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:
3) Approval of Women's officer's £17,140 p/a contract: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)
It was approved unsurprisingly, although I was surprised that sabbatical officers were paid that much.4) Return of the 'Disproportionate Sentencing' Motion:
5) Black/Minority/Ethnic JCR officerRecap: 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.
6) Affiliation to Cambridge Council for Voluntary servicesThis 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/.
7) CUSU Oscars ControversyThis passed. It costs £50 a year. That is something like 0.25p from each of us.
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.
Wishing you a successful Easter term,
Dom
"Going to CUSU Council so you don't have to since 2012"
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