A proposal to amend the Union’s governing documents titled Number of committee positions per person, was presented by Ana Boikova, the Activities & Engagement Officer, at the first Union Executive this year.
The amendment acted to formalise and revise a now lapsed policy, with changes to the maximum number of leadership positions a student can hold.
The lapsed policy set the limit at 10, whilst the amendment will be raising the cap to 14 to allow for network and student officer positions, as well as defining an exemption process.
The proposal passed with 11 votes in favour and one abstention.
Notably, there was no mention of Project Leader positions for Student Led Projects, which are community outreach programmes run by UCL students and are considered leadership roles in line with Principal Officers on the Union’s internal systems. Perhaps they forgot.
Boikova argued that formalising the policy would ensure societies are run to “a good level”, adding that members of inactive societies have historically asked for refunds on their membership fee.
She also cited welfare reasons to introduce the amendment. The original policy states that it would act such that “students aren’t pressured into taking up more committee positions than they want to”.
Boikova claimed that if one individual took many committee positions, they would be “taking opportunities from other people”.
Of the 2072 positions offered in the Leadership Race last year, 433 were left unfilled to be offered in the term 3 by-election.
The policy was criticised on several fronts. In particular, Trans Officer Mia Vautier argued that if the policy was targeted at improving welfare, then 14 is far too high a limit.
She conversely argued that because the limit is so high, and since all exemptions have insofar been granted, then why implement it at all?
The Activities Officer made it clear that she was in favour of allowing more positions, stating several times, “I want people to have choice [to be on many committees]”, despite being the one who brought the policy forward.
Disabled Students’ Officer Danilo Paganelli argued that even small and infrequent events from largely inactive societies make a positive difference to the student experience.
Paganelli said: “I am on the committee of 29 societies/networks and I am president of 11 of them… only one of them was contested and that was my Officer role.”
It was revealed at the meeting that last year, the two individuals who had exceeded the limit set out in the policy emailed the A&E Officer to apply for exemptions, and that both were granted.
Some might question the point of such changes to the governing documents. If the vast majority of students will never get near the limit, and those that do are granted exemptions with a 100% success rate, then it seems the impacts of this policy are negligible, with the only real detriment being the time we spend discussing it.
