What happens on SU Council

errlloyd

Last year I wrote a big boards post after USI congress in the name of transparency. In the past this board has been very critical of the lack of transparency and interaction in the SU. Going to congress made me want to take a greater part in the SU so I ran for rep this year and I thought I should share some of what goes on in council here so people get an idea of what the **** goes on.

I'm going to post a few headings here, you can skip to whatever part you want to know more about. Had a few, and I am a bit tired, so excuse mistakes. Feel free to ask questions, pm if you want.

1.1: Composition
1.2: Location and Frequency
1.3: Pre Council Preparation
1.4: Functions and power
2.1: Agenda
2.2: Officer Reports
2.3: Motions
2.4: Other Business

1.1 Composition

Council has somewhere above but around 100 members I believe, they consist of the 5 sabbatical officers (president, C&C ect), the executive officers (arts, Irish language ect), the campaigns forum, the ents forum and of course class reps.

Each person on council has pretty much the same rights, one vote, they can speak pretty much whenever, and they can give their speaking rights to other people if they want to.

The chair of council is Rolland, he's no longer a student. One of Butlers guys and a lawyer. He's a good chair, relatively fair to everyone.

1.2 Location and Frequency

Council usually takes place either in the new debate chamber or in the AG lecture theatre. I think preferably they'd like to be in the chamber as much as possible, but its not really a goer.

It is meant to happen every 4 weeks (but at least once a calendar month). In effect it actually happens more frequently than that. If anyone wants updates on when it happening you can get them on the SU page, or just pm me, I'll sort you out.

1.3 Preparation

All motions have to be submitted a week before council, they need a submitter and a seconder. At least one of them has to actually attend.

Officer reports have to be in by (I think) the Sunday evening before council. They are sent out to council members Monday evening for us to look over along with the motions for that week. Theoretically this gives us a few days to check up on stuff.

1.4: Functions and power

So what does council actually do? To be honest the council mostly seems to act as checks and balances to stop the sabbatical officers doing whatever they want. It also acts as an avenue for people to submit ideas for things they want the SU to do. I'll talk more about this in reports and motions.

For the most part though we're there to ask questions, apply pressure and try to stop people doing nothing. In that regard council has been a relatively successful tool, and I will give some examples of this later.

2.1: Agenda

This is the agenda from the last council.

Agenda

1. Roll Call and Declaration of Quorum

2. Minutes of the Previous Meeting

3. Matters Arising from the Minutes

4. Officer Reports

5. Motions on Notice


A: UCDSU Speaking and Voting Rules Motion
B: UCDSU Information motion
C: UCDSU shuttle service motion
UCDSU I Was There motion
E: UCDSU Council Event motion

6. Items for Discussion
a. Budget 2013

7. Items for Approval
a. Constitutional Audit and Revision Strategy
b. IADB Membership

8. Questions on Notice (none)

9. Questions not on Notice

10. Motions not on Notice

11. Submission of motions to be on notice for next meeting

12. Any Other Business

Pretty much the only important things on the agenda are officer reports and motions. Items for approval and items for discussion can also be important.

The minutes of the last meeting are hardly ever read, and that vote is a formality, and thank god cause that would take ages. Council this year has a Quorum of 33% so it is never inquorate.


2.2: Officer Reports


I said the main thing council is for is as checks and balances. We achieve this mainly through officer reports. Each officer has to write up a report on what they have done since the last council, reps get to ask them questions on the report, or just in general, and then we vote on the report.

We can vote against the report if we want, and that effectively is us saying "no this isn't good enough", if an officer's report gets voted down twice in a row, it begins impeachment proceedings.

Each officer is meant to read their report in council, in reality this would take too long, so the exec officers reports are more often than not taken "as read", but we do get the chance to ask them questions based on the text report that was circulated.

The sabbatical officers usually stand up to ad stuff on they might have forgotten, or to specifically address "important points" (read - **** that makes them look good). This is usually the longest part of council. If people have a particular issue with an officer and go hunting they can do some damage here. Effectively it's like a confidence vote every 3 weeks.

There hasn't really been any instance where an officer looks likely to get hit with a rejection, but as of yet no one has lobbied for it. I believe that if an officer did their job particularly badly, council would reject, there is some backbone, they're not sheep.


2.3: Motions


The other substantive half of council is motions. Motions are a chance for council members to submit ideas, or create mandates. They can cover a huge range of topics. So for example in that above agenda there were 5 motions.

The first called for a referendum to change the council rules so that anyone who showed up could speak or vote, the second mandated SU officers to post on their fb pages about every motion for every council, the third mandated the addition of an exam shuttle home from the final exam, the fourth tried to whip up support for a bullying initiative in schools, the 5th mandated the creation of a fb event page for every council to make it more public. There was also a motion "not on notice" condemning Israel for the violence in Gaza.

To give an example of their effectiveness, that motion calling for a return shuttle was submitted by a second year economics rep, who just thought it should exist. She argued her point, and created a mandate. Because of that we had an exam shuttle bus.

Debate on these motions can be a bit... weak. It would be rare to get more than 4 speakers, and speakers have less than 3 minutes. I Often find important arguments aren't made, which is a shame. Also voting can sometimes be in blocs, not really political blocs, more just social cliques.

The actual power of motions is also something I am not quite sure about. If you create a mandate, you can reject an officer report if they don't follow it. But, sabbatical officers don't need a mandate to actually do stuff. So if they want to do something that no mandate currently exists for, they could probably just do it. Council would have to step in and actually stop them.

Even still, in the first council I mandated the president to publish a full transparent plan and strategy for USI congress, and present it by the final council of 2012. She did that, and I think there was some progress.

My other issue with the motion process at the moment is there aren't really any discussion groups or committees bringing motions to council. (Equivalent of Dail working groups if you like). So motions seem to come in a little "undercooked" sometimes.


2.4: Other Business


We sometimes have "Items for discussion" which are basically minor debates we have without a vote. So the other day we discussed the budget at what it meant for UCDSU. Pretty pointless talking shop stuff, but some good ideas are generated.

We also have "Items for approval" so last time we had constitutional review and IADB (Independent appeals and disciplinary board) membership. We do have to vote on these. To demonstrate council's "backbone" we did reject the proposed IADB membership because it was felt that two of the proposed nominees knew each other too well, and knew a lot of current students, so they would have natural biased towards each other.




Anyway, feel free to ask me anything, and if you wanna submit anything to SU council you can have my speaking rights.

Chris

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errlloyd wrote: »

2.2: Officer Reports
I said the main thing council is for is as checks and balances. We achieve this mainly through officer reports. Each officer has to write up a report on what they have done since the last council, reps get to ask them questions on the report, or just in general, and then we vote on the report.

We can vote against the report if we want, and that effectively is us saying "no this isn't good enough", if an officer's report gets voted down twice in a row, it begins impeachment proceedings.

Each officer is meant to read their report in council, in reality this would take too long, so the exec officers reports are more often than not taken "as read", but we do get the chance to ask them questions based on the text report that was circulated.

The sabbatical officers usually stand up to ad stuff on they might have forgotten, or to specifically address "important points" (read - **** that makes them look good). This is usually the longest part of council. If people have a particular issue with an officer and go hunting they can do some damage here. Effectively it's like a confidence vote every 3 weeks.

There hasn't really been any instance where an officer looks likely to get hit with a rejection, but as of yet no one has lobbied for it. I believe that if an officer did their job particularly badly, council would reject, there is some backbone, they're not sheep.

I think some members of council are too afraid of hostility to push towards rejection of reports... There have been some problems with reports that have been ignored for a variety of reasons.

(Note: I'm not a member of council, but I'm there sometimes and know a good few people involved)

Annasopra

It's good to read reports like this

Well done to OP