In an attempt to fill the power vacuum left by removing the ‘President’ role from the Student Union, the boffins at York SU have developed the role of ‘Supreme Pontiff’, or just ‘Tha Pope’.

Lewis Parrey, who is currently the ‘Union Affairs Officer’, which he assures us is “basically the President, like, genuinely, literally just the president, I’m fully in charge”, is expected to announce his candidacy for the role, although the election process will differ slightly from other Sabb roles.

The trustees of the Union, as well as a series of legacy presidents (think Pierrick Rogier and Tom Scott), Stanley Tucci, and the reincarnated corpse of Vince the Vole, will be locked into Central Hall, and not allowed to leave until they have come to a decision. Each day, a member of the team will leave the room for five minutes to hunt and kill a member of the University’s waterfowl population, and will then burn it, its smoke rising from the hall’s chimney. 

The adoring and engaged York SU electorate, all five percent of them, will then interpret the smell of the smoke to establish whether a new pontiff has been elected (goose) or whether the electors are still deliberating (pigeon or moorhen). No one will be fed anything other than pigeon until a decision is made.

While it’s impossible to predict who will win the role, Mr Parrey has been seen writing up a risk assessment for ‘secretly poisoning my political rivals’, which makes us think he’s got a pretty good shot.

First published in Issue 63