Constitutional Committee

As I’ve mentioned previously, I also sit on Sheffield’s constitutional committee, who are responsible for making recommendations to Council for changes to the constitution, which are then referred to March’s referendum. The meeting went fairly smoothly and there were no particular controversies. Many of the things discussed were routine amendments (an accidental reference to a non-existent committee, or an out-of-date by-law number, and branding updates – referring to the sabbatical officers consistently as Student Officers, and SU Council as Students’ Council).

We also tackled a number of issues regarding trans representation – updating the definition of women to include self-defining women (there are no reference to men in the constitution, so no corresponding definition for men have been added), to formally include transphobia in the ethical policy and a change to election regulations so students can use preferred names (subject to officer scrutiny to avoid people taking advantage), which also benefits international students who use adopt a western name, etc.

Another issue we discussed was that of splitting the modern languages councillor into 2, which we will be recommending council reject (the rationale behind the split seems fairly weak, and last year’s proposal to introduce more councillors for larger departments failed, and modern languages isn’t a particular large school anyway.

The final issue brought up was for reducing the majority required for constitutional reform from 2/3rds to simple majority which we are also recommending to reject for a number of reasons – it’s out of line with standard student union practice, and an event where over one third of the student body reject a constitutional change, it would be hard to claim that the union is representative of the entire student body considering such a high level of controversy with such a fundamental document.

Thursday sees the next Council meeting, which I have submitted a number of proposals – one asked of me by people I’m living with regarding summer accomodation in Endcliffe for postgraduates, and one I’ve raised regarding opening up the women’s minibus to be a safety minibus for all students (priority being given to women students) to better utilise the resources available, which looks like it might be a controversial debate.

As usual, I’ll blog after that meeting to let you all know the outcome, and as always, you can contact me at computersciencecouncillor@sheffield.ac.uk to let me know your (dis)satisfaction with how I’m representing you.