The systemd is a make dependency only. Unless you plan on compiling it yourself, you don't need systemd to run it.

    ~ $ y -Qi libutil-linux | grep Depends
    Depends On     : None

EDIT: conversely, these are the packages depending on systemd:

    ~ $ y -Qi systemd | grep Required | fmt
    Required By    : accountsservice  chromium  colord  crda  cups
    device-mapper  gnome-session  lib32-systemd  libgdm  libgusb  libpulse
    libusb  libvirt  libwacom  lvm2  media-player-info  mesa  mkinitcpio
    netctl  polkit  procps-ng  qt5-base  qtwebkit  rtkit  spotify  subversion
    systemd-sysvcompat  udisks2  upower  xf86-input-evdev  xf86-video-ati
    xf86-video-modesetting

As a sysadmin and developer I don't understand this systemd-hate. If you ever have written a /etc/init.d script for a python non-daemoning script running in a virtualenv, or something to the same effect, you'd notice the improvement over SysV init scripts.

Upstart is nice too, but as a Linux desktop user I love socket activation: I can have cups, avahi and other optional/non-critical daemons "active" but not actually using any resource, until effectively used by some other process.