Council began by opening with a question and answer session between members of union council and several members of the Union Executive.
Interesting discussions included: Sophie Sanders, Societies Federation President talking about the progress and success of her on-going 60+ challenge, which requires her to visit as many societies as possible to see how they can be better run.
Natasha Cox, Head of Media, also commented on the recent Media Conference that was held in the Union: 'Around 19 to 20 members of Alumni came down and held a days worth of workshops. It was very successful and led to a few people getting work experience out of it. It is definitely something that we will be doing again in future years.'
Council dealt predominantly with the issue of electing council members for positions on the Union Council sub committees with positions available for: Elections, Procedures, Governance and Discipline.
Union council members running for Elections sub-committee included Chris Carter, Krupa Nandha and Elizabeth Atoyebi. After a question and answer session between the floor and the above council members, which included questions such as ‘what is your view on consumables in elections’, it was taken to a vote, by a show of hands. With six positions available, all three were elected to join the Elections sub committee.
Five positions were available for Procedure sub committee, however; only Andrew Pyatt stepped up for election. It was passed straight to a vote and Pyatt was duly elected.
As with the Procedure sub committee, Governance also had five positions to fill. Candidates for Governance included James Carroll, Andrew Pyatt, Krupa Nandha and Josh Hurrell. There were some interesting exchanges that took place between the floor and the candidates; with many stating that if elected they would be committed to updating the constitution and making it more 'water tight'. All four candidates were elected.
Candidates for Discipline committee included Tom Traies, George Martindale and James Carroll; there were five positions available to be filled. All three were duly elected.
In the latter part of the meeting council discussed the issue of David Haines, Chair of Council, running in the election for University sub-committees. The concern was that Haines had already been issued the role of Returning Officer in the Candidate Pack and had then at a later date decided instead to run in the election; many spoke of the issues of pre campaigning. The issue was resolved by secret ballot, which resulted in the decision that Haines wasn’t allowed to step down as Returning Officer, in order to run in the elections. Council voted as follows on the decision of whether Haines should be allowed to run in elections: 6 for, 11 against and 4 abstained.
Council ended after the above issue was resolved and the times for next Council were given, as follows: Thursday 29th November at the Council Chambers.
