— FOR: Will Langdale explains why the Governance Review will be so good for students
The next few years are going to be fantastic. Governance is the single biggest enabler for student bodies of the past few years. Council has been stagnant for so long that it’s hard to get anything done, and the Open Policy Forum attracted, give or take some for exceptional circumstances such as the Jay Webster controversy, exactly the same students that went to Council. Why should politics be so hard to understand, and so hard to get into? The Governance Review gives us a breath of fresh air; no longer will every person who is student-political need to know every event and every finicky detail about the constitution, the elected representatives and their goals. By splitting everything into zones, a person who wants to change our stance on sport can go to the Sport Zone, which will take those changes to the Council and turn it into policy. If someone wants to change welfare they can go to the Welfare Zone, and so on. The days of sitting through long, largely irrelevant meetings just to change the smallest thing are over – and this was a large problem that the common student was forced to overcome to get involved. At last we can break the political apathy in this country from the place where politicians take flight: university. Finally we have a way for any student to approach a sympathetic political ear, and have a real chance to vocally affect the body that silently affects them.
Will Langdale
— AGAINST: Turville Young highlights the problems of change
It’s not that the new constitution is inherently flawed – it’s more that it isn’t sturdy enough to withstand the brief and flighty opinions of students. One might ask why the constitution’s ability to be modified easily is a bad thing – surely it becomes a more representative document. The problem? Students want to change everything. Students – especially political students – want to be rebellious and indulge ridiculous fringe ideas that might work on paper, but that the wider student body has no interest in. Under the new constitution the UEC, a body made up of four elected sabbatical students, the President, and four external trustees, can change any bye-law without referendum. This body can radically change from year to year, and the Union needs to present a united face whatever the beliefs of its leaders – the purpose of a constitution. The four external trustees are appointed by the sabbaticals and in a year where these students are politically extreme we could see some very unrepresentative amendments.
Of course, this is an unlikely sequence of events, especially considering the scrutiny body that oversees the changes to bye-laws is Council; another group that is elected by students and is made up of eight people who are unlikely to put their politics before student welfare. Sabbatical officers don’t tend to agree with each other’s politics as they’re elected on their individual issues rather than their political bents. Beyond
that, all changes to bye-laws must be posted on hullstudent.com and if 25 people object they must go to referendum. Only in a year with massively biased representatives and a horribly apathetic student body could this happen.
Turville Young
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