This CUSU meeting was dominated by one issue: the failure of CUSU to support Faculty representatives adequately.
The issue was brought up by our very own Nailya Shamgunova, who is a faculty representative for History. She has some ambitious changes she wants to implement during her time in office, but says that she has faced avoidable obstacles because of a lack of support which should have been provided by CUSU. There are a number of failures, most notably:
- There should be a 'Faculty Forum' where all the representatives can come together to co-ordinate ideas and share best practice, but this body simply has not been set up.
- Faculty officers were not contacted by CUSU representatives upon being elected to their positions, which meant they were not aware of basic information, including that they have a vote on CUSU council.
- After contacting CUSU sabbatical officers to seek support, Nailya's emails were not responded to for a number of weeks, if at all.
This led Nailya to seek to put forward a motion to CUSU council criticising these omissions, in particular pointing out Sam Wakeford's (CUSU Education Officer) failure to comply with his responsibilities under the CUSU Constitution.
This motion was rejected on the basis that it was submitted too late. That those who don't go regularly to CUSU Council are not aware of the precise rules about submitting motions is hardly surprising! To make matters worse, when Nailya sought to issue the motion as an 'emergency motion' (basically a motion presented to Council on the day of Council itself, rather than circulated in the minutes beforehand) she was strongly discouraged to do so. Instead, it was suggested that she make her point as an 'Announcement' at the start of the meeting.
Prior to the start of Council, Sam came over to Nailya to discuss what she was going to say. He clearly was keen to prevent Nailya from speaking out, and was quite arrogant in his attitude. He stated that Nailya and I had made the "mistaken assumption" that he could be expected to fulfil every one of his constitutional obligations considering his limited time and resources. I said that I did not consider this to be an unreasonable assumption to make.
Sam tried to undermine what Nailya was to say at the start of the Announcements by making an announcement requesting to the criticisms before they had even been made. This was rightly refused on the basis that he could not respond to something which hasn't been said yet. I hope you are getting a flavour of the kind of guy this is.
Nailya's announcement was very eloquent and powerful. She started by asking the floor how many Faculty representatives were in attendance, and there was only three. She asked them when they first got contacted from CUSU, and only two had ever received contact, and both only in the last few days as Ros (CUSU President) has tried to sort this mess out. She went on to explain her experience and the failures she perceived were occurring, mostly from a failure by Sam to do his job properly.
When she finished, Sam's response was essentially that he had to prioritise some things in his role, and he chose to focus on large-scale university wide projects rather than the nitty gritty work of supporting Faculty officers. Whilst I can accept that some prioritisation is necessary, I think that his utter failure to make any kind of contact was unacceptable. Far more unacceptable, in my opinion, was the arrogant attitude he took to the whole issue. I asked him how he felt his reaction would appear to students who, let's face it, already have a negative enough view of CUSU. He replied that he thought it would damage CUSU's reputation, but didn't seem repentant about this. Another Council member more pointedly asked "So are you refusing to apologise", to which he replied with some BS about apologising for the way Nailya felt but not for not doing more to support her.
In my opinion this attitude is frustrating considering CUSUs already low reputation. Ros has made such an effort in her time as CUSU President to get students engaged, and this seems to undermine all of that.
After this there were the hustings for the CUSU sabbatical positions. You will get more information about the people running in due course. Suffice it to say the shocker of the night was when one of the candidates running for President said that he wanted to "reign in the Women's Campaign". I am pretty sure that his campaign has died today...
Wow, long post. Thanks if you made it this far.
Dom
