It appears that I’m doing this every three weeks deliberately – I assure you this isn’t the case! I’ve just been very busy and doing lots of stuff.
Week 6 was RUSU’s Money Week – and I helped out as much as I could with the campaign. This included running a session of ‘R U Ready… to be a treasurer’, heading up the Campaign for South East Weighting and doing stuff on Volunteers Hours to show how much they give to the campus ‘economy’ (if it can be called this). The campaign was a huge success – one of the biggest pushes the Union has done in recent years and one that really did get the Union into halls through the finance talks and encouraged the student community to participate. I’d like to thank all staff and Executive who took part in the campaign and a special thanks to Jenna who co-ordinated the whole lot fantastically.
Last time I reported that 207 people were on MASIV just before the deadline – in fact 230 people signed up in the end! What’s more, we’ve now run training sessions that have seen 150 of them prepared to take part in the module, get their portfolios together and get accredited. The more I think about this the more I grin.
A lot of my time’s been sorting out issues with Spark and the role of editorial independence of content opposed to independence of the Union – and what I mean by that is not the Executive but the membership. My feeling is that student media should not be the Executive’s, just as 3Sixty should not be the Executive’s nightclub. But it should belong to the membership, be responsible to them and have a duty of care to inform them properly and uphold the policies that they, the membership, set through the democratic processes. Editorial Independence is the ability to discuss the policy of the membership, not ignore it, and editorial independence is a privilege given to the Student media by the membership through its constitution and regulations, not a right of it. If it were a right then all Students Union’s would have it – not just Reading. The Executive have a duel role – fulfil their portfolios and uphold the administration of the democratic processes of the Union as its trustees. I know this view – that all parts of the Union should be accountable in some way to the membership is not one shared by everyone – but I do believe in a democratic process and the power of the group over the individual. I refuse to apologise for this. My review of the Constitution and Regulations in line with the Governance review will hopefully clear up some of these misconceptions and grey areas and put the governance of the Union back in the hands of the students.
Governance review – I’d have liked to have done much more work on this recently, especially in light of tomorrow’s Student Council. The edited highlights of the plans are…
1) Sabbatical Officers to remain as they are
2) In addition to these trustees 2 internal, non-portfolio trustees (i.e. full time students who have to look after the business, legal and democratic side of the Union, but not a specific area like ‘Education’ or ‘Welfare’)
3) Two external, non-portfolio trustees interviewed and selected by the Sabbatical officers and scrutinisers. Suggestions for this could be ex-sabbaticals of RUSU, people with a background in the education or charity sector and so on
4) Replace Part Time Officers who currently have an untenable position as trustees and scrutinisers of trustees and replace them with a team of 6 whose remit is to make sure the trustees are acting properly for the Membership
5) Change the role of Council to a policy setting and campaigning organisation not a scrutinising one (a role it is unable to fulfil currently)
6) Change the structures of meetings and the constitution and regulations accordingly
As an Officer, my main focus is political. I’m keeping an eye on two campaigns at the moment – the first is the Participate campaign (look out for Pink Postcards and read the article in next week’s Spark) and the South East Weighting campaign. Many people (about 500) signed the petition to Bill Rammell during Money week and I hope the pressure remains.
That’s all for now…
Nickers
4 comments:
Nick, I know I'm not supposed to contact you, but I figure a public forum is acceptable - apologies if not.
"Editorial independence is a privilege given to the Student media by the membership through its constitution and regulations, not a right of it. If it were a right then all Students' Unions would have it – not just Reading."
Most Students' Unions papers do have it - or at the least all the ones I've been speaking to in the past week.
Freedom of the Press (as Dicey wrote in the 19th Century) is a key part of democracy:
"Freedom of discussion is, then, in England little else than the right to write or say anything which a jury, consisting of twelve shopkeepers, think it expedient should be said or written."
Without it, accountability, and by extension democracy, will crumble.
If you were an external newspaper funded by external sources then that would be perfectly legitimate, however you are not and therefore its not quite true.
All papers are read by lawyers to check that they cannot be sued, which is one of the reasons Spark is proof read. The fact that you are funded by the Union means you have to abide by Union policies, now in my view the current problem is down to interpretation of the word "significant" in the constitution, which also under the constitution Dave's interpretation is the one that counts.
If you want to be truely free you need to be either externally funded or the editors would have to be on the board of trustees under the new proposed system or the president under the current one. That way if something goes wrong they are personally responsible. Everyone is responsible to someone else even the press. You are responsible to the people who buy the paper but also the people who own the paper, in this case the Union.
Hmmm - that's my feeling about it. This is a long conversation and might be better placed on the forums or in person?
Hello Nick!
Took me a while to join the dots and work out what MASIV was for a moment there... Anyway, I'm very glad to hear it's going well.
I have been hearing about the Spark woes, which sound like a mild variation on the Spark woes that happen every year...
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