Have a re-election for Union President
Anonymous submitted on
Wednesday 7th November 2018
Complete
having witnessed many discussions about the current union presidents role and potential abuse of authority and responsibility, it is apparent that many people feel the current union president should step down form their position and another election should take place. In a demographic society it would only be fair that they are allowed to run again should they wish to, this ensures the students voices are heard and that the students choose who they want to represent their university union. As it stands many people are not in support of the current representative.
Responses
Here, you can view the complete set of official responses from the sabbatical officers regarding this submission.
Students' Union replied on
Thursday 20th Dec 2018 12:03pm
Hi Anon,
Thank you for your suggestion, and apologies for the length of time it has taken to conclude this You Make Change.
The Students' Union has always been clear that we do not support Emily's comment in question as we recognise that it was deeply insensitive and inappropriate. Following on from the incident, SUSU carried out an internal investigation into whether there was a breach of our HR policy at which point Emily made the decision to resign from her post. Unfortunately due to the confidential nature of these proceedings this is all I know and this is also all I am legally allowed to disclose. We will always challenge extremist or inflammatory language where we find it, in line with our rules and procedures.
With regards to a re-election, we are unfortunately unable to enact this for the current academic year due to the timing of her resignation. The only candidates that we would be able to elect to the post would be current students part of the way through their academic year and it would be impractical for us to elect them to a full time position during their studies. The nominations period for our spring elections opens on January 7th, so there would not have been enough time to run a Sabbatical by-election before then in any case. As dictated in our rules, the Deputy President (elected by the sabbatical team at the start of the year in line with our rules) will take over the responsibilities of the President in their absence. What this means in practical terms is that I will be line-managing the sabbatical team and acting as President for the rest of the academic year, while the rest of Emily's responsibilities that can be delegated will be shared among the rest of the sabbatical team.
If you have any further concerns regarding this please feel free to email me at aupres@soton.ac.uk.
Best wishes,
Steve Gore, Acting President
Students' Union replied on
Tuesday 20th Nov 2018 1:44pm
Thank you for your submission, due to an ongoing HR process, we were unable to publish this You Make Change. Now that the process is concluded, and in the interest of transparency we will publish this and allow our usual processes to take place.
The most recent statement form the Union can be found here: https://blogs.susu.org/blog/2018/11/19/emily-dawes-to-stand-down-as-union-president/
Comments
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