Execrable - 25

It seemed at first as though the meeting would be crazily brief: quorum was only just met, and Ros needed to leave in seven minutes. Needless to say, Critic was stoked.

An hour in, Ros was frantic, and Imogen subbed in for her. By this point Critic was a lot less stoked. Somebody asked whether a standing committee could be delegated authority, to which James retorted “I’m not doing that just because people can’t be bothered showing up.”
   In light of the previous week’s realisation that the OUSA Constitution is more than a little fucked up, James presented the Exec with his proposed changes. If passed in the online referendum next month these changes will alter the structure yet again, replacing “forums” with regular SGMs with a quorum of 100 students. The SGMs would serve two purposes. Firstly, internal policy would be voted on, and secondly, motions on external policy would be debated. At the SGM, students would vote on whether the motion should be put to an online vote with quorum of five percent required to pass a motion at an online vote. But don’t worry, even if the Exec can’t get their motion passed at an SGM, they can just bypass the whole convoluted procedure and call a referendum anyway. They do know best after all.
   In other words, what was already an incredibly fucked up process will be more confusing still, and it looks like the International Socialists will remain the only people who care about/attend SGMs. Although the proposed constitutional changes were ultimately passed, the general atmosphere was more “we’re screwed if we don’t” than “man I love this policy.” 
   The Exec went on to consider motions from students. Harriet and Claire weren’t at all keen on allowing the motion “Should OUSA formally apologise to NZUSA,” thinking it would pre-empt their other questions about whether OUSA should stay with NZUSA. Walker said wisely, “Just because we accept a motion doesn’t mean we endorse it.” Ros noted it would look bad if the motion was removed, as it wasn’t repetitive or stupid (unfortunately the Exec ran out of time to put the motion “That the Exec supports flooding the stadium for pirate ship battles” to an online vote). The rest of the Exec agreed, and voted to keep the motion in. With that, the meeting was abruptly cut short as Imogen ran out the door. Hooray.
Posted 2:00am Monday 11th October 2010 by Julia Hollingsworth.