General Meeting Proposals

Six proposals have been announced for Monday’s General Meeting, being held at 7pm in MS.02.

The first proposal ‘Supporting Fairtrade’ seeks to amend the current Union ban on Nestle products so that no Fairtrade products will be boycotted by Warwick Students’ Union (SU). Kit Kats, a Nestle product, have recently been awarded Fairtrade status. The proposal seeks to bridge the gap between the ban and the Union’s support of Fairtrade by exempting Kit Kats and other Fairtrade Nestle products from the ban.

The second proposal is an amendment to the Boycott Eden Springs proposal which was passed at the last Union Council meeting. It will change the title of the motion to ‘Water Without Politics’ and also alter the phrasing of the policy, which criticises the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights, changing the wording so as to lessen the possibility of offence.

The third proposal concerns the Bacardi boycott. This will be the third time Bacardi has been discussed; once at Union Council and twice at General Meetings. It resolves to put in place a boycott of Bacardi and to replace it with an alternative rum, in addition to raising the issue at the next NUS National Conference with the aim of extending the boycott.

SU Democracy Officer Chris Luck said that Bacardi has become such a recurrent topic because “the Union was exposed to legal and financial risk with the policy as it stood. It was discussed with the trustees, where we have the power to alter policy which puts us at risk, but we decided we wanted to send it back to the student body to vote again.

“We felt it was reasonable to assume that some of the students who’d voted in favour of the boycott voted for it on the basis of facts that cannot be proven to be true in the eyes of the law.”

The fourth proposal ‘Pound In Your Pocket: An Affordable Warwick Experience’ was proposed by Union Education Officer Sean Ruston and President Leo Boe. Its focus is on hidden course costs, such as textbooks, which can be perceived as especially unreasonable in light of the rise in tuition fees to £9,000. Among other aims it will mandate the Education Officer to conduct research into the hidden course costs at Warwick and mandate the President and Education Officer to lobby the University to include hidden course costs in the tuition fees.

The fifth proposal concerns the issue of ‘Postering On Campus’. Over the last few weeks many students have faced difficulties in the University taking down posters across campus. The policy would mandate the Societies Officer to lobby the University to relax its limits on postering around campus, reduce the frequency of poster removal and increase the number, space and prominence of designated areas for postering.

Luck said that the policy simply “reinforces what we’re currently doing as Sabbatical Officers on the issue, Matt [Rogers] and I sit on the Flypostering Committee. From the University’s point of view they don’t want the place to look messy when there are guests around.

“From our point of view we want to have as many avenues as possible for students to advertise what they do. The policy mandates us to continue doing what we already do, but reinforces our message. It will strengthen our voices if we can see we have policy legitimately passed by the student body.”

The sixth policy will lobby the University to affiliate with the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC). It will mandate the President to lobby to the University to affiliate to the WRC.

A final policy concerning the naming of the University’s new halls of residence was withdrawn on Friday after the University decided to name the accommodation Sherbourne. It would have lobbied the relevant University authorities to name the halls in memory of former Warwick University student Kevin Gately, who died on June 15 1974 whilst attending a demonstration against the National Front.

The official quorum figure for the meeting has been set at 208. If quorum is not met the meeting will be held again seven days later, with the quorum figure being set at however many students show up.