Politics as process: Salford’s charter of student rights

This chapter analyses the development of a Student Charter in the context of the changing relationship between a Students’ Union and a university administration. We identify a core tension between, on the one hand, the accountability of Students’ Unions in Britain to the governing bodies of their universities and, on the other, their political accountability to their student electorates. The University of Salford’s first Student Charter was launched in February 2012. By looking closely at the process of developing the Charter, and interviewing student leaders and university administrators who were involved, we show how the tension between working in partnership – the concept of a “covenant” – rubs up against the dynamics of student politics. We see this as the differencebetween “outcomes” and “process”, and as politics as normal. We also show how local, intra-institutional issues interact with national policy positions and political campaigns; how a general trend in student engagement manifested within the specific context of a single institution. In this sense, “all politics is local”.