Max Barber: Reintroducing a student union for deaf students – fill in the questionnaire!

Complete the questionnaire by clicking here!

Some of you may or may not have heard of a group with the name, ‘UKDSU’.  UKDSU stands for United Kingdom Deaf Students’ Union – basically a union to represent deaf students across the UK.  

UKDSU was initially founded in 2012 by Thomas McWhinney.  As a representative group, UKDSU is simply a group of members elected by students focusing on current issues and working with policy-makers within universities, the government, and the National Union of Students (NUS).  

This is a way for all the deaf students in the UK to have their views represented in one place, so complaints and issues are not just dealt with on a case-by-case basis; instead issues are addressed within the policies, to ensure that recurring issues do not happen again for deaf students in the future.  

UKDSU is not just for deaf undergraduates, but also for deaf post-graduates (Master’s degree, PhD, MPhil, the whole lot!).  UKDSU aims to be a representative voice for all deaf students throughout the UK, and that includes Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

You might be thinking, “Well, it’s 2019 and I haven’t seen anything from UKDSU?”  This is mainly due to limited funds, which means it is difficult to set up an event like a General Assembly, or hold a sustainable board model where the members can be reimbursed for the costs of their participation (travel costs, for example).  

It can also be difficult for deaf students to commit to a certain amount of work, as they are having to fight their own battles, such as sorting out interpreters for courses, issues with DSA, and so on, and also to navigate the world by themselves.  

This unfortunately meant that the momentum for UKDSU moving forward wasn’t quite enough at the time. We now find ourselves in the position of needing to improve our relationship with policy-makers, and deaf students themselves.

As of now, UKDSU currently consists of two members – Max Barber (me!) as the Chairperson, and Ixone Saenz, who is currently a postgraduate student, as a Board Member.  

We are currently working on a ‘need-for-evidence’ basis.  This means we are focused on gathering evidence that UKDSU is what is needed by deaf students. We need to show that deaf students really do have recurring issues across the UK, and would benefit from a union like UKDSU, who can advocate collectively on their behalf.

Based on anecdotal (word of mouth) evidence, UKDSU would certainly be beneficial in having an impact on the system in place for deaf students – but we need actual evidence.  

We need concrete evidence such as numbers – how many students reports having ‘X’ issue, how many are actually satisfied with the service they receive from their university, and so on.  

The concept of ‘critical mass’ applies here – this basically means to gather enough people to get the people in power to notice us.  If we go to them with a mountain of evidence that deaf students are having issues with their education, and the current policies are not good enough, they are then ‘forced’ to deal with this.

As the chair of UKDSU, I am leading with the idea that deaf students are always the driving force of UKDSU (rather than UKDSU being a group of non-students making vital decisions for deaf students’ rights).  

We are releasing a questionnaire that will allow us to start documenting the issues faced by deaf students across the UK.  If you are a deaf student, or were one in the past year, please consider completing this questionnaire.

Complete the questionnaire by clicking here!

Like the Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/UKDSU-United-Kingdom-Deaf-Student-Union-1053509844671807/

Max Barber is the Chair of the UK Deaf Students Union.