The mystery of the disappearing motion of no confidence
Whatever happened to the motion of no confidence in Jim ‘leader of the rightwing [sic] conspiracy’ Hunkin, reported in the last issue of The Cheese Grater?
Vanishing Trick
As usual in Gordon Street, chaos reigns. Usually, the Finance & Administration Officer would handle motions of no confidence. But nobody was quite sure who should deal with a motion of no confidence in the F&A Officer himself. So... nobody really informed Hunkin he was facing the motion – the only reason he knew was that he had happened to be in the sabbatical suite when it was handed in. Oops.
It was agreed to hold the EGM needed to consider the motion after the Easter break, with the controversial Chair of governance committee, Samantha Godwin, given the task of organising and publicising it. And then? Well, then the motion pulled off its vanishing trick.
Withdrawn
The day that the EGM was supposed to take place, Godwin still hadn’t publicised the meeting (or replied to emails asking her to organise it). Hunkin turned up to governance committee to ask what was going on. Turns out that Jo Casserly, fervent proposer of the motion, had... er, decided to withdraw it, not wanting it to be considered in exam term. So why hadn’t Hunkin been told? Indeed, why had nobody been told? A real mystery...
Referenda Mindbender
The referendum on the controversial military ban as promised on the front page of the London Student before last looks like it’s disappeared as well. Has the (thinly veiled) hand of SDUCL struck again?
Although the motion calling for a referendum was passed by Union Executive committee, Godwin pushed a ruling through Governance Committee saying it couldn’t happen because it had violated standing orders.
To make a decision at Exec you need three sabbs and five non-sabbatical offic- ers to be there. Governance Committee decided that Hunkin wasn’t a sabbatical officer for this occasion (see ‘How UCL Union works’), and – thanks to some beautiful mathematical gymnastics – that even if he had counted as a sabb, there still wouldn’t have been enough people at the meeting to make its decisions binding: Godwin, although in the room, was refusing to participate. Of course, this numbers-problem could have been quite easily solved if the other sabbs, Sean, Olivia and Jules, had actually turned up to the meeting they’re paid to attend...
Voices in the wilderness...
The ruling also decided that the Exec couldn’t call a referendum on an issue that Withdrawn Voices in the wilderness might end up reversing Union policy – which officers are supposed to uphold. It’s a rather contrived point – given the outcry from the general student body over the ban, one might think officers were best serving their constituents by, erm, letting them have a voice?
To top it all off, you could question whether Governance Committee even has the power to overrule Exec like this, when within the Union’s committee structure they’re on the same level. Sadly, in UCLU politics, it’s now the boring technicalities which count, even if they’re what’s crippling true democratic representation.
