Wednesday 18-04-2018 - 11:38

Rhodri Sheldrake Davies reports on Assembly from 13 March.

Before Assembly began, statements were read regarding the resignations of Matthew Gibson as Assembly chair and Laura Tidd as Undergraduate Academic Officer.

Statement from UCU

Megan Croll gave a statement from the University and College Union regarding the recent strikes, UCU thanked students for support on pickets and their solidarity, and noted that more than 100 DUCU pickets had been held and that success had already been made with ACAS.

Officer Reports

Megan Croll – SU President

Megan gave an update on the cost of Durham work she had been doing including the SU’s new push for a wider range of tiered bursaries. Regarding the Senate and Council, she updated Assembly on the vote on the 17^th college, with the University conceding that it had raised expectations but ultimately choosing to vote to wait for a donor, despite Megan’s objection.

On UCU, she explained that she would be working hard to ensure that students are not impacted in terms of exams and summatives, and would be working closely with the University to coordinate preparative measures. On refunds, she said, at this time it was not clear whether this would be possible, and would have to be discussed once strikes had ended – UCU had urged that students closely pursue this as an option.

Charlie – Opportunities

Charlie briefed on his work to do with active citizenship and linking into a UK wide network. He raised the point of the National Society Awards, noting that Durham SU would love to support its societies in applying for them and urging societies to approach him for more details. On fees, he said that the University has now begun to recognise this as an issue and that more focus is increasingly being put on extra fees outside of purely those for college

Rosa – Welfare and Liberation

She briefed on good progress being made in terms of training for peer supporters and spoke about how she planned to roll this out to welfare on a wider scale. Similarly, she briefed on the close work she has been doing with the Police and University to design an incidents map to help combat sexual assault in communities.

Motion 1 – Ratification of the Women’s Association

The first motion regarded the ratification of the SU Women’s association.

The association would focus especially on women’s welfare, and had already set up structures, meetings and campaigns priorities regarding this. The motion received a short opposition. The motion ultimately passed with 1 against and 1 abstention.

Motion 2 – Ratification of the Working Class Students’ Association

The proposition for this moment noted that there is currently a serious issue with working class accessibility and representation in the Durham campus. As an ‘elite’ university, the current representation of those from a wider range of working backgrounds, who often lack cultural and economic capital has led to issues for many students. For this reason, the association would work to create a student-led movement for liberation and raising the voices of the marginal working class people of Durham.

Questions of clarification were asked regarding the exact focus of welfare and liberation, the commitment to non-politicised conduct of the association and the exact role of the association, which argued it would work for liberation through focus groups, discussions, campaigns and the provision of resources to those unable to access them.

Though Assembly was evidently split on the issue, the motion was passed.

Motion 3 – Academic Affairs representation

This policy would reduce the number of academic reps sitting on Assembly from nine down to three to clear up academic representation and encourage better attendance.

Opposition was made on the grounds that it was questioned to what extent this would help and whether this was appropriate considering the fact that this seemed to be more an issue of attendance and less one regarding actual representation.

The motion ultimately passed unanimously.

Motion 4 – Trustees Report

A final motion was passed regarding the Durham Trustees report, available online.

The report’s most significant element also includes part of the University’s routine evaluation of SU governance and a regularisation of the SU’s governance policy.

This passed unanimously.

Questions of Officers

A range of questions were asked to officers regarding departmental issues with the strikes and whether the Union’s stance on the strikes would change depending on how much students were disrupted.