democratic culture in the guild?

Today Guild Councillors have been protesting the proposal that the trustee-board should circumvent Guild Council. 22 Councillors have already signed a joint letter in protest to the board. Their excellent letter can be found here and is well worth a read.

A proposal from “team 10”, not elected students.

The motion to the trusteeboard is labeled as having come from the “sabbatical officer team”. This is not the case, I do not support it, the decision to send it to the trustee-board was in fact made by team 10. Which is a guild committee  made up of the three senior managers and the sabbs. Several member of the sabbatical officer team were unhappy with the decision.

Guild Council has already decided the matter.

On 15^th of March Guild council was presented with an emergency motion for a new officer disciplinary policy. It was given three options, to one pass it, two defer it or three amend. Guild Council decided to defer it opting to have more time to pass a better policy at the next council rather than rush it and have a bad one implemented in the meantime.

We have seen the damage a bad policy can cause.

The shock today is the revelation that three trustees unhappy with this decision by students at guild council to defer are putting a motion to the unelected trustee board giving the board the same options that guild council had. Surely the decision by guild council should have been the end of it?

What this highlights is we simply don’t have a very deeply rooted democratic culture, in many unions the idea proposing this to the unelected board would be an anathema.

Two questions for the three trustees who proposed the motion.

1. If the three trustees are so unhappy with the decision at guild council and want it reviewed. Then how come they are not petitioning to call an emergency guild council to get a new debate on the subject?

2. Why have the three trustees not even attempted to seek any form of mandate for the decision if they didn’t have the time for an emergency guild council why didn’t they then circulate a letter around guild councillors asking them to sign?