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An OUSA referendum will be held this week from Monday 27 to Friday 31 May. The referendum comprises six questions, one of which would radically alter OUSA’s governance structure.

Question Six was included in the referendum after former Executive member Dan Stride started a petition and gathered the 100 votes necessary to put the issue to the student body. The question encompasses 24 amendments to the OUSA Constitution and election rules, and affects over 100 provisions. The changes are to be accepted or rejected in their entirety.

Stride’s proposed changes would reintroduce Student General Meetings (SGMs) in order to deal with routine matters, such as appointing OUSA’s honorary solicitor and auditor, and as a forum for debating more controversial matters. Any motion that failed to attract a two-thirds majority either way would be put to a referendum.

Question Six would also restore 2010’s governance structure and Constitution, adding representatives for each academic division as well as a Women’s Representative, two General Representatives, a Pacific Island Students’ Representative, and a Queer Representative, and removing the Administrative Vice-President role.

Stride claims the changes are necessary “because I feel the Exec has abused its powers by vetoing stuff going to referendum.” Stride believes that all motions regarding external policy should be put straight to referendum, which the Exec has failed to do. Stride also feels that the Executive has ceased to be “properly representative.”

“Since 2011 we’ve had Execs without science students, or Execs with only one woman out of 10 members. I can’t recall there being any Health Science students on the Exec in the last three years. That’s wrong, because the job of the Exec is to represent students.”

OUSA President Francisco Hernandez believes that while Stride raised some valid concerns, a bigger Exec could “lead to more inefficient decision-making.” Hernandez had opposed the slimming down of the Executive in 2010, but told Critic that “any change to OUSA’s governance structure needs to be a part of a wider, inclusive process that goes out to the student body, asks them what sort of changes need to be made – rather than one person attempting to impose their vision on the student body without any consultation.”

Hernandez is also ambivalent about the proposed reintroduction of SGMs. “Maybe you could say that giving them back some measure of power will make them relevant again and students will be more engaged with OUSA in that way. But you could also say it would allow a small minority of motivated students to dominate and guide OUSA’s policy direction, in terms of external policy.”

Stride and Hernandez both describe Question Six as a “blunt instrument,” although Stride believes this was unavoidable due to OUSA’s current constitutional setup. He claims that by restoring an earlier version of OUSA’s governance structure, this will reduce any problems associated with such a radical overhaul.

Hernandez recently set up a working party to review OUSA’s governance structure, one of his many election pledges. He told Critic that the working party would wait until the results of the referendum were in before beginning its inquiries. If Question Six passed, Hernandez did not rule out the possibility that the working party would seek to undo the changes before next year, in order to have an unchanged governance structure in 2014. “If Dan’s reforms pass, the working party will have the ability to suggest reversal of the reforms and put this to the student body.

“I think we need to end the see-sawing of the OUSA Constitution … it’s been changing every couple of years because different people try to impose their vision,” Hernandez continued. “It needs to be a settled issue, not something that keeps swinging back and forth. These changes passing means that political battle will have to be fought all over again.”

Stride told Critic that the establishment of a working party was “healthy,” but suggested that the party would fail to see through any necessary governance changes in time for the elections to the 2014 Exec. “Fran has the best of intentions, but I don’t think he’s very adept at getting things done,” he remarked.