Executive Reports, Standing Order C and the DO Candidates Pack were all on the agenda for Union Council on May 10 but it was Union President, Rebecca Bridger who broke the biggest news of the evening; Michael Duckworth, the Global Development Officer has stepped down due to course commitments.
The Development Officer Elections were an important conversation topic of the evening. A potential error whereby Standing Order C states that there should be four working days of lecture shout outs clashing with Friday’s voting day led to the times had to be changed to 18:00 on Friday as opposed to 00:01.
Once the misunderstandings were cleared, the motion for the changed voting times and the motion for the Candidates Pack were passed. For the first time this year, the DO Exec Elections are being held separate, Childs stated that it is only a trial and is to be reviewed afterwards.
The campaign rules for the upcoming elections were also changed and banners are no longer allowed to encourage social media campaigning. Lecture shout outs are however still allowed but a candidate can now only distribute 10 instead of 25 T-shirts.
Pete Childs said that he aims for 2000 voters and a minimum of two candidates for each position in the upcoming DO Elections.
After presenting his executive report, Adam Rae was questioned on the Loughborough Goldrush potential name change to Loughborough Students Cheerleading Club. Rae fully supports the Loughborough Sports brand and believes that if the name is kept the brand itself would be diluted.
He went on to state that building on the brand as a unit will help to unlock sponsorship potential which is vital for the development of the section. At this point in time Rae is uncertain as to where the sponsorship money will go exactly but he assures it will be filtered down to the students.
Next on the agenda was the ratification of the Executive Elections. The exec elect, many of whom are councillors, were advised to abstain if they felt they could not separate their counselling roles from their responsibilities as members of the Executive. Only moments after proposing, the motion to ratify the Exec Elections had been passed.
Ali Cole successfully became a member of the Union’s Elections Sub-Committee.
In his report, David Cox mentioned the success of the Community Fun Fay which took place last weekend and the upcoming Action Awards. Nicholas Bosworth stated that International Day was a huge success, according to Bosworth, never before have this many countries been represented.
Dave Tingle talked about the Alumni weekend which took place last weekend, it was a success and he believes it has great potential to be much bigger. Jack Heskett mentioned that it is Better Decisions Day on May 23, the event will be held in the piazza as well as his involvement with helping the Save Lufbra campaign.
Zoe Lloyd raised the issue regarding night time safety; she believes the night bus has not been advertised efficiently. James Carroll, Council Chair replied ‘‘when it is running, it is running to its capacity.’’ Sarah Musgrave stated that she is one of only four drivers of the RAG Bus which is the bus used for the night bus service which explains why it has not been running as efficiently as initially anticipated. This matter will be passed on to the Welfare Select Committee to undergo further investigations.
Finally, Rebecca Bridger had a meeting with the University on Friday regarding the funding of the Students Union. At the moment, the Union receives £900,000 a year but she proposes to get an additional £100,000 to enable students from lower socio-economic backgrounds to get involved.
