Council to call General Meeting to discuss Higher Education Funding
Meeting must have 200 people attend for it to meet quorum
Imperial College Union Council agreed to a Union General Meeting last Tuesday, only the second General Meeting in five years and the first under the new constitution change.
A General Meeting needs 200 students to attend to meet quorum, and can be called to discuss any topic at any time.
The General Meeting was called to discuss the Higher Education Funding (HEF) policy, which has been bouncing in and out of Council papers since the beginning of term.
The Union wants to decide its stance on HEF, and wishes for this to be representative of the student body majority preference on the matter, however determining what this majority preference is is causing the issue.
The meeting was proposed via a paper submitted by Andrew Tranter, the postgraduate representative for the Faculty of Natural Sciences. The paper highlighted that despite Council agreeing last year to a Referendum to choose between the three options for Higher Education funding, this was then replaced in a following meeting to introduce a “non-binding” survey that is currently open to all students to fill in.
Alex Savell, Deputy President (Finance and Services) is overseeing the survey and the policy. He explained to Felix the reasoning behind the survey. “We ran the survey to try and get a more thought out response generally and find out other opinions on subjects around the topic.
“We want to then make a more detailed policy from this.”
The survey will be analysed and then the policy drawn from these will be presented at the General Meeting. All students present will be able to vote to pass the policy, and add amendments if need be, although these too will have to be voted upon.
Continued Savell, “Once we have a policy, we are going to then come up with a strategy to lobby parliament and parliamentary candidates about our opinion on what is best.
“We aim to do this in the run up to the general elections.”
Said Andrew Tranter on his paper being passed, “I’m glad that council have finally agreed to let students have a vote on what our HE funding policy should be. There’s a massive lack of direct democracy in our union, and hopefully this will go some way to fixing that.”
Scott Heath, Union President during the academic year spanning 2011 to 2012, called the last General Meeting. The Meeting was held in June of that year and was called to discuss alterations to the constitution. The Meeting failed to meet quorum, with attendance numbers failing to rise into double figures.
The debate was then taken back to Council, again which failed to meet quorum, so the decisions were made over email and reported to the following Council meeting.
The meeting will be held on December the 1st in Blackett Lecture Theatre 1, although this time currently clashes with the Royal College of Science Union (RCSU) Science Challenge Launch.
