It is important. Many of the people at this university (and most importantly on the student union) will be making their way into the civil service and onto local councils. Even if that wasn't the case, though, it's important because it comes back to the old issue about how student unions treat the people they are supposed to represent. Currently students in the UK are getting a pretty raw deal in various ways and they would benefit enormously from having conscientious and intelligent union reps to lobby on their behalf and represent their interests. That is what unions are for. Instead, the tiny cross-section of people who get on to these unions (invariably on remarkably shoddy electoral processes which would not be tolerated on any other kind of union) do something quite different. They waste their time picking fights with people who have the 'wrong' opinions and exploit sensible security rules to have them excluded from campus debate, they use their positions on student councils to grandstand and tote up CV points for their own political careers, and in general they make themselves a nuisance to the people they are supposed to be representing, who understandably respond by getting on with their lives and avoiding the Union at all costs. This is not how the majority of students who go to university think and it's a real shame that their representatives behave in this way.