Imperial students lose the vote
The vast majority of Imperial students will not be able to vote in the upcoming University of London Union elections. In previous years, all Imperial students have been made eligible to vote automatically and were emailed a login and password.
But, this year, only students holding a valid ULU card will be able to carry out their democratic duty as the ULU will not be emailing our students due to a `slip-up'.
As has been the case every year, the Union President, Sameena Misbahuddin, sent ULU a database of all Imperial students. But Samuel Thomas, ULU Vice-President, said that as, "Imperial College itself failed to give permission for ULU to use it and such permission is required by law," Imperial students will not be receiving the email.
However, when Felix contacted College, we were told that, "although the College does not give out data to third parties, we would have been happy for data to be used for this purpose. Imperial is still part of UL and as such the students should be able to vote."
Misbahuddin told Felix she was "incredibly annoyed with ULU - we went to immense efforts to get them all the data. ULU shouldn't be restricting students from voting, they should be trying to get as many as possible voting".
The ULU elections attract a notoriously low turn out; last year only 1,075 students voted out of a total electorate of over 120,000. This year 46,616 are registered to vote, up from 30,000 last year. ULU elections hustings were held in the Union yesterday.
Imperial faculty election nominations have now closed, hustings will be held on Friday lunchtime and voting opens on Monday 13 March.
