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Student Politics

This year I'm Athletic Union Treasurer, voting member of the Sports Zone committee and voting member of HUU council.

For the past 2 council meetings we did not meet quorum. Leading to a chicken and egg problem:

  1. Loads of things are not ratified and a lot of people are not elected to sit on different committees.

  2. Some structural pieces struggled because of this (notably societies).

  3. UEC had a proposal to change the quorum pool 50%+1 of the elected council members instead of 50%+1 of the total possible amount of council members.

  4. UEC had a hung vote 2 vs 2. And chair of UEC made a deciding vote to pass this SO change such that council will vote on this (ratification vote).

  5. At the last minute 2 council members arrive (shortly before the vote).

  6. The council then votes 12 (in favour) vs 10 (against) vs 2 (obstension). Prove me wrong, but if not the last minute arrival of 2 people people council voting would have been a hung vote and the chair of council would have to take deciding vote. As far as I'm aware chair of UEC is currently the chair of council, hence there was a possibility that he would have to take deciding vote on the matter twice.

  7. When we moved on to first item of the agenda "Election Chair of Council". VP Education stood up, interrupted the council and said "If 6 people will walk out now we won't be quorate again". This leaded to massive walk-out and end of council.


I have voted against the ratification of the quorum change. My reasoning here is that such controversial decisions shall only be pushed by unanimous backing from all VP's. If four people have a split vote how do expect 24 people not to have a split vote. In these two votes we had a swing of 3 votes that "represented" 21 000 members of HUU.

Last council showed lack of leadership and team effort from exec team. I did not see "All for one and One for All". Even my beloved HUU president Helen from last year managed to create an image and illusion of united union behind the exec team. And despite the personal differences (and motions of no confidence) IT WORKED.

And VP Education, in my opinion, was not at his behaviour by discouraging people from representing HUU members who voted for us to be in that room. I ran against 2 other candidates to become AU treasurer with 40+ club presidents going through 2 rounds of voting. I'm not going to betray odd 1000 people who join AU each year & run the teams.

After further considerations, I will be running for the chair of council this Monday.

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