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.
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.
Thanks for reading,
Dom Brown
VP External
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