Before we get into the nitty-gritty of it all (ie, the 7 or so topics I put up last week), I realised it might be useful to explain a bit about the way the SRC itself is structured. Not many people are familiar with the system used, or why some people have votes and some don't, and the whole mess.
Broadly speaking, there are three groups of people who sit on the UNSW SRC. There are the 'Office Bearers' (OBs), who work in particular areas. The second group is the 'Councillors', who theoretically represent the broad student body. The third group are the 'ex officio' positions, those who sit on the SRC as a result of holding a position in another body.
OBs: There's quite a few. My earlier post went into detail about my views of the people holding those positions. Each Officer position gets one vote on the SRC. So when a position is shared (as it is this year with Enviro, Indigenous and Ethno-Cultural), only one of the co-officers gets to vote. This is usually worked out when they nominate for election, based off who is more likely to be able to get to meetings.
A (sometimes seen as loopholey) exception is Queer. Because the Queer Department is the only one to have specified as having two Officers (female-identifying and non-female identifying), the Queer Department gets 2 votes on SRC.
Including President, there are 13 votes held by OBs
Councillors: (I'll likely write further about this section later on)
On the full SRC, there are up to 14 'councillors'. These are divided between Undergrad and Postgrad, between Kensington and COFA, and (at Kenso) between the two university 'electorates'. The University electorates are Electorate A (Arts, Law and Commerce) and Electorate B (Science, Engineering, Medicine and Built Environment).
12 Councillors represent Kensington. 3 are 'Undergrad A' councillors (ie undergrads from electorate A), 3 'Undergrad B', 3 Postgrad A and 3 Postgrad B.
2 Councillors represent COFA - one undergrad, one Postgrad. I don't believe the COFA councillor positions have ever been filled, since to get that position you first need to be elected to the COFA SRC then get their endorsement to also sit on the full SRC, then get the full SRCs permission to sit there, then get Arc Board's agreement too. An incredibly overblown bureaucratic process, which the COFA SRC so far has shown little patience for (and really, can you blame them?).
Each Councillor receives one vote. For a running tally, there are 27 votes so far accounted for.
Ex-Officio: These people already sit on another committee/board/council/body, and as a result of that position get to also sit on the SRC. Not many ex-officio positions get voting rights - usually the person is there to find out what's going on in SRC world, to offer advice, and (potentially) to take SRC ideas back to their own groups.
The Chair of the Arc Board sits on SRC, with full voting rights. The Chair is elected by the Arc Board, and must be a student representative.
The Convenor of the Student Development Committee (SDC) sits on SRC with full voting rights. The SDC oversee Arc's Volunteer Programs and Club Affiliations.
(The SRC President and Arc Chair also sit on SDC as voters, and the SRC President and SDC Convenor are ex officio voting members of the Arc Board)
29 votes for full Council.
The ARC CEO also holds an ex officio position on SRC, but does not vote.
The Student Representatives on UNSW's University Council (one undergrad, one postgrad) sit on SRC, but do not vote.
The Student Representatives on UNSW Academic Board (four in total, two undergrad, two postgrad) sit in SRC, but do not vote.
The Tharunka Editors are kinda left alone. There's a bit of debate going on as to whether they hold ex officio status on SRC (non-voting) or whether they don't. Legally, they currently do not have automatic entry to SRC meetings. I strongly suspect this is just a case of no-one getting around to putting them back into the Regulations after the merger of the Guild into Arc. The Tharunka editors are invited to submit reports to COuncil, so it seems odd they may not have speaking rights. Also, SRC is the body responsible for maintaining the Tharunka Charter.
So there's (theoretically) 29 voting members of the SRC. For a meeting to take place, at least half of the voting members need to be present - that's of the current voting members, so if a position is vacant then quorum may well be lower.
It is possible to give someone a proxy vote - but that person already needs to have the automatic right to attend meetings. So proxies can only be held by non-voting co-Officers, University Councillors, Academic Board reps or (maybe) Tharunka Editors. Also, crucially, proxies do not count towards quorum.
If anyone's got any questions, feel free to ask. I may well have bungled an explanation, or need to make things more clear.
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Last board meeting the board tasked the SRC President with clarifying the voting positions at COFA to make it much simpler to understand who has the votes and how they can exercise.
ReplyDeleteIt hasn't been finalised yet but a possible structure will be that the COFA SRC nominates any two voting members to be the SRC representatives and they will then receive votes at the SRC.
Is that functionally any different to the current system? Board still needs to sign off on appointments to SRC outside of formal elections I thought. Which can mean a delay between appointment and them actually being able to vote.
ReplyDeleteYeah I think the idea is to remove some of those unnecessary steps so once they decide it's done and doesn't have to come to board.
ReplyDeleteThat would be good. But also increase the quorum requirements. Reckon you can handle it?
ReplyDeleteI say rein in those bludging councillors Mister Thomas.
ReplyDelete