November 2013 Student Council meeting

The second student council meeting of the year took place on Monday 25 November.

The council discussed issues including project funding, the removal of ‘discriminatory’ songs and themed socials from the Students’ Union (SU) and the raising of the salary of all SU staff to the national living wage.

Opportunity Fund
A number of societies were present to bid for project funding from the Opportunity Fund.

The Technology Volunteers, part of Warwick Volunteers, were granted £675 to support the attendance of three student leaders of the society at the 2014 Scratch Conference and run a workshop at Scratch@MIT, USA.

Warwick Anti-Sexism Society was also successful in securing £400 for hosting ‘The Vagina Monologues’ next term. The money will be put toward the cost of hiring venues in Leamington, Coventry and on campus.

China Public Affairs and Social Service Society won £500 to fund the appearance of guest speakers at the annual Warwick China Summit.

Warwick Animal Ethics Society and Brass Society were unsuccessful in obtaining funding for hosting an Animal Ethics conference and the UniBrass 2014 inter-university brass band contest respectively.

Equal Opportunities to include disciplinary stereotypes
An amendment was proposed to by-law 11 – Equal Opportunities – that was to state that societies and sports clubs must not encourage themed events – for example ‘Mexicans’ or ‘Cowboys and Indians’ – due to the discomfort and discrimination that they may cause.

The motion attracted a number of sports club and society members to attend despite not being eligible to vote as non-councillors.

Proposer for the amendment, Ayesha Mittal, stated: “This is drawing specific attention to it so that societies know they shouldn’t do these kinds of socials.

A second councillor added: “It’s not up to people sat on committees to decide if someone is going to be offended. It’s about giving someone a platform for people to be able to make a complaint.”

Despite the good intentions of the policy, Erin Davies, education officer, was unsure: “I have mixed feelings on this. We already do a wonderful job on this”.

Zoe Buckland, sports officer, agreed: “I don’t think that this motion is going about it the right way. We have procedures in place already that do this very successfully”.

The motion was passed on to an All Student Meeting (ASM) following Ms Davies’ suggestion due to the high turnout from non-councillors demonstrating the significant interest from the student body.

Equal Opportunities to include playlist restrictions on racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic and ableist language
A second amendment to by-law 11 proposed changes to make it easier for the SU to ban offending songs from being played across SU venues.

The proposal stated that the welfare officer would be responsible for the investigation and subsequent banning of songs that received complaints from students. Their decision would have to be justified to the president and student council.

The topic was passionately debated with arguments for and against. Cat Turhan, welfare officer supported the amendment: “This is a duty of care to vulnerable students.”

An anonymous council member stated: “For the same reason that I go to gay bars, I don’t want to be experiencing something homophobic [in the SU].”

Cosmo March, democracy and development officer, was wary of the pressure that it would give to the current and future welfare officers.

He said: “I don’t think that anybody wants that pressure upon them” in reference to potentially being in “the line of fire” from students who agree or disagree with the banning of a particular song.

Mr March continued to suggest that the ASM “could see it [the proposal] as a ban” which may confuse students as to why it wasn’t an ASM topic like the voting on Barcadi and Nestle boycotts earlier this year.

Ms Davies added that the policy may not be consistent with different welfare officers: “I think it’s really important for us to have a duty of care … [but] there’s a level of inconsistency that is potential.

“I’m not objecting, I just have some day-to-day issues with this one”. The motion was not passed, with 14 votes for, 11 against and nine abstentions.

Lifelong learning officer
A proposal to introduce a new officer position to cater for the needs of mature students was successful.

Lucy Gill, postgraduate officer, stated that the position was needed to identify campaigns and issues associated with mature students and to encourage their engagement with the SU.

Ms Gill was confident that the position would be able to run contested elections each year with over 90 people in the lifelong learning society already.

There were no financial costs for the role, the same as any other part-time position.

A living wage for student staff
A policy review looked to increase all pay for SU staff to meet the national living wage of £7.65 per hour.

The changes would apply to all SU employees including bar workers who currently earn a base rate pay of £6.31 per hour.

There was disagreement that the existing base rate is not unreasonable for a majority of students and worries of what impact the pay increases would have on consumer prices around the SU.

Mr March added that a feasibility study carried out showed that the changes would cost an additional £114,000, and said: “The SU doesn’t have this money.” The motion was passed and is set to be a “gradual” implementation.