Every single student studying at Cardiff University is a member of Cardiff University Students’ Union. As a students’ union, CUSU represents all students irrespective of an individual’s sexual orientation.
The Students’ Union should be a tolerant place which all students can visit without fear of discrimination. However, the recent allegations made by a gay student from Southampton Solent do not support this ideal.
The quick response to the incident, reveals the hard line that the Students’ Union are taking in response to the allegation.
Although no similar incidents of the sort have been reported to the Students’ Union previously, the comment from newly elected Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) officer Sally Woods that some gay students feel ‘uncomfortable’ in Solus is quite revealing.
With a part-time officer elected to represent the concerns of LGBT students, here’s hoping that steps can be taken towards making the Students’ Union a more tolerant place.
gair rhydd will update you with the result of the Students’ Union’s investigation into this issue when the details are released.
1. Mark
Firstly not every single student at Cardiff University is a member of Cardiff University Student Union, you should be aware that students have the legal choice to not become a member of the Union when becoming a student at its associated institution.
Secondly I think we should keep this in perspective, this isn’t really a case of major anti-homosexual discrimination. It was just a bouncer asking two blokes to stop smooching on the dance floor because it was making some people feel uncomfortable. Considering the mass of different people that come to University, inevitably including some who for cultural, religious or personal issues find the idea of homosexuality repugnant, then it’s hardly surprising that a few people didn’t take too kindly to the view. You will obviously respond by saying that the Union is ideally 100% tolerate but that is just an ideal, as long as the Union is visited by so many students with so widely different cultural, religious, moral and political backgrounds then you’re not going to get everyone to agree on every issue and it would naive to suggest that you could.
So it becomes a case of give and take, I’d like to hope that even the duller students among us have enough common sense to realise that not everything they do or say is going to please everyone. So if you’re a gay guy and want to spend the night eating your partners face in the middle of a dance floor then why not go to a gay club or if you really want to be at Solus then be discrete.
Anyway why anyone would want to go to the Union is beyond me, it’s not that cheap, the drinks are limited in choice and taste like partially fermented rat urine, the place stinks, the toilets are usually filled with a combination of vomit and urine by midnight, the bouncers resemble and act like strategically shaven gorillas and the place has more half naked sweaty drunks than a German orgy.
2. chris white
Mark, just because it might have made people feel uncomfortable isn’t any reason at all to make them stop. It’s the person-who-feels-uncomfortable’s problem. It’s like people finding things “offensive”: tough shit.
That first sentence is a massively schoolboy error though. Unless they’ve checked that nobody opted-out, of course.
3. Mark
I’m not so sure, the Union tries to respect everyone’s beliefs but how can it reconcile gay guys who like public shows of affection with the students who think gay guys will burn in the eternal fires of hell or that even homosexuality should be a criminal offence?
Anyway legally the Union can’t discriminate against homosexuals anymore than it can against anyone on race or religious grounds, but it can act against the individual if they were undertaking an action that the Union felt was unacceptable. Not that I care, I don’t go to the Union for the reasons I mentioned above and even if I did a couple of blokes snogging isn’t going to bother me, but it is immensely amusing to see the Union bite itself in its own ass.
4. chris white
The people who believe that gay guys will burn in the eternal fires of hell aren’t all that likely to be a nightclub though.
(They’re more likely to be hanging around Queen Street in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings, asking passers-by if they want an IQ test before furnishing them with Christian literature. One of the aforementioned, incidentally, once told my flatmate and I that he’d like to kills us, which we considered somewhat un-Christian of him.)
I’m not sure the Union does try to respect everyone’s beliefs. It continues with that ludicrous No Platform policy, after all.