Consultation on proposals to reform the democratic structure of the Guild of Students 

February 2^nd 2012 

Introduction

This consultation is the latest step in the process of introducing democratic reform to the Guild. We kickstarted the idea back in September with the first Ideas Forum, which demonstrated a new, roundtable approach to doing democracy. This has inspired us to build on the work done by Jon Antoniazzi and Simon Cameron last year in the production of the “Guild Assembly” model, which has been circulating since November 2011.

But the new Assembly is only part of the proposal. We also want to see a massive change in how we encourage and support democracy – new structures are all very good, but if they don’t have the backing and support from the Guild, then they’re going to mean very little.

At a meeting on February 1^st, we discussed a whole range of ideas that people brought forward relating to democratic reform. We’ve taken a number of them on board and integrated them with our proposals, and this is what we’re making available today.

We want to emphasise that this is not the final step: once we’ve received and processed your responses, we’ll formally publish the proposals and these will be brought to the next General Meeting – see below for more on where we go from here.

We look forward to hearing your ideas, taking them in and trying to improve our democracy!

Other information

Questions

If you’ve got questions on anything at all to do with the process, please email union.president@aber.ac.uk and we’ll do our best to answer them.

Welsh translations

As the proposals are still very much a working document, we’re still working on the original in English. Once the consultation responses are in, we’ll publish the final English and Welsh versions together.

Where do we go from here?

After the consultation responses are in and we’ve taken them into account, we’ll have the final proposal published in English and Welsh.

We’ll then hold an open meeting where anyone who wants to can come and go through the final proposal, line by line. This idea was suggested at the Shape the Change meeting and we hope that those people who have a particular interest will come along to this meeting where full explanations can be given for some of the finer points in the proposals. We hope to use this opportunity to allow specific concerns to be raised and dealt with, so as to not bog down the following General Meeting.

We’ll then take the original proposal, plus any amendments that come out of the line-by-line meeting, to the General Meeting on February 21^st, where there will be another chance to debate the proposals, and any amendments to them. At the General Meeting, we’ll be proposing a motion that will require us to hold a referendum on the proposals at the same time as the Guild elections in March. It’s the result of this referendum that will formally enact the proposal.

After this, the bits of the proposal that amend the Constitution will have to be approved by the University. Although we can’t predict how long this will take, we envisage that this will be done as soon as possible after the referendum, allowing the new democratic structure to come into effect for the start of the next academic year.

Proposed timescale

8 February                             Deadline for responses to this consultation

15 February                          Publication of the final version of the proposals

(including Welsh translation)

17 February                          Line-by-line review of the final proposals

21 February                          General Meeting

7-8 March                              Referendum

Consultation questions

We’d appreciate all responses to be emailed to union.president@aber.ac.uk, with the subject line “Democracy consultation response”, by February 8^th (replying in the body of the email is fine). Feel free to reply in English or Welsh.

Q1. Do you agree with the proposed amendments? Which bits do you think are good?

Q2. Are there bits you think we’ve missed, or bits you think could be better?

Q3. Are there bits you disagree with? How could they be improved?

Q4. How do you think we should incorporate liberation movements into the new structure?

“Liberation movements” is the term used to describe groups and individuals who represent and advocate for certain groups in society who are often disadvantaged or overlooked. The term can have a wide range of meanings, but usually includes: women; disabled people; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people; and black people and people from other minority ethnic groups. In the context of students’ unions, the term can often also include mature students, postgraduates and international students.

Q5. Other than these proposals, what else do you think we could do to help encourage democracy at the Guild?

Attachments:

Democracy Referendum Proposal	[ ]	281 Kb
New Bye-Law 7 Guild Assembly	[ ]	250 Kb
Bye-Law 7A Membership of The Guild Assembly	[ ]	203 Kb
Bye Law 9 - Elections	[ ]	208 Kb
Bye Law 9A - Elections to Offices	[ ]	212 Kb
Regulation 5 - Halls Representatives	[ ]	216 Kb
Regulation 6 - Town Representatives	[ ]	254 Kb
Regulation 7 - Block of 15	[ ]	170 Kb
Amendments (post shape the change)	[ ]	458 Kb