The CULSU’s Annual General meeting held at 6 PM on the 29th of November drew about 150 students – out of 21 000 – to the Oliver Thompson Lecture Theatre at City University London. The attending student quorum voted to pass officers’ reports and motions proposed by other students to become Students’ Union policies.
SU President Rima Amin hails the meeting a success saying: “this is the first time in several years we’ve had a quorate AGM, let alone one of that size,” while most attendees slammed the SU for lack of organisation.
“It was shambolic – I’ve been to pub brawls that were better organised. It was embarrassing, completely undemocratic and frankly farcical,” said Payam Edalat.
The SU official media teams covering the event also expressed confusion and dissatisfaction about the procedures during the meeting along with other students’ commentaries under the twitter hashtag #culsuagm2014.
Motions passed during the AGM will see the Students’ Union lobbying for lower graduation costs; providing better support to students of faith; looking at revising City’s timetabling policy and forming TEDx talks at the university; campaigning for ‘No More Page Three’ and free education; and, working on better AGMs.
Issy Cooke, Vice President for Education, said: “We now have a clear set of goals for the next six months which I am very excited to work on.” Amin also expressed thanks to those who proposed policies. “We now have lots of challenging work to do in the Union, we’re glad it’s a direction led by you, and we look forward to moving forward on this all,” she announce of her Facebook.
While a lot of motions were passed, this outcome is threatened to be overshadowed by complaints against the SU.
Jack Fenwick said he plans on officially filing a total of 8 complaints against the SU. He also criticised the whole process of the meeting for being “laughably disorganised.” He expressed discontent about the “lack of debate allowed to take place on the floor and the total inadequacy of the chair.”
“I myself feel I was the victim of a personal attack by my Studenst’ Union President Rima Amin. She openly opposed six of the seventeen motions put forward. All six happened to have been either proposed or seconded by me. I believe that if somebody else had submitted some of those motions, especially the one about AGMs, the president would not have opposed them,” said Fenwick.
On the other hand, the chair and the SU Coordinator repeatedly warned the floor about “personal attacks” and “bullying” against any present attendees during the meeting with regards to some students’ behaviour. They said that such behaviour are “against university policy” and wouldn’t be tolerated.
Cooke expressed her personal view that they should have offered the students the opportunity to submit procedural motions, including clarification of rules and requests to overturn the chairs’ decision. “I feel like a number of students and officers were put in a very unfair position where bullying and harassment was allowed to continue. We should have taken a stronger stance and made them leave.”
Amin is yet to reply to Her Campus on questions about criticisms of the AGM.