Low turnout in last UGM voting

Only one of the motions put forward reached the required level of quorum, meaning the other three automatically failed.

Cem Turhan’s motion for ‘Lobbying for the Heslington East Social Catering Facility’ passed with 282 votes ‘for’ votes, 9 ‘against’ and 6 abstentions, reaching the quorum of 290 votes.

Turhan’s motion called for support from YUSU Officers for the planned catering and social building on the Heslington East campus, which currently only has one café but no bar or cash point.

Turhan, Langwith College chair, wants YUSU to lobby the University to press forward with these plans to provide and improve services for the 1,300 students who will be living there from 1212.

After the motion passed, Turhan said: “It feels great to know everyone supported the motion.”

“I really want people to see how the move to Hes East affects all students, and I hope to negotiate the building of the social/catering space as soon as possible.”

“This should signal to the university to notice that we do not care about profits; we care about our student experience, and they need to start improving the services on Heslington East because the provisions they have at the minute are insufficient and unacceptable,” he added.

The other three motions were all proposed by Peter Spence but failed to reach quorum.

Spence admitted: “It is accepted that turnout at the end of the academic year is always low. I do not think that this was related to the motions, but to the time of year.”

However, he intends to raise the issues again so they can be debated more extensively.

I do not think that this was related to the motions, but to the time of year.
Peter Spence, motion proposer

His first motion called for an annual NUS affiliation referendum, rather than the current three-yearly one, and although this received 90 ‘for’ votes to 84 ‘no’ votes, it failed to reach quoracy and so didn’t pass.

Spence said: “We currently elect NUS delegates annually, but only discuss the NUS as a Union every three years. I believe that a more regular discussion of the issues surrounding the NUS would lead to a student body that is better informed.”

“We could then push for the changes to the NUS that York students want to see more effectively,” he added.

Spence’s motion to repeal YUSU’s Gaza Policy also received more ‘for’ than ‘no’ votes – 125 to 55 – but failed to pass because it did not reach the required quoracy.

Spence argued: “I passionately believe that our Student Union should seek to meet student needs in terms of services and representation. I do not consider foreign policy goals to mesh with these aims.”

“Student Unions do not have a say in foreign policy, nor should they. Having active policy with explicit foreign policy goals makes a mockery of the Union's more legitimate aims.”

The final motion proposed to redefine quorum for Union referenda, wanting to change the current system of all votes at a referendum contributing to the quorum to only taking into account votes which desire change.

This motion also failed, however, receiving 88 ‘no’ votes, 62 ‘for’ votes and 56 abstentions.

Spence said: “There were comments made that the proposal does not match other institutions that use quorum thresholds, yet the change would have brought YUSU's rules into line with those used by the UN Security Council, the Greek Parliament and referenda in Germany, Hungry, Albania, Armenia, Croatia, Latvia, Russia, Belarus, Serbia, Sweden and Wyoming.”

“The system remains one that penalises one side of any debate and results in tactical voting.”

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