Monday 11-03-2024 - 14:44

Nicole Ireland, Assembly Media Observer

Thursday 7^th March

Chair: Oliver Cunnell

Highlights:

Procedure for Allocating Representatives to NUS Conference 2024

NUS Delegates Election

Update Questions

Motion: Review of Durham SU Elected Officer Structure: Change to Election Rules

Motion: Group Complaint: UCU Industrial Action

Motion: North East SU’s Mayoral Election Manifesto

Routine Business:

Assembly Chair Oliver Cunell opened the meeting, welcoming members, and attendees. The minutes from the last Assembly meeting in November 2023 were approved.

Procedure for Allocating Representatives to NUS Conference 2024

NUS Delegates Election

Assembly believes that Durham SU should decide the process by which representatives to NUS Conference (a student democratic event) should be elected.

Assembly resolves that the newly elected Durham SU Full-Time Officers, alongside the current Durham SU President, will attend NUS Conference in 2024. The attendees would then include recently elected Education Officer Catherine Howells; Community Officer Moitreyo Ganguli; and re-elected Durham SU President, Dan Lonsdale.

The NUS Delegates 2024/25, as voted by Assembly, are Flo Wright, Tom Harrington, Un Lersvidhaya and Will Brown.

Update Questions

A chance for officer teams, committees, and associations to receive questions on their updates.

Durham SU President: Dan Lonsdale:

• Working on housing and communicating with landlords.
• Meeting with the council about HMOs.
• Access.
• Officer restructure.

PG Academic Officer: Freddy Fossey-Warren:

• Working on student voice and a preliminary report for this.
• HR review.
• Decolonisation work.

Undergraduate Academic Officer: William Brown:

• Working on the student voice paper.
• Working on concessions and ensuring students understand the changes to the extension system and working with Durham University Disabilities and Carers Association to make sure the changes to the extensions form meets students’ needs.
• Preparing for any industrial action in order to limit disruption to learning following the election of Jo Grady as UCU General Secretary.
• Campaigning for students to register to vote.
• Working on commuter students and ensuring the Durham experience is accessible to all students, especially those who don’t live in DH1.
• The Durham SU awards was a success on Wednesday (6^th March).

Welfare and Liberation Officer: Deborah Achaempong:

• University Mental Health Charter – visiting days with intensive panels and good conversations.
• Harm reduction work – lack of university guidance on the zerotolerance policy and the policy on controlled drug use.
• Housing – implementing rate your landlord scheme.

Opportunities Officer: Skye Carroll:

• Website Tender – looking at a timeline of improvements and changes to the website and setting up ideas of hubs for major issues and big pieces of work, making the website more useful for students.
• International student work – Global Week was a huge success, and met with Global Strategy Group and International Office with upcoming meetings with ISA.
• Associations work and policy writing, also attending the Association Committee and Trans and Nonbinary Working Policy Group.
• Student groups: happy with the number of grants, personal accounts crackdown and regular meetings which is good, but attendance varies.
• Student groups: approval of new groups, refreshers fair, annual awards, and work with Palatinate on structure, scope and purpose going into the future.
• Attended Strategy Meeting (sustainability) and the Sustainability Fair

Motion: Review of Durham SU Elected Officer Structure: Change to Election Rules:

The proposal suggests that cross-campus ballots are used for the four Faculty Presidents, the International Students Officer, the Liberation Officer and the Societies Officer. This election method will be the same as the full-time Officers, but there’ll be a restriction on which students can stand and vote in the election.

The consultation showed that three communities of students; postgraduate research students, welfare volunteers, and sustainability activists, would not wish to stand in a cross-campus election, and a cross-campus election was not viewed as the best way to engage in dialogue and gain a mandate from those communities as students. An experiment has been proposed and this will be evaluated, with the conclusions shared with Assembly.

The aim is for ‘welfare volunteers’ to elect the Welfare Officer, introducing an inclusive definition of the wide number of students who volunteer in welfare roles across the university. This would include Welfare Officers of student groups, Common Rooms and other student organisations, and general executive members of student groups that support student welfare such as Nightline.

This restriction on voting is intended to allow students who have a stake in student welfare to come together at an event to choose one of their number to represent their interests.

‘Sustainability activists’ will also elect the Sustainability Officer in order to include students who are passionate about or campaigning for or studying sustainability across the university. This would include Officers of student groups, Common Rooms and other student organisations focused on sustainability, and general members of student groups that focus on sustainability such as the Climate Society, the Conservation Society and the Student Energy Society.

The motion passed.

Amendment: Review of Durham SU Elected Officer Structure: Change to Election Rules:

The proposal does not include a requirement that there be an option on all ballots to void the election, usually known as ‘ReOpen Nominations.’

The recommendation has come from the election’s officials on the basis that RON doesn’t progress any democratic exercises, but stalls it instead, and makes future engagement from candidates and voters more difficult.

Assembly was asked to discuss what RON adds to the elections process, and what having the RON option does to help students to express their democratic priorities. The original proposal contains the ‘spoil the ballot’ option, so:

• A vote for this amendment would remove the ‘spoil the ballot’ option and insert RON.
• A vote against this amendment would keep ‘spoil the ballot.’

The amendment passed – RON will still be an option.

Motion: Group Complaint: UCU Industrial Action:

In the regular occurrence of UCU industrial action, Durham SU has supported the right of academic and professional staff to exercise their lawful right to take industrial action.

Durham SU would like to highlight that Durham University has a responsibility to protect students’ academic and consumer rights in anticipation of future industrial action. Durham University hasn’t set out how it will respect customer rights in advance of any future action compared to many other organisations across the UK who have a published policy which says ‘If your experience is disrupted or reduced or other than we promised, this is what we will return to you…’

Assembly believes that nothing prevents Durham University from having a policy position on student consumer rights, making a group complaint possible in order to seek enforcement of students’ consumer rights.

The motion passed.

Motion: North East SU’s Mayoral Election Manifesto:

On May 2^nd, 2024, an election will take place for the new mayor of the North East combined authority (Newcastle, County Durham, North Tyneside, Gateshead, South Tyneside, Sunderland). Following the devolution deal, the combined authority and its new mayor will have increased powers.

Durham SU has been collaborating with other SUs in the North-East (Newcastle Students’ Union, Sunderland Students’ Union, Northumbria Student’s Union) in the lead up to the North-East Mayoral Election. Alongside these SUs, Durham SU intends to present a combined manifesto to the candidates with a list of demands for the new mayor.

Assembly notes that the new mayor will have increased powers in several areas including housing, finance, and transportation. Each of these areas has an impact on students so by working with the three other SUs, a combined manifesto will make the demands more powerful.

The motion passed.