The Durham Students' Union is a body, set up as the Durham Colleges Students’ Representative Council in 1899 and renamed in 1969, with the intention of representing and providing welfare and services for the students of the University of Durham in Durham, England. The union is almost universally known by the initialism DSU.

DSU is designed to be truly democratic - to this end every student has a vote in the principal elections and in the sovereign body of DSU - the Union General Meeting - as in all students' unions. DSU holds two major elections a year, and has pioneered using electronic voting to increase participation in these. In the 2003 and 2004 Sabbatical elections it received the highest turnout of any student union in the UK, a fact that some use to show the continued relevance of DSU to the students of Durham.

The union employs full-time trained counsellors to provide students with Welfare advice, and also helps fund semi-autonomous representation groups to help those whose gender, sexuality, race or disability causes them to be discriminated against. A highly valued welfare service is that provided by the DSU nightbus, a mini-bus that runs during term time to ensure that students can get home safely regardless of their immediate financial state.

DSU also runs more commercial ventures such as a shop, cafe, bar and night-club. These operations are intended to make a profit that can be used to run welfare support, student societies and other student services by DSU. The University also gives a grant of money to help meet the cost of running student services.

DSU occupies Dunelm House, a university owned building in the centre of Durham where a wide variety of student activities take place. The imposing concrete building was completed in 1963 under the supervision of architect Sir Ove Arup , whose Kingsgate Bridge , adjacent, opened two years later. Both bridge and building have won Civic Trust awards, though the architecture of Dunelm House is not generally liked in the city.

During the late 1960s and the 1970s Dunelm House was a popular music venue, hosting bands including Pink Floyd and Procol Harum. According to their drummer Simon Kirke, Free's most popular song All Right Now was written by bassist Andy Fraser in their dressing room in Dunelm House, after a set of slower material had failed to excite the audience.

External link

• Durham Students' Union