of the day and night. Many of them are not trained or developed on how to handle such a situation, not only is this unsafe for the person seeking help it’s also a risk factor for officers’ wellbeing. There is also the abuse that officers are having to deal with, particularly online. Who can forget the great work carried out by 25 Dots and Glitch looking at officers and online abuse (September 2021), where 88% had experienced abuse as an officer and almost 3 in 4 experienced it at least on a monthly basis.

Political context and taking an honest, inward look

We do know that there is ever-increasing energy from the Government to intervene and review the role of students’ unions - the latest developments examine free speech on campus and the governmental response to covid 19 in 2020 proposed the need to ensure that SUs are not funding “...student activism and sabbaticals” as well as not “subsidising niche activism or campaigns”.

Generally, the response of the student movement is to be very defensive and trott out #LoveSUs all across social media platforms (a hashtag I too generally love to use), rather than to engage in meaningful debate. It is no secret that the political philosophy of those individuals of influence in the student movement is somewhat different to those in Government and so naturally when accusations are made many in the movement become defensive, very tribal and sometimes bordering on toxic.?

But what if the movement listened and tried to look at it from the point of view of an unengaged student? I’ve seen turnouts ranging from 5% to 20% from those SUs that are brave enough to publicly announce total voter turnout this year. So, let’s imagine that you have a number of uncontested elections, for some sabb roles and part-time/rep roles. If turnout is 15%, the successful candidates are then inducted in the summer and they go about trying to achieve their manifesto points. So, we’re saying that sabbs have a mandate based on 15% turnout? If the sabbs are then inducted during summer and just go about achieving those manifesto points without engaging the views of a diverse and substantial number of students then how is that not, by definition, “niché activism”? Pluck a random student from campus and ask them what campaigns the SU has run this year? Could they name 1 or 2??

Whether you agree or disagree with those “niche activism” accusations or what your political beliefs may be there is a very real possibility that the future of SUs could be dramatically altered by Government intervention so any effort made to make SUs more representative of their student body could help us lean into and lead the change in the sector. Is taking a revolutionary look at the core democratic structures a way to lean in?

Old school

Sabbatical officers are a long standing tradition and institution of the student movement. Ironically, how often do we see students’ unions challenging tradition and structural inequity of other institutions? The concept of sabbatical officers is a throwback to before SUs were required to register as (or even considered) charities and prior to the 1997 Labour Government began a dramatic expansion of HE with a very deliberate focus on widening participation. The result of this? Student numbers almost doubled between 1992 and 2016 and continue to rise (ONS and UUK data). This has resulted in a very diverse student population in HE, so the question is whether the concept of sabbatical officers, which has only seen small changes and adjustments through the same time period, is still an effective model for students’ unions??

Errr Ollie, isn’t it a legal requirement?

Great question - answers on a postcard. Let’s dust off my non-qualifying Law degree and have a bash. Part II of the Education Act does make mention to “major union offices” as well as “sabbatical union office, or paid elected union office”. It also says that sabbatical officers will only serve a maximum of 2 years. It’s also the responsibility of the institution’s governing body to ensure effective governance. But it is not stipulated as a legal requirement, as far as I can ascertain. The law assumes sabbatical officers will exist, kind of like the rest of us. It could be considered a legal requirement if it is mentioned in the SUs governing documents - but they can be changed, can’t they?

Conclusions

Obviously this is an idea that’s a bit “out there”, but take some time to think about it. Sure, we have many different kinds of interventions such as quality officer induction and ongoing development, support programmes for officers offering external mentoring or coaching, training on managing disclosures and signposting - but in some SUs are these trying to plug an unmanageable leak? Is it now time for SUs to take a radical and transformative look at their core structures and try to bring in creative and innovative processes to engage and represent students? Is it really so outlandish to suggest that some SUs in HE may benefit from a different model?