BREAKING: Landslide votes overturn SU support for Hong Kong protests at Warwick

A landslide vote by over 2,000 students at the University of Warwick overturned Students’ Union (SU) support for the Hong Kong protests.

The number of votes for this term’s All Student Vote (ASV) run by the (SU) also tripled from last term, hitting a record high.

7,330 votes were cast compared to 6,681 last term. There were also 3,194 individual voters, over 2.5 times of 1,261, the number of voters in Term 1’s ASV.

The motion, “Support Hong Kong’s movement and protect freedom of expression on campus”, which saw heated debate between students from the city and mainland China as well as division within the SU, was voted down by 2,041 to 971.

After the ASV meeting on Tuesday, Warwick Chinese Society posted a tutorial for its members on how to vote against the motion.

They told The Boar: “Recently, we realized that many Chinese students are not aware of the ‘All Student Vote’. To allow Chinese students in University of Warwick be more active in improving the University’s environment, we published an article to teach Chinese students how to participate in ‘All Student Vote’ and make them aware of the recent motions.”

Regarding the motion, they responded: “We merely advised Chinese Student to vote ‘Against’ in one particular motion but we did not force any students to do so as it is in the student’s right to vote for their desired outcome.”

“Fighting Stigmas Together”, which aimed to lobby for the the University to treat the mental health crisis “seriously” by improving access to, increasing promotion of and investing more into wellbeing services, was also overturned by 1,003 to 777 votes.

The other two motions, “Misogyny is a Hate Offence” and “Update to Academic Dress at Graduation”, passed by a slim margin, with 558 and 445 students voting ‘for’ and 550 and 413 students voting ‘against’ respectively.