Hey y'all,
This CUSU Council saw a clash of CUSU titans. In the left corner we have ROS OLD, President of CUSU, and in the right we have CHARLIE BELL, V-P External of Queens' MCR.
As ever, in the manner of a realistic supervisor, all of the below is recommended reading, but I only expect you to read the starred items.
1) What has CUSU actually done this term?
* 2) Charlie's anouncement
* 3) Charlie's motion
4) Elections
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) What has CUSU actually done this term?
The first half hour of the meeting was consumed by the sabbatical officers telling us what they had achieved over Michealmas, and what they wanted to do over the next term. Although it lasted half an hour, I didn't make any notes for this section of the meeting. Partly because you can just look over previous editions of the blog to see what has been happening, and partly because there didn't seem to be anything hugely relevant to report on.
* 2) Charlie's announcement
The party got started when it came time to make the announcements. Charlie Bell took the floor and shit got real. At CUSU Council 3 you will recall that elections for the CUSU exec took place. There were also elections for the Elections Committee, for which there are 6 positions. The elections committee are responsible for running the CUSU sabbatical elections which will take place next year. On the ballot sheet there were three Queens' members running (Charlie Bell, Harry Prance and Callum Wood). Charlie had encouraged Harry and Callum to run as he thought the presence of non-'CUSU types' on the Elections Committee would improve CUSU's image, as it would appear to be less of a closed shop, or 'self-serving elite'.
On the night of the elections, however, 4 sabbatical officers stood for positions on the Elections Committee, mostly citing the reason that they had 'a lot of time on their hands' as sab officers without a full-time degree to deal with. They were all elected, gaining a majority on the committee. This was unsurprising because the sabs are well known at Council, and also Charlie, Harry and Callum were all not in attendance.
Charlie was successful in being elected. In his announcement, however, he said that he had written to the CUSU sabs complaining of what had happened, and he had no response. He said that he did not want to be part of an elections committee which would perpetuate the image of CUSU being comprised of a self-serving elite. He resigned from his position.
A sombre silence fell across the room. Rather surprisingly the CUSU sabs did not take the opportunity to tell Charlie why they decided to run and take the place of non-CUSU types.
Charlie 1, CUSU 0.
[The chair broke the silence by suggesting we move onto the first motion of Council. We did, and it was a motion about Quality Assurance. Within it, there was the statement 'CUSU believes Quality Assurance is exciting'. Charlie questioned this, causing the education sab to admit that whilst he personally found quality assurance to be exciting, he couldn't say the same for the rest of the student body. There was no alteration of the motion, and it passed. So that means we all now believe quality assurance is exciting. I'm not convinced.]
* 3) Charlie's motion
The next motion was brought by Charlie. It relates to the activities of the 'CUSU Oscars' in Easter term last year. At the time I wrote this:
"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."
Charlie at the time vowed that that wouldn't be the last we would hear from him on the issue, and he did not fail to dissapoint. In his motion he called for the suspension of the honorary life membership system and a constitutional reform to be drafted to remove it from the constitution.
Naturally the CUSU sabs did not agree with this. They argued that a constitutional reform wouldn't pass because no-one cares about CUSU constitutional reforms, which need to be ratified by referendum. Charlie agreed with this, but said that the reform could be put to a referendum at some later date along-side more gripping changes. They also argued that the honorary life membership system was very good at awarding particular people who had done an outstanding job. This doesn't seem convincing due to the trend in recent years to put more and more people up for this 'exceptional' award. Also, if you know you are a CUSU bad-ass, you shouldn't need to be validated by an honorary life membership.
Despite this, there was relatively little debate on the motion. On the vote Charlie lost 10 votes to 12, with 7 abstentions, and I voted in the minority.
Charlie 1, CUSU 1.
In some ways I am glad the motion failed, because if there is something I want to avoid whilst I am in office, it is another referendum.
4) Elections
After this there were more elections, with positions which no-one ran for being filled up. There are still places for the Black, Minority and Ethnic officer, and the Anti-racism officer. So if you love ethnic diversity, and/or hate racism, I would recommend you stand for one of these positions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At 1-1, this is one rumble in the jungle which is going to rumble on. Stay tuned for more next term!
Dom,
Your friendly VP Ext
No comments:
Post a Comment