The Democratic Structures and Officer Review started 6 months ago, and is coming to an Emergency Guild Council on Thursday 13th March for Guild Councillors to approve a new model before it goes to cross-campus referendum in April/May. I was part of the project team that engaged students thoughts on the Guild as it currently organises and a consultant drew a possible model for improvement out of the research they had done. It may seem strange that the project team are now proposing amendments when we were involved throughout the whole process, and I would agree that its not a great situation. However, sitting on the project team didnt give us much agency over the process at all - I remember only ever being asked to decide whether to approve the questions being put forward to survey and to decide what the parameters should be set at within the model for quoracy and approval. We were extremely limited on time, and this wasnt made easier by certain members of staff reducing the amount of time we had to read through important documents: we were sent the initial draft of the report on Friday at 6pm to come back with feedback at 10am on Monday, although the consultant had sent the report a week earlier. As a non-sabb also doing my degree, and with no fixed or paid hours, I found this extremely inaccessible and intrusive on my time, and it strongly limited my ability to come back with good or constructive responses. The project team were also limited in our input for how the focus groups would be formed: for example we were looking to engage association members to gage their views on accessibility and inclusivity at the Guild, and instead the consultant and staff invited people who define into those groups as representatives of the associations (rather than active members of the campaigning groups). I personally feel that the view of many women on campus is likely to be different to those aware of the extent of structural oppression at this University and fighting to change that. Please have a read through of Toms summary here and of the amendments the project team are putting forward, and dont hesitate to get in touch with ideas or questions!
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 09:03:26 +0000
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