News

Tom Roworth 4 weeks ago

In response to the “New Student Representation for a New Union” proposal…Am I correct in thinking this will remove representation of Media heads, Sports exec, Association heads to student council? Only if I read the proposal correctly it seems that many decisions that are been taken at council that directly affect these students are going to go unanswered in council in future. It seems mad that these often hard working groups of students that clearly have an active interest in a particular aspect of student life are not getting the opportunity to have their voice heard directly in council and can only be elected on the basis of what course they do for University.  I think that there is a distinct risk of turning away good candidates because their collage has it’s full compliment, to try and find a lesser candidate so that another collage can be filled so that the council is “balanced”.

Also as an aside, this agenda has only been available openly online a day before this major change to the way the union operates and I thought that at least a week notice must be given for AGM agendas. Of course I can’t check this because I was unable to find a copy of the constitution either, which I’m fairly sure is also against the rules. It shows a lack of transparency from council with these matters unattended to.

I know that the opinion of graduates is largely ignored by ULSU, (unless you’re former Sabb with current Sabb mates), but I’d thought I would make my opinion known anyway. I have no doubt that if passed this proposal will change the entire democratic decision making in the building and NOT for the better either.

Regards
Tom
Former LUST DG

Ryan O'Hare Web Editor 4 weeks ago

Hi Tom
The one thing which unites all students is that we are all here to study on a course. Everybody knows who their course rep is, and can communicate with them at many opportunities during the day, on the other hand councillors generally only appear once a year at elections then fade into the background.
The point about turning away good candidates is valid, however there may be two really good candidates but simply because one of them loses doesn’t mean they won’t get involved. I’d also say there are many good candidates for parliament who don’t get selected during the general election process, but that’s just democracy in action and do you not feel that it in fact does change democratic decision making for the better by removing all the direct vested interests which are on council.
The idea that media heads all require 1 vote, associations require 1 vote etc, is clearly not representational. Anybody can bring a proposal or speak at council, and having 100 truly representative councillors will enable these proposals to be considered even more democratically and fairly (rather than the current ‘i scratch your back you scratch mine’ way of doing things)
The media heads and sports exec would still be cross campus elected and directly answerable to council, which is what they are currently, except currently the odd situation exists where they are answerable to council but yet are voting members too, which to me seems undemocratic.
The website has only just launched so we are still developing it to get all the info on there. We got the agenda up as fast as we could, it was available from the exec secretary before 11am yesterday morning which is the only constitutional requirement. I will endeavour to get the constitution up ASAP.

Tom Roworth 4 weeks ago

Believe it or not, the year I sat on council I was in fact non voting. I also visited many times when certain issues were raised mostly those to do with LUST, LUT and Bars and Ents. As a non voting councillor I felt my time was wasted when other issues were being raised as I had little experience to speak about the issues.

Why should media heads, sports execs have to be cross campus elected when they don’t get a vote on council. It would be all too easy for anybody with no experience to get elected into these positions which would be very detrimental to the groups. As far as I’m aware ULSU is unique in student television nationally by electing cross campus the head of the group and have a seat on council, something which is of great benefit to student media and students in general. I feel that without the presence of these groups council could lack the experience and expertise to speak on specific issues. As a media head yourself you must be aware of this.

The scrapping of various committees a few years ago as already meant that many councillors are not really accountable and the increasing of open seats has lead to many councillors have no remit to work on. The scrapping of liberation officers has also meant that many minority groups are no longer directly represented. Whilst this new system does look to be more representational of students, I think it will lead council away from giving people responsibly for specific issues. The forums are as far as I’m aware very poorly attended as a whole and I believe this new system will leave many important non academic issues un looked at.

Finally, glad to see your working hard on the website and I look forward to seeing it develop. Once again all this is just my opinion, based on my experience at ULSU.
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