Council cancelled - will the DPFS role be renamed?

After a low turnout at Tuesday’s Council meeting, the session was abandoned since they lacked the quorum level of attendance required for binding votes.

While the missing students may have been excused by the pull of examinations or projects, the Council body missed the chance to pass several papers, including the Safe Space Policy – a policy aiming to create an environment in Union venues that all members, staff and visitors can feel safe in, a paper discussing the support provided by the Union for halls of residence located further from South Kensington, and a paper about changing the name of the Union’s Deputy President (Finance & Services, DPFS) role, prompted by changes to the Sabbatical Officer roles last year.

The current DPFS, Kieron Creagh submitted a paper to Tuesday’s Council session about the topic in which he seemingly dismissed the recommendations of last year’s Council and Sabbs and proposed that this year’s Sabbatical Officers carry out a(nother) review of the sabbatical roles with a look to make their own recommendations for next year’s sabbatical team.

As well as not providing a thorough and balanced discussion about the role’s name change in the proposed paper, or providing much reference to any of the data collected by last years Sabbs, the DPFS also submitted the paper 4 working days after the deadline, just one day before the Council session.

While the paper was not discussed in Council, due to the committee being three members short of quorum, giving the fact that the next Council session takes place on 11th February there will not be enough time to discuss the paper before the election cycle begins, effectively achieving the aims of the paper.

The idea to change the name of the DPFS stemmed from a paper discussed at Union Council last year, in which the Sabbatical Officers’ remits were expanded. At the time the previous DPFS stated that he believed the role was able to expand into it’s additional responsibilities, which included student development, accreditation and the postgraduate experience, however, it was felt that this might need to be accompanied by a change in the name of the role to include the wider remit.

While several names for the DPFS were suggested, including DP Community & Development and DP Services and Development, DP Finance, Services and Develpoment. There were several reservations with changing the name of the role, including: discouraging candidates to apply, misrepresenting the position to potential future employers and changing the title of somebody who had already been elected into the position. The decision was instead deferred to the January Council session this year, before the Big Elections nominations.

In response to the article, the DPFS said: “...Pending the role review now included in our wider Democracy Review, I’m confident this role next year will be accurately described as ‘Finance & Services’...”