Meeting:2013/12/05/EGM

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[[|]] | Current Meeting:

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Meeting (to be) held from 18:45-19:15 on 2013/12/05 in Zepler CLS Lecture Room

 

This AGM was called by the Secretary (Schmendrick). At least 24 hours notification was given by email to the society mailing lists.

Purpose of EGM

Copied verbatim from the official notification:

There are three issues that will be discussed and voted upon:

   Item 1) Amending the society constitution to reflect the updated SUSU structure.

   Item 2) Amending the society constitution to create a formal procedure for the 
           society accepting external sponsorship.

   Item 3) Only to be discussed if Item 2 passes, or a formal process is deemed unnecessary. 
           Discuss and vote on accepting external sponsorship from ConnectUs.

Conduct of the EGM

Copied verbatim from the SUWS Constitution:

Voting: 
   Every full member of the Society present at a general meeting shall be entitled 
   to one vote upon every voting matter. Only full members are entitled to vote and 
   no proxy votes shall be accepted for any purpose.

Quorum: 
   The quorum at all meetings shall be 10% of the full members.
   
Minutes: 
   The Secretary of the Society shall keep minutes of all general meetings, which 
   shall be made available to the Societies Officer and the Societies Department Committee.

and:

At the EGM, no business other than that specified in the written statement shall be discussed.

Chairperson

The Secretary shall serve as Chairperson, unless a full member present feels that a conflict of interest is apparent.

(See Point of order 1).

If this occurs, then replacement candidates shall be nominated by the full members present, and then from the nominees, one shall be elected. Any full member shall be eligible for nomination, including the Secretary.

Quorum

• According to the official list on the SUSU admin site there are 34 members of SUWS, including both full and associate members. Consequently if there are more than 3.4 full members present at the meeting, we would be quorate (the actual number required is smaller, as it should not include associate members).
  • Full membership is defined in the constitution as:

Full membership is open to any registered student.

Amendments

Copied verbatim from the SUWS Constitution:

a. The Society committee at a General Meeting shall first approve amendments
to the constitution.

b. The committee shall hold a vote to pass any constitutional changes. This 
shall be done by ballot or a show of hands, at the discretion of the Chairperson.
Should there be a tie, the Chairperson may vote.

Accordingly, the following procedure will be followed for each amendment under consideration:

1. The committee present at the meeting will vote as to whether to approve putting the amendment to a vote.

   If the committee present approves:

2. The proposer (in all of these cases, the Secretary) will describe why he feels the amendment should be passed.
3. An opportunity will be given for a member to present an opposing viewpoint.
4. A vote will be held amongst all the full members present at the meeting.
5. The committee will vote to ratify the vote of the members. (See Point of order 3).

Proceedings of the EGM

Point of order 1

Selection of a Chairperson

• Does any member object to the Secretary acting as Chair?

Point of order 2

Quorum

• How many members are present?
• Is this greater than, or equal to, 3.4?

Point of order 3

Clarification of the procedure for making constitutional amendments.

• Do we believe that stage 5 is necessary?

Agenda item 1

The purpose of the following amendments is to update our constitution to reflect changes to the structure of SUSU. These are in accordance with [1] and [2].

Amendment 1

The following changes shall be made to the constitution:

   i.  All references to "Societies Officer" shall be
       changed to "Student Groups Officer".

   ii. All references to "Societies Department Committee" 
       shall be changed to "Democracy Zone (Committee)".

Amendment 2

The following changes shall be made to the constitution:
 
   i. The section "Zone" and its contents shall be deleted

Amendment 3

The following changes shall be made to the constitution:

   i.   A new subsection "ii." will be added to the section
        titled "Extraordinary General Meetings (EGM)"

   ii.  Subsections of this section previously numbered "ii." and above shall
        have their subsection number incremented accordingly.

   iii. The newly added subsection "ii." will contain the text:
        "In addition to the circumstances specified in i., an EGM shall be
        called in the event that SUSU's structure changes sufficiently that
        a part, or parts, of this constitution are no longer accurate or 
        enforceable. This EGM shall be held within 1 month of the changes 
        to SUSU coming into effect, or the soonest appropriate date if this
        would be in conflict with subsection iv.."

Amendment 4

The following changes shall be made to the constitution, taking effect at the
conclusion of the meeting in which this amendment is passed:

   i.  In the section "Membership" the clause "Full membership is open to
       any registered student." shall be changed to "Full membership is
       open to any full member of the Union."

   ii. A footnote shall be added to this clause with the following text:
       "At the time this clause was last modified, full membership of the Union
       included any registered student, among others, who had not explicitly 
       opted out of Union membership.".

Agenda item 2

Amendment 5

The following changes shall be made to the constitution:
 
   i.   The section titled "Affiliation" shall have the words "and to
        the Union AGM" removed.

   ii.  In the same section, the spelling of the word "organization" shall be
        corrected to "organisation". 

   iii. The same section shall be extended with the following text:
        "In order to affiliate to an external organisation, the matter shall be put
        to a vote of the society membership at a general meeting."

Close of meeting

• No other business is to be discussed.