Easter 2 - CUSU Oscars

Below is pretty much a copy of the email I sent out after the second CUSU council of Easter Term...


Dear all,

Last night was the final CUSU council meeting of term. After all the drama of Easter 1, Easter 2 was pretty mild in comparison. As ever I will endeavour to highlight (literally) things I consider to be of interest.

1) Trustee reform referendum passes

2) Gerard Tulley (CUSU President) makes an apology

3) Approval of Women's officer's £17,140 p/a contract

4) Return of the 'Disproportionate Sentencing' Motion 

5) Black/Minority/Ethnic JCR officer

6) Affiliation to Cambridge Council for Voluntary services

7) CUSU Oscars Controversy

8) 'I've got a bone to pick with you'

9) CUSU secretary election

1) Trustee reform referendum passes: 

I have to eat my words - I thought this referendum was going to fail to get the 10% of students voting 'YES' as required by the CUSU constitution for referendums to pass. In fact CUSU managed to get a turnout of about 2500 voters (~12% of the student body) with about 95% voting YES (so they managed to get about 11% of the student body to vote YES - 1% more than they needed! I wonder how many of us voted out of a genuine desire for Trustee Board Reform, rather than just a desire for the emails from CUSU about it to stop... 

On a lighter note does anyone else think that the pinky on the writing hand at the start of the YES campaign's video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g17Iu_s8zyY) is pretty freaky?

2) Gerard Tulley (CUSU President) makes an apology:

You might have read in the Tab about this drama: 

http://cambridgetab.co.uk/news/cusu-cock-up-causes-conference-confusionBasically Gerard read out an apology for seeming to spread blame on others, and said that he placed all blame on himself.

Just a quick health warning about the article - it is slightly misleading when it says "President Ros Old vocally oppos[ed] his (Gerard Tully's) nomination". She was not opposing the nomination of Gerard Tulley specifically, just the method Charlie Bell was using to attempt to have him nominated (look at item 7 for a fuller explanation)

3)  Approval of Women's officer's £17,140 p/a contract:

It was approved unsurprisingly, although I was surprised that sabbatical officers were paid that much.

4) Return of the 'Disproportionate Sentencing' Motion:

Recap: At the last CUSU council there was a similar motion which was voted down. Basically the old motion suggested that the guy who interrupted the David Willets speech and was given a 7 term sentence should not have been given any punishment at all, which was very controversial. The new motion removed that controversy and unsurprisingly passed. 

5) Black/Minority/Ethnic JCR officer

This was a rather ambiguous motion calling for JCRs to have 'an officer formally responsible for BME issues'. I asked a question about what that meant, since I was concerned that this motion was suggesting our JCR should have a BME officer. In case you are not familiar with our JCR we don't have a BME officer, and I think this is sensible. Although BME issues are important, I don't think that there would be much practical benefit in having a BME officer on the JCR committee, particularly since one of the main BME issues, access, is already covered by our Access officer.Would be very interested to hear what you think.

The motion's proposer, in answer to my question, seemed to say that whereas a BME officer would be preferable, the person in charge of BME issues could be someone like an Access officer. I thought this was sensible, and so voted for the motion, which passed.

For more information about the BME campaign see here -> http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/campaigns/bmestudents/. 

6) Affiliation to Cambridge Council for Voluntary services

This passed. It costs £50 a year. That is something like 0.25p from each of us.

7) CUSU Oscars Controversy

I don't think I was the only person in the room confused by what was going on, and since the chairperson of CUSU forgot to ask if anyone had any questions there was about twenty minutes of debating between Charlie Bell (our old JCR president, and now chair of CUSU LGBT), Ros Old (CUSU President Elect) and various others before I had a clue about what was going on.

Basically, every year the sabbatical officers nominate one or two people to be 'honorary life members' of CUSU. This year four people were nominated for this apparently highly coveted honour. Charlie Bell put forward a motion which would mandate the sabs to nominate a further two people, ie Gerard Tulley (outgoing CUSU President) and Taz Rahul (outgoing CUSU Access officer). Ros was arguing that we should vote to withdraw this motion on the grounds that it was improper for sabs to be forced to nominate people, and that too many people as a result would be nominated to be 'honorary life members', devaluing the honour. That is why earlier I said that the Tab article was misleading to say she was opposing Gerard's nomination - she was opposing the procedure Charlie was using to get him nominated.

I voted for the motion to be voted on, and then voted for the motion to be passed, which it did. This was partly because I thought it was a bit hypocritical for the CUSU elite to say Charlie was destroying the honorary life membership system when the sabs had chosen themselves to put forward an unprecedented number of people for it. It was also because I mischievously wanted to undermine the honorary life membership system.

8) 'I've got a bone to pick with you'

Less exciting then it sounds. The motion was given that name on the spot since it was originally untitled. It basically is an ideological motion against Trenton Oldfield, Ian Bone, Mr ASBO (a swan) and all others who would wish to disrupt the May Bumps. CUSU is meant now to work with other bodies to ensure the safe running of May Bumps, but I am not really sure what that could involve.

9) CUSU secretary election

One person ran and he won it uncontested.

So that wraps up another episode in the exciting world of CUSU! Let me know what you think about anything raised in this email - as I said I am particularly interested in what people think about the BME officer question. Not being part of an ethnic minority myself I am concerned that I might be missing the other side of the argument on this one. Should we have an Ethnic Minority officer on the JCR or is it OK for the role to be covered by the Access officer?

Wishing you a successful Easter term,

Dom

"Going to CUSU Council so you don't have to since 2012"

Easter 1

Below is pretty much a copy of the email I sent out after the first CUSU Council of Easter term

CUSU Easter Council 1 Low-down

We had the first CUSU council meeting of term on Friday and I thought I would update you about what went down and how I voted. I'm using sub-headings so you only need to read what is of interest to you. ***Things I think are of special interest I have starred and highlighted (although this is horribly subjective so don't read too much into it!). This is my first email like this so if you have any feedback I would be very happy to receive so I can improve my future low-downs. I apologise for any inaccuracies in advance. Please find attached the Agenda for the meeting if you want to read any of the motions in their original.

Remember - if you like this please subscribe to my list at quen-jcr-ext@lists.cam.ac.uk since in the future these low-downs will be sent there. If you want to subscribe but don't know how just reply with a blank email and I will add you :)

Contents:

1. Budget

2. Election returning officer report

3. Trustee Board Changes

***4. Owen Holland and University Discipline

5. Cambridge living wage campaign

6. Say no to dangerous tax hikes

***7. 'God save the Queen'

8. Anti-Semitism

9. Questions to CUSU president

1. Budget - Basically the financial situation has improved from last year and we got given a copy of the budget for next year, which was approved (Will Oram and I voting in favour).

2. Election returning officer report - Said that the election was difficult this year because of some breaches of the election rules. Said that next year it might be an idea to elect Election Committee earlier to make election time less manic. Average turn-out was 20.4%, and Queens' achieved a turn-out of 19.1%.

3. Trustee Board Changes - CUSU is determined to pass reforms on the trustee board. I do not know in detail why this needs to be done, but I think it should be an improvement. My concern is that to change it they need to pass a referendum with at least 10% of the student body voting YES, which they failed to do in Lent term, and I am not convinced that they will succeed this time. Despite this me and Will both voted in favour of allowing another referendum, which I will present to Queens' when the time comes.

***4. Owen Holland and University Discipline - This was an interesting motion put forward by Queens' member Amy Gilligan. 

A little bit of background in case you don't know. Basically Owen was suspended for 7 terms by the university disciplinary body for disrupting the David Willets talk.

Essentially this motion was calling for CUSU to condemn this sentence as too harsh and supporting Owen through protests etc. The problem was that the motion was drafted in quite a divisive way. For example in the 'Believes' section it called for Owen to be 'reinstated' without specifying whether this was to be immediate or after a proportionate sentence. 

It had to be taken in parts, but both parts failed. Will voted against both parts. I voted against the 'Believes' section because of the ambiguity I have mentioned, and voted for the 'Resolves' section, since I thought it was more straight-forward. The reason others voted against the 'Resolves' section was that part of it seemed to imply that CUSU would be supporting the 'Defend the Right to Protest Campaign', which was unpopular because of that campaign's history of supporting more extreme protesters (ie the guy who climbed the Cenotaph, and the guy who threw the fire extinguisher). I did not think that the motion did imply support of that campaign, except in the limited context of the support they were giving to Owen Holland. 

I would be interested to hear from you if you disagree with the decision I took so I can take that into account for future votes. Have a look at the motions attached and let me know what you think!

5. Cambridge Living Wage Campaign - This motion essentially ideological in favour of aligning CUSU with this campaign. There were some criticisms of the campaign's methodologies, but Will and I, along with most of CUSU council, were not convinced by them, and subsequently voted to support the campaign, which passed in whole. This is a really interesting campaign calling for an increase in wages for those being paid below what the campaign considers to be the 'living wage'. Will and I agreed that we should bring this up with college, as a freedom of information request indicated that Queens' currently pays about 30 staff members below this level.

6. Say no to dangerous tax hikes - This was another ideological motion opposing the government's proposed changes to the tax rules for charities. Considering that Queens' relies heavily on charitable donations, and the governments changes would seem to reduce the incentive to give large amounts of money to charity, Will and I voted in favour of it and it passed.

***7. God save the Queen - This was a patriotic motion put forward by Charlie Bell which would require CUSU to formally congratulate the Queen on her diamond jubilee and sing 2 verses of the national anthem at the start of next council. Even after there was a friendly amendment for one of the verses to be sung solo by Charlie this motion failed to pass. Considering the Queen is our patron, I felt it my duty to support this motion (as did Will). Keep an eye out on the Tab for an article Charlie will be writing about this hopefully.

8. Anti-Semitism - This was an emergency motion separate from the main agenda. This was another ideological motion condemning the vandalism of the Union of Jewish Students stall at the recent NUS conference. This, unsurprisingly, passed unanimously.

9. Questions to CUSU president -Questions were asked about bursaries, the NUS conference and some other matters. What was of most interest was the fact that Cambridge failed to get their motions raised at NUS because they were not submitted on time. Apparently this was because the CUSUteam was busy with elections, but this seemed like a pretty inexcusable error.

Please contact me if you want to know in any more detail about what happened at Council, or if you are interested in coming along next time. If you want to be kept in the loop subscribe to my list at quen-jcr-ext@lists.cam.ac.uk since in the future these low-downs will be sent there. If you want to subscribe but don't know how just reply with a blank email and I will add you.

Thanks for reading,

Dom Brown

VP External

First Post

Hi all,


As VP external it is my mission to get the students of Queens' to explore beyond the four walls of college and see some of the exciting things which go on in the rest of the university.


In particular I am talking about the exciting world of CUSU, the mothership of all college JCRs and MCRs. It is a place where student policy at a university level is decided, and is attended by a mixture of CUSU representatives and JCR/MCR reps. As such it is very exciting.


It is the responsibility of the VP External and the President to represent the interests of Queens' at these meetings. 


As some of you may know I send out a regular email detailing what happens at CUSU meetings and beyond, so as to keep everyone in Queens' in the loop, and to ensure that the President and I remain accountable for the decisions we take on your behalf. 


I call them my 'low-downs' of what is going on. 


This blog will hopefully make my 'low-downs' accessible to a circle wider than those on my list (which you are still free to subscribe to by emailing me here -> jcr-vp-external@queens.cam.ac.uk)


Thanks for reading


Dom