A University leader was challenged and heckled by students frustrated by issues impacting their student experiences.
At the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Aberdeen University Students’ Association (AUSA), guest Professor Jo-Anne Murray responded to students as the University’s Vice-Principal for Education. Concerns included reduced law library hours, barriers to international and PhD students, the rise of AI, decline in staff-student contact hours and institutional transparency.
The meeting was promoted by the Students’ Union (AUSA) as a platform to discuss cut library hours in “the biggest student debate of the year” with the added appeal of pizza from its sponsor.
At 17.30pm on November 18, a required quorum of 200 members was exceeded by about 50 attendees. Students then voted to approve last year’s meeting minutes and the 2023/24 financial accounts which showed that about 80% of the £1 million core funding from University of Aberdeen went towards paying union staff.
Guest speaker Professor Jo-Anne Murray arrived late to the AGM, forcing Chair Kaitlin Agius to reshuffle the agenda.
At the meeting, frustration about Taylor Library’s cut hours and weekend closures came to a boiling point. Law students were especially outspoken: the library provides materials essential to their courses including highly demanded law texts, some of which cannot be taken home.
Other problems raised about campus libraries included strained capacity during assessment periods, noise on designated silent floors, and poor accessibility for neurodivergent students.
Student officer Samuel Seymour said that “due to current financial constraints, the university has not reinstated posts that became vacant” in the library team, causing reduced hours. As Vice-President for Education, he held talks with chief librarian Simon Beins and COO Fraser Bell who were “unlikely to restore previous hours” but seemed “willing to adjust hours within the current cost envelope.”
A student suggested that if the main issue is staffing and funding, perhaps students could volunteer to keep the library open later. Another student requested a student internship scheme as a solution.
Samuel promised to pass such ideas on to university management. He was unable to answer several more detailed questions about library accessibility, finances and staffing because the Students’ Union – where he works – does not manage the library.
“What further action can we take if the University doesn’t listen to AUSA?” asked a second-year law student.
Samuel Seymour responded that he may consider “more visible action if the situation further deteriorates.”
Mehak Verma, organiser of a petition to restore Taylor library hours, told The Gaudie: “If the petition doesn’t work after submission, I think our only solution is to assemble a large group of students to sit in the library past closing hours.”
At the meeting, Professor Jo-Anne Murray presented the university’s Adapting for Continued Success programme which outlines a structure for wide-level operational transformations across the university and the floor was then opened for a Q&A. Several students took the opportunity to ask questions highly critical of University management, each such question punctuated by a loud applause.
Responding to a question on how students can input in workstreams in the ongoing Adapting for Continued Success programme, the professor replied, “please tell us ways you’d like to input because I like to think I’ve got a lot of good ideas, but they’re not always good.”
International students expressed dissatisfaction towards the institution, one student telling Prof Murray, “you take our money, then completely ignore us.”
Another international student described being sent through a bureaucratic nightmare when they appeared to be removed from a course on MyAberdeen: “Even though I had paid my fees well in advance, I had not been registered as a student. To this day I don’t know if I am registered. When I contacted the university, I was sent from place to place. I called my parents crying on the phone. It’s been a month and I’m frustrated that no one will give me an answer.”
Professor Murray replied “that’s not good enough and I’m sorry, but we will fix that,” and invited the student to leave their details at the end of the meeting.
Another student made a defiant speech about contact hours with staff and quality of teaching: “Staff are not paid enough and are asked to do too much. They therefore have little time for students. Contact hours are lessening by the year and in the meantime the university is suggesting this can be fixed by technology, which means AI.
“We still need school administrators. We still need junior staff, PhD students and teaching staff at the upper levels. So what is the university going to do to maintain that?”
Professor Murray replied that Aberdeen has the best staff-student ratio in Scotland and a higher-than-average salary bill, but work is needed to ensure student experience reflects those statistics.
Another student voiced concerns on how equality, diversity, and inclusion will be promoted in Adapting for Continued Success if people of colour do not see representation in the senior management team.
The final question to Prof Murray saw an ex-military student ask: “Are we going to end up with a University that is such a dismal mess that nobody wants to be here?” and “I don’t think we have a good opinion of ourselves as a university and I think most students think quite poorly of us,” prompting sustained applause.
Prof Murray replied: “I promise you, I will make changes that you need me to make; that’s why I’m in the job.”
As the guest speaker left New King’s 6, an attendee heckled: “I am a PhD student, and the university does not acknowledge my existence.” Loujain Alzahrani, the PGR Society Founder & President, felt “ignored” at the meeting and has now sent an open letter to Prof Murray outlining a “lack” of workspace, communication, community, administrative clarity, teaching opportunities, and teaching training for postgraduate students.
At the meeting, Vice-President for Education Samuel Seymour presented ‘SU-ggestions’, a platform on ausa.org.uk for contributing policy ideas. In 2024/25, the SU-ggestion with the most votes (90) was to open a bar in the Students’ Union. In response, AUSA made a prank announcement of a new bar for April Fools’ Day. In summer, over 50 SU-ggestions were purged from AUSA’s website so that the 2025/26 suggestions page could start from scratch.
Student President Christina Schmid presented plans for changes to the Students’ Union based on its recent democracy review. Reforms are expected to include a reduction in annual meeting quorum from 200 to 50 members, replacing student council with a ‘community organising model’ and reducing the number of full-time elected student representatives.
Post-AGM, students exchanged mixed views about the meeting’s productivity. Library hours petitioner Mehak Verma reflected that she feels “less hopeful” about restoring library hours but “absolutely loved” the AGM, adding that the Chair was “quite funny, good at her role and gave everyone a chance to be heard.” However, she shared: “I disliked how some speakers didn’t actually have authority to answer questions sufficiently.”
Various society committee members described the meeting as “crazy” and “heated”, some wondering whether only a small subset of active students attend such meetings to vent their frustrations.
Nour Elshenawy, The Gaudie co-Editor-in-Chief and rep for women’ s rugby, was disappointed by the AGM:
“I expected to hear more about club funding, the payment system and promised floodlights. We cannot train at our normal training times and location.”
In a statement shared by AUSA, Vice-President for Education Samuel Seymour said:
“Thank you to everyone who contributed at the AGM and to those who continue to get in touch. Every experience shared helps us strengthen the case for restoring access to the study spaces students rely on.
“It is vital that the University provides services that genuinely meet students’ needs, and we will be taking forward the ideas and concerns raised to make that case directly.”