FOR A CHANGE in governance which the Sabbatical Officers have proclaimed as being a ‘legal requirement’, the impending Governance Review is being handled with all the tact of a white supremist in a mosque. Grandly, under its ‘Time 4 (sic) Change’ section, the UCLU website exclaims “it is only right we demonstrate how we act [and] why we act.” This is more telling than the Executive and some Union staff might have hoped – so far any debate on the Governance Review has been obscured by a ‘demonstration’ of childish behaviour, ignorance and downright lies.
The problems with the Governance Review stem right back to when it was originally proposed by the infamous Lucy Gould (ex Finance & Administration Officer) in March 2006. Longstanding readers may recall that Gould utterly refused to back the lecturers union during last years strikes DESPITE unanimous support from all other UK student unions AND a UCLU motion mandating her to do so. Since Gould couldn’t tell democracy from her elbow, she was hardly best placed to give advice on how to encourage it.
It should come as no surprise that in her view UCLU needed to change to respond to “market competition”. She conveniently forgot that, as with any student union, UCLU’s main, nay, ONLY true purpose is to represent the interests of UCL’s student body, a ‘market’ of which it has a 100% share [see CG9 for further info].
But ignorance surrounding the Governance Review, its purpose and why we’re even going through with it hasn’t been limited to Gould; it’s been passed down to the present Sabbatical Officers. At the reconvened Welcome General Meeting at the start of October, Steve Whittle, Clubs Societies and Student Development Officer, stood up and told those assembled that the Governance Review was required under the Charities Act 2006. Whittle was of course, completely wrong and a more astute member of the Union Executive quickly told him so. His reply? “Whatever.” How telling.
Actually the Charities Act only requires charities, such as student unions to register themselves officially. But as an exempt charity, UCLU doesn’t even have to do this – it needs only to define its trustees in its constitution. Put simply, this means there is no legal reason why UCLU should have a Governance Review, something which is hardly made clear on the UCLU website.
Ignorance breeds
In fairness to Steve Whittle, he isn’t the only Sabbatical Officer to suffer from an affliction of ignorance; last year’s Sabbs also believed a Governance Review was required by law and even went as far as telling everyone so in Pi Squared. This begs the question – why has such a huge oversight been allowed to fester? After all, UCLU has been taking legal advice from charity lawyers, Bates Wells & Braithwaite (BWB) who aside from rolling in all the cash they’re earning off the back of SU governance reviews have at least clocked up some experience. The evidence points to a principle staff member working with the Sabbatical Officers that we can’t mention due to Staff Student Protocol (that hideous policy that stops US from commenting on the people WE employ to run OUR union). Bob’s your uncle eh?
So wait a minute, if the Governance Review isn’t required by law, is being handled so badly by the Executive and has all the popularity of a venereal disease – why the hell are we even bothering with it? The answer seems again to lie, at least partly, with several members of UCLU staff. One of these is a freelance consultant who was hired to “push the Governance Review through” as Dominic Tarn (Finance & Administration Officer) perhaps accidentally told The Cheese Grater. Furthermore, one senior member of Union staff (who yet again can’t be named…) has supposedly been getting a little too involved with the Governance Review.
Nobbled
It would be pretty unreasonable to expect staff members to keep quiet over something like the Governance Review - it would after all affect their working environment. However, staff members of the Union are only allowed to give advice on policy – they cannot set it. The fact that a particular staff member threw a wobbly when the Students for Democracy at UCL Union (SDU- CL) ‘Hands off Our Union’ motion was presented at Governance Committee suggests at least one Union employee has more to gain from the Governance Review than he would like to admit. As a tired hack put it; “[Governance reviews in general] allow AMSU (Association of Managers in Student Unions) managers to sit back in their chairs and think ‘We’ve nobbled them.’”
Laughing stock
Although the Executive of UCLU are starting to wake up to the truth, the bad smell surrounding the Governance Review hasn’t gone away. The proposals put together over summer have already caused a backlash and the last few weeks have seen a spate of amendments put forward in order to grasp back some form of credibility. What the Executive at UCLU have failed to notice is that the very public disagreement surrounding the whole affair is making it look a complete joke – amongst UCL students and the wider student community. By following the trail they’ve been guided down since the beginning, the UCLU Executive is helping to implement a change in governance that will ultimately see representation of student opinions marginalised. As an executive officer at LSE lamented “there are a lot of good people that have bought into this.”
And bought they have. The debate over the Governance Review has been far from a gentlemanly one. In response to the growing presence of SDUCL, a group set up to oppose some of the more alarming changes in governance [see CG 13] Sean Clothier (Media & Communications Officer) decided to set up an opposing facebook group… with exactly the same name! Not content with just one dirty trick, when a debate started up online, Jules Mazowiecki (Medical Students & Sites Officer) decided to delete the posts he didn’t agree with. As if this wasn’t enough, a motion to UCL Council by SDU- CL group was ‘forgotten’ about by the utterly useless Dominic Tarn. So much for proving students are mature enough to run their union eh?
Dental treatment
When Lucy Gould kicked this farce off she had visions of following in the footsteps of King’s College SU. But with reforms that can only be described as shit [see CG Issue 9] King’s is hardly an excellent model for student governance. The question is – why do we need to tear up our constitution, at great cost and debate, when all that is needed is to bring the current one up to date? LSE did exactly this and is arguably the most active SU in the UK. LSE joined the London Living Wage Campaign, something that at UCLU would be considered beyond the pale. LSE remains an SU with teeth, if UCLU’s staff and Executive get their own way, our union will be bound, gagged and in desperate need of dentures.