The UK’s SouthBest West’s Best Publication Student Publication The Student 2023
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ISSUE 773 8 OCT 2025 exepose.com @exepose
THE UNIVERSITY OF EXETER’S INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SINCE 1987
What makes your degree valuable Page 9
Image: Your Student Union
Uni student finds out you actually have to attend lectures Page 14
‘Time for a union for students, by students’
Kayleigh Swart Editor-in-Chief
I Trump’s second state visit Page 26
Images (top to bottom): Wikimedia commons, Wikimedia commons, Heute,
N the past few weeks, a new Instagram account has popped up, announcing itself as the new Student Union for the University of Exeter. To those who have not come across this account yet, this all might be a little confusing. Is the Guild not the UOE’s version of a student union? And if not, who is this new student union that seems to have stepped into the spotlight? On this Instagram account (yourstudentunion_uoe), Your Student Union have posted an introductory statement, explaining who they are. We also spoke directly to Your Student Union, to get a better understanding of why they’ve formed and what their goals are moving forward into the academic year. All students should be familiar with the student Guild, who are, by definition, supposed to act as repre-
sentatives for the student body. The Guild’s function is to act as a student union; Exeposé has previously reported that that use of the word ‘Guild’ instead of union is due to its roots in craft groups who would join together for the purposes of protection from government regulation. However, Your Student Union have criticised this, saying on their Instagram that “The Guild insists they are our student union, but isn’t brave enough to even bear the name”. The Guild is currently run by a board of trustees, many of whom are voted in by the student body at the end of each academic year. Your Student Union have stated that it was ‘time for a union for students, by students’. We asked Your Student Union why they think their group was important and what the Guild is not currently achieving. They replied: “The Guild is sorely failing in its role as a democratic mechanism to lobby the university on behalf of its students. A ‘union’ is an activist organisation first and foremost, but the
Guild has lost this powerful identity. We’re not trying to replace the whole institution of the Guild, but are filling the void left by their inability to effectively campaign for social justice”. Recently the group held an alternative fresher’s fair, with the Intersectional Coalition of Societies. Throughout this fair they spoke about how this movement was built from the way the Guild handled the Islamophobic comments made at a Freedom society event. They highlighted how encouraging it was to see so many people come together to try and make change. In their statement they wrote: “When the Guild failed to call out and take meaningful action to prevent Freedom Society’s abhorrent racism, a bunch of students came together to shut down one of their pub events. At the same time, a network of networks bloomed as the Intersectional Society Coalition got over 70 societies involved in an Instagram campaign and signed onto an open letter to the Guild in just three days”. Another key point they mentio-
ned was the response the university and Guild had to the pro-Palestine encampments on campus last year. Exeposé previously reported that the university had changed their guidelines to protesting on campus. The speakers at the alternative fresher’s fair claimed that the university told them that the student Guild had been fully informed about these changes, while the Guild told them they had no idea about them. In a direct statement to us, Your Student Union commented: “Exeposé just published an article about the University signing up to an ‘anti-protest coaching webinar’. Where is the Guild? Where is the uproar? Our protest rights are being stripped, and our so-called union is too busy handing out free tote bags to intervene. We need a student’s union that boldly confronts injustice - it’s clear that the Guild aren’t brave enough to be that union, so we’ll have to do it ourselves”. Continued on 3