It’s hard to make a point without having evidence. Especially when the evidence lies back in time and cannot be brought back. I might be “old” and bitter, but things worked better before – at least when talking about the student Nations in Umeå.
A brief introduction: The Nations is groups of people that makes events like parties etc. They have their own crowd of members that may attend to all events that the Nations provide. The House of Nations (Nationernas Hus in swedish or shorter NH) is a pub where we usually end up after these events. The Nations used to run this pub, but things have changed. Now some other group of people that does not want to join the Nations works there.
One can wonder why the pub is called Nationernas Hus, because it isn’t any more.
Now to the point. The Nations consists of several groups. The group that is highest in the hierarchy is NF, or Nationernas Förbund. Below in the hierarchy are the Nations and the leading group of NH.
This is where the interesting part is. Before, when the Nations ran NH, there were “utskott” or committees in the Nations that had the special mission to work at the House maybe once a month. It worked well, we could spam our Nation members if we needed more workers and the workers could easily speak with the Nations if they needed some team building event or money for something else. The best thing was that these worker teams denoted themselves as Nations and that brought everyone together because we all spoke about and believed in the same thing. Sort of. This is how the structure looked. N1, N2 and N3 are three arbitrary Nations and B1, B2 and B3 are tree arbitrary bar groups (groups of people that run NH for a night now and then).
Below is a graph showing how the structure looks now. As you can conclude yourself, the communication between the bar groups and the Nations is suffering. There is no line (edge) between them anymore.
A mathematician would simply say that this is an unbalanced graph, and that some algorithms will run badly on it. This can be compared to real-world events. For example, if the bar groups wants to make an event like a sittning or something, and needs money, the communication line goes from bar groups to NH to NF (two steps). Before, the money was already in the Nations. The bar groups had through the Nations their own economy and also an own financial accountant to speak with.
Public relations will also run slower with the latter structure. We can not say that we are making PR as one group anymore, so we have to do twice as much work for the same thing. Either NH or the Nations.
These are my thoughts for now. I have to study now but I might update this post later, check for updates. And please let me know if my grammar is wrong – my english is not the best.
You could say that NH and the nations are working against eachother rather than together these days. But still, haven’t the bond between the different Nations gotten stronger?
But also, I think that it got this way because the nations aren’t attractive enough. Board members lack willpower. Board members are afraid of reaching out to new people. New members get excluded by the nations internal jokes and conversations. The nations feel like a very internal group of people. NH became it’s own group when the nations couldn’t get people to tend bar any more, wich IS The nations own fault.
You might say that the nations are groups “for everyone” and that everyone fits in. But that isn’t really true, The Nations are groups where only the ones who doesn’t usually fit in… fit in. In general.
Maybe that’s the charm? Or maybe it’s just narrow… But if you want the old heriearchy back you will never achieve it by complaining. I am not saying You are. But I know we did a lot.
If you want the bar groups below the nations again, show them that you can get personnel. Make the nations attractive. Why aren’t the current bar group members in any nation? I wouldn’t blame THEM. It’s because you haven’t attracted them.
Does every nation have a member in the NH board? Does any nation? If not: Then OF COURSE The House Of Nations isn’t the nations house.
/Brut
You’ve got some interesting points there.
You say we are working against eachother, I agree on that. I don’t know if the bond between Nations are stronger, maybe it is so. But we are people working under the same roof, why should we divide? We could with my suggested structure grow stronger bonds between all groups. At least, that is what I believe.
I don’t care who’s fault it is. The Nations might have failed on being attractive. Or maybe NH forgot that we are all part of the Nations (hence the name of the house). Personally, I think both of these reasons made us what we are today, but lack in communication started it all.
We fell into another structure that people seem comfortable with. But this structure will kill us both. If it continues like this, I think that the Nations will become extinct. Either that, or we will separate totally. And what happens if we separate totally? Well, we cannot call ourselves NH anymore. My theory is that Umeå Studentkår eventually takes over and then we are in exactly the same position as the Nations in Linköping. What are we but a Kårhus if we have no Nations and only let Kårmedlemmar in?
I don’t want to struggle with getting personnel to NH. I’m just suggesting a structure. And as I said, I’m “old” and bitter. Call it complaining if you want. However, I will still thing that things worked better before.
The Nations does not have anything to do on the NH board meetings. The goal for NH is to run the house economy, buy supplies for the house and make things work. At least in the old model.
/Stefan
Super ecxetid to see more of this kind of stuff online.
Shoot, so that’s that one sppuseos.