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► Union Committees

Union Committees

As far as departures from the current structure go the proposals don’t differ as significantly in this area as much as they do in others, however the small changes that are proposed are far reaching in nature. Two recommended changes stand out far and above any others proposed with the possible exception of the change of Sabbatical Officer roles, and they are the opening up of voting at meetings to all students and the shift from regulations to policy. (Yes, that second one is a bit technical, but we’ll try and break it down and explain it fully.)

Simple part first – the opening up of voting.

Under the current mechanisms that govern the Union meetings only elected officer are able to raise issues and vote on them at formal meetings, which in essence means that although there are nearly 15,000 members of the Union currently only 44 of them can vote on decisions and policy. The proposed structure removes that exclusivity of voting, and basically gives every student who is interested in a topic under discussion the right to vote on it whether they are elected or not. Similarly the ability to raise issues as topics in meetings (‘tabling’ them) is open to any student, although there will of course be rules that govern voting and tabling items.

The shift from regulations to policy. Right. *Deep breath*

Under the current Union structure all the rules that govern the Union - which range from what a member is to how many elected positions there are and so on - are called ‘regulations’. This means that they are part of the Constitution, which is a heavy weight legal document that governs how the Union works. As a legal document the Constitution is owned by the Students’ Union but is overseen and ‘signed off’ by our governing body, which is the University.

Currently whenever we wish to change something about how the Union works or how we are structured we changing a regulation, which means changing the Constitution, and as well as passing the changes through the Students’ Union committees we also have to seek permission for those changes from our governing body.

Part of the proposals include registering the Union as an independent charity, and as such our Constitution will be overseen by the Charity Commission as well as the University. This means we will have to seek the permission of both if we wish to make even small changes to our Constitution or the regulations that make up that Constitution.

Because one of the purposes of restructuring the Union is to try to make it more flexible and easy to change to meet the developing needs of students, the recommendation is that to move most of the rules that govern what the Union is and how it works from regulation to policy. The difference is that policy, unlike Constitutional regulation, is not overseen by either the University or Charity Commission and so can be changed comparatively quickly by students through the appropriate committees and mechanisms. Certain core legal rules remain as Constitutional regulations, but the vast majority of the structures that define what the Union is and how we work will sit as flexible and infinitely tweakable policy.

The Committees

As a membership organisation its unfortunately inevitable that there have to be committees and meetings to filter the views and opinions of 15,000 voices into usable directives and decisions. The structure and hierarchies that the Union are proposing are partially based on our current structures but with various aspects opened out.

The proposed committees are broken down as follows:

	Range	Primary Purpose	Secondary Purpose
Campus Groups	Local	Issues/Action	Accountability
Campus Collective	Local	Issues /Debating/Action	Local Representation
Whole Union Assemblies	Global	Debating/Action	Cohesive action
General Meeting	Global	Pursuing Outcomes	Constitutional change
Union Executive	Global	Day to Day oversight	Staff liaison
Trustee Board	Global	Compliance	Stability
Office of Independent Chairs	Global	Impartial chairing	Representative Oversight

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