In Appointments We Trust

During Tuesday’s Union Council meeting, one of the tabled papers proposed the ratification of two student trustees who were appointed last term.

The paper outlined the process that was used to vet the 10 candidates that applied for the two vacancies. During the Council meeting it transpired that part of the process involved the Union’s Managing Director (a full-time member of staff) selecting a long-list of candidates using criteria (ratified by the Board of Trustees) and phone interviews.

During the meeting, several members of Council raised the point that a student representative would have been a more appropriate person to screen 6 of the candidates before interviews took place.

Additional points were raised by Council members concerning the fact that they were being asked to vote on the ratification of the chosen appointed student trustees without meeting or interviewing them beforehand. Eventually the paper was passed by Council, ratifying the appointment of John Winters and Tian Wei Chew.

The Board of Trustees is the highest authority in the Union Governance structure and oversees the Union through the Managing Director and the Senior Management Team. The board comprises the five Sabbatical Officers, four student trustees (half of which are appointed by the Trustee Board and Council, and the others are elected during the Big Elections), one Alumni Trustee and four ‘external’ or ‘lay’ trustees, one of which, Professor Dame Julia Higgins (Dept. of Chemical Eng.) is the Chair of the Board and the other two are either an alumnus or a member of College staff.

A member of Council told Felix: “It seems to me that the appointment process gives power to a very small number of people, not all of whom are elected by students. The shortlist of 4 was drawn up by a lone member of staff, and the panel to decide the final two Trustee nominations was manned by only two elected union members… Union Council faced a very hard decision, where it had the names of two people… who it had absolutely no information about. This is neither fair on Union Council, the student population it represents, nor indeed the Student Trustees themselves… These processes need reviewing before any future appointments.”

However, last year’s Union President Paul Beaumont, an instrumental part of the Union’s constitutional reform has supported the process, saying “TB [Trustee Board] has always been (since it was formed) majority students, and majority elected. It still is. The appointed positions are there to allow the Board to recruit expertise to the Board that it is otherwise missing… it would be good to appoint people who have different insights into the University and Union. This is basically the good check-and-balance for getting the Board as “representative” as possible (even though it’s not meant to necessarily be a “representative body” – that’s Council)... It is not an election: The process is specifically a recruitment exercise (to achieve the aims I mentioned above), and thus only the nominated members are presented.”