A group of York students has won the opportunity to have their very own I-phone application developed after winning The App Challenge final, held at the Ron Cooke Hub on Wednesday, January 18.
YUSU Welfare officer Bob Hughes has warned students to be vigilant after a student loans phishing scam has been revealed.
Her Majesty the Queen will be visiting York on Maundy Thursday, 5th April, as part of the 800th anniversary of York’s Charter for the traditional “Royal Maundy” ceremony.
A flood caused by a heating system “failure” forced the university IT services to shut down many essential systems on Sunday night, causing problems for many students on the eve of their exams and assignment due-dates.
The UGM Motion for grant allocation for clubs and societies has passed with 291 votes.
Student Activities Office Nick Scarlett proposed the motion of reforming the “undemocratic” system which allocates grants to our societies and sports club funding.
Scarlett’s motion is to pass over the responsibility of grant allocating to the recently formed Societies Committee, elected by representatives from 9 categories of societies. They will deal with all societies that obtain a grant of more than 5% of the overall budget.
The motion not only attracted copious amounts of media attention but also led to an hour and a half long debate during the UGM. Head of the Debating society Chris Montanaro, took the lead of the opposition to this motion, and claimed that the system Scarlett proposed is also undemocratic because the Societies Committee is not elected by the student body whereas the Sabbatical Officers are.
Montanaro said the system in place at the moment is “meritocratic” and that Scarlett as an elected sabbatical officer can make an “independent and impartial” judgement over what societies “should merit in terms of resources.”
The motion even drew the notice of former YUSU campaigns officer Chris Etheridge, who set up a Facebook page in an attempt to stop people for voting in favour of the motion. Since the meeting he has sent out an apology claiming that he: “was particularly infuriated by the motion at the time and thus acted irrationally.” His message read: “I hope you will accept my apology regarding the email which was sent round regarding YUSU's current UGM motion on society funding the other day.”
The motion in question has been supported by other YUSU sabbatical officers Tim Ngwena, Ben Humphrys and Sam Asfahani and states that the existing system is “prone to nepotism.” According to Scarlett, present and future YUSU officers can allocate a large grant to a society or club for which they have a preference for.
However many of the main YUSU funded media outlets on campus are angered by the passing of the motion. York Vision Editor Daniel Goddard told the Yorker: “Naturally I'm disappointed the motion passed. However I'm still adamant that there's not really support for it. I don't think motions where only 46% of votes cast were for it, have a mandate to become active policy.”
Goddard also highlighted an anomaly in the voting system: “If the 241 people who had voted against the motion did not vote at all, the vote wouldn't have met quoracy and the motion wouldn't have passed. Effectively everyone who voted against the motion, helped it pass, which is quite frankly ridiculous.”
University of York student radio Station Manager Oliver Julian also has problems with the motion: “It lacks clarity; it seems that it has not been made clear enough about what the exact function of Societies Committee will be in regard to society finances.” Though going on to tell the Yorker: “I also see the problems raised by other societies about their own funding and I believe that any way that URY or any other society can justify what they do to receive the grant they do as a good thing and that they should indeed be able to do this - whether that be to the Student Activities Officer or the Societies Committee.”
Overall 291 people voted in favour of the motion, 241 against and 97 abstained. Goddard suggests that many have not accepted the outcome though: “There will most probably be a counter-motion proposed at the next UGM to reverse this policy.”
You must log in to submit a comment.
