The penultimate Council, and a few wins

My time at Sheffield draws to a close, as does my time as Computer Science councillor. Apologies for not keeping up with the blogging, but Rob’s done a pretty good job with the last few council meetings, so you can read his blogs (or the minutes) if you want more :)

Since I last blogged, you voted for the Councillor/Link merger to go ahead and I stood forward and was subsequently elected to sit on the select committee to make sure the merger goes smoothly. The select committee has a good mix of sceptics and supporters and we’re all dedicated to getting the best out of the merger, so hopefully my cynicism will be unneeded if we can pull off a successful merger.

Another issue we discussed was that of the elections. As Forge Press reported in issue 20, there was some accusations of foul play against Josh Forstenzer’s victory at the Union Officer elections, and we were asked to overturn the decision. I was one of the few that voted in favour of overturning the decision, but I would not have supported the plans to ban Josh from standing again, but rather to re-run the elections to ensure it was done fairly. In particular, I was dismayed to hear about the decision of the returning officers to dock votes from Josh – a move that literally disenfranchises some voters from the elections, especially as the decision of how many votes to remove was based on thin grounds.

Unfortunately, I missed Council two weeks ago due to being away from Sheffield (I also missed the early Merger select committee meetings for the same reason), so I don’t have anything to report from that meeting.

The papers for today’s meeting were interesting – particularly the reports from NUS conference of our delegates, and a number of policies were proposed – one on spying on campus and one on twinning with the University of Gaza. These will be discussed further next meeting, before going to referendum. I plan on tabling an amendment to the Gaza motion to instead twin with University of Gaza’s students’ union, as I believe that we would be more effective to twin with and support a body of the same type as us, and generally be more effective than twinning with the University would be.

Along with the usual conference updates, minutes from Exec Committee and officers questions, we also set in place the elections timeline for next year’s councillors elections. Following discussions from the merger select committee, I proposed an amendment that we should instead run the Council elections as e-voting over, saving money, paper and counting time for the election. Concerns were raised over accessibility, but Union staff assured Council that these could be managed.

The Merger select committee also provided an update to council, where various uncontroversial recommendations were agreed. A more controversial motion, that of splitting up some ‘schools’ into ‘departments’, as there were more links than councillors was also agreed.

We also had an interesting presentation from the head of Accommodation and Campus Services, who showed us the amount of feedback gathered by people staying in Uni accommodation, some disappointing trends, and what was being done to correct it. I brought up the issue of postgrads staying in Cratcliffe over the summer (as I was asked to, and had done before), as movement on it seemed to have stalled, and I was reassured that there would be more communication on this soon.

The final select committee to report back was that of the alcohol working group. Several recommendations were made, and some more added (such as reinforcing staff training) to improve the Union’s alcohol responsible retailing policy. These were generally sensible and progressive, but not particularly revolutionary, but small wins are good. I personally proposed an amendment which was that bar staff should not attempt to “up-sell” spirits (i.e., offering a double for £1 more). The offers will still be there, but staff will no longer directly offer it to you – you will have to specifically ask for a double if you want one from now on. Most staff weren’t “upselling” (it’s not Union policy to offer it), but some were, so this should sort it out. Council agreed with me on this amendment, so this should be coming in soon.

And finally, as Rob (Union Chair) pointed out at the end of today’s meeting, much to my embarrassment, I was awarded the title of ‘Outstanding Union Councillor of the Year’ at last week’s Union Awards – so thanks to those who nominated me, and the judges :)

Next meeting, I plan to bring a motion to Council about expanding the Media Hub to include space for Forge TV (who only have 1 Mac for video editing, compared to Forge Press’s many PCs and Forge Radio’s 2 studios), which could also be used by Film Making Soc, etc. And as always, if you want to get in touch with me, drop me a line at computersciencecouncillor@sheffield.ac.uk.