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This article was written by Matt Oliver.
We started by inviting Matt Oliver, Vanbrugh JCRC Chair, to discuss the effects of the UGM on ordinary York students.
In the aftermath on the biggest turn out of any UGM in memory YUSU now finds itself with a number of mandates for forward action, a couple of constitutional amendments, and short a sabbatical officers.
Student politics have always been criticised. Many question the impact of the SU on their daily lives. A more damning indictment is that student politics is run, on all levels, by certain cliques and that those not in the clique do not get a say.
Student politics shouldn’t be on the top of anyone’s list of priorities apart from those paid for it to be so; the rest of us have degrees to maintain.
The enormous turnout in the UGM should serve to remind students that they do get a say in the running of their union, and will hopefully raise student confidence in their own democracy.
For the SU the UGM represents a double-edged sword. It is all very well the students voting in enormous numbers to mandate the Union, but if these mandates are not successfully pursued, the confidence of the students in the impact of their vote will hardly increase. Unfortunately, this is most likely to happen with the motion that gained the greatest numbers of votes in the UGM – the motion for students to graduate at the Minster and not at Central Hall.
The motion only mandates the SU to lobby for change. The SU can lobby with little difficulty, which is what is has to do after the UGM, but the change won’t happen. Why? Because Brian Cantor, the man with the final say, has stated explicitly that York University students will not graduate at the Minster.
In the short-term the greatest threat to the credibility of the SU and the student’s confidence in it comes from the no-confidence vote in Grace Fletcher-Hackwood.
The vote was passed by a fraction of a percent but ultimately it was passed, and for the majority of students I have spoken to, that is the end of it. It is not, though, necessarily the end of it. Grace may yet take the issue to an EGM, to which she has every right.
At an EGM at least 245 people have to attend for the vote to be quorate. The voting is decided there by a hand count. This means that any such vote would be decided by a much smaller number of people – unless the EGM was to be held in central hall.
Furthermore, not everyone would be able to attend a meeting, nor would they necessarily place it high enough on their list of priorities to do so, and rightfully so. Student politics shouldn’t be on the top of anyone’s list of priorities apart from those paid for it to be so; the rest of us have degrees to maintain (allegedly).
The student vote is most active when it can vote at its own leisure and this is easily proven by the fact that as recently as November 2005 none of the motions passed because they didn’t reach quoracy.
Ultimately Grace has the right to an EGM, but it would be called by another Union official calling for another vote, hoping for a reversal. If the perception is that democracy can be sidestepped if it’s not desirable then the credibility of every elected official in the Union would be damaged.
The suggestion that someone who sought and won election and later didn’t like the result of another democratic vote so tried to change it is perhaps unfair, but it’s an accusation that could and would be made.
As long as Grace (and hence the union that elected her) is open to such accusations then the confidence of the student body will be weak.
The issue is no longer as to whether she should be no confidenced or not: it is whether challenging the decision to no confidence her is damaging to the Union.
Finally, it is Grace’s colleagues, the other sabbatical officers, who would suffer the most should an EGM be called, for these are the most high profile of all SU officers. Other accusations may have been made in the past. These people are working incredibly hard for the Union that elected them, and that should not be forgotten.
Whatever else occurs following the UGM the students should have confidence in their union, because under the furore created by the other debates a motion in the UGM proposed by Jo Carter, the AU President, passed with an absolute landslide. When the Grace issue, and the graduation at the Minster, have been settled, it is this motion passing and the work being done behind it, that may well have the biggest long term, positive impact on the students at the university.
Well it seems that Grace doesn't want to have an EGM after all so that's okay!
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