The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of your Students’ Union will be taking place on Wednesday 2nd May at 1pm in the union cinema.
The AGM (Annual General Meeting) is the one time in the year when every student gets a vote on the big issues about how the Union is run and what is going to campaign for. As part of the Students’ Union, you can make sure that all aspects of your University experience are catered for properly.
SUSU has many policies all of which it is compelled to follow. You can find the full list of current union policies here: http://blogs.susu.org/policy . Many of these were put forward by ordinary students including setting up a student housing agency (currently in the planning stages) and keeping Wednesday afternoons free for sporting matches.
But how does a student do this? Well first you need to write a policy proposal to submit to the AGM to be debated and voted on. It may sound a bit complicated if you haven’t done it before. That is where we come in to make it as simple as possible.
On Thursday from 11am to 3pm we will be running an idea session in level 4 of the union building. I and two of the other Vice Presidents will be on hand to help adapt your policies into a well written motion ready for submission to the AGM. Other students can also take the opportunity to have a look at and comment on your idea and help improve them. There will also be a number of ideas from the sabbaticals to look at including a proposal to hold a referendum on joining the NUS.
Policies must then be submitted by 25th April on the referendum website which will be up shortly on susu.org.
Here is an example format of what a policy motion looks like:
Union Notes:
This section should include the facts surrounding the motion and only the facts
Union Believes:
This section is the opinions that you want the union to adopt
Union mandates:
This section is what you want the union to actual do about it, It could be as simple as “campaign for this change….” Or require a particular officer to ensure something is done in a strict time frame.
More examples can be looked at here: blogs.susu.org/policy
