The final Union General Meeting of the academic year is on tomorrow – and with eight motions on the agenda, it’s set to be a bumper one.
Alongside the usual meeting agenda, the 2023/24 sabbatical officers will begin by giving their reports of the year and final comments.
The General Meeting will kick off at 5.15pm on March 14 in Cottrell lecture theatre A4 and Teams.
The motions up for debate are as follows. Full details of the General Meeting agenda can be found on the Union website.
Hedgehog over squirrels referendum
This motion, proposed by Aaron Caulfield and seconded by Luna Larkin, calls for the Union to hold a referendum asking the question: “Should this Union petition the University to adopt the Hedgehog over the Squirrel as the mascot of this University?” (Yes, you read that right).
The motion notes that “It is an inherit [sic] fact that hedgehogs are indeed cuter than squirrels.”
Student Union declares a boycott of University commercial services
Proposer Ben Alker and seconder Luna Larkin’s motion calls for the Union to boycott some University food outlets “in order to better the state of housing”.
The proposed boycott would begin on March 29 and continue until the University commits to a rent freeze.
Outlets to be boycotted would include:
- Scran
- Sup
- Refresh
- Stirling Court eatery
- The food truck in Queen’s Court
- Bite at Cottrell entrance
- Haldane’s
Exempt from the boycott would be:
- The sports centre and its café
- Macrobert
- All Union outlets
- Nisa
- Campus pharmacy
- Stirling Court Hotel
If passed, all Union officers and staff would participate in the boycott. A rally would also be organised and a statement on the boycott would be posted to the Union’s social media.
An additional note on the motion states: “Should this motion pass, it would require external legal support to qualify its legality as well as ratification by the charity’s Trustee Board.”
Alteration to election and referendum regulations
This motion, proposed by Aaron Caulfield and seconded by Joeseph Roach, calls for the Union’s election and referendum schedule to “be reverted to such a point that it is the same as if the motion presented by 2022/23 Vice President Communities […] was never passed”.
In November 2022, Jess Reid passed changes to the election regulations “removing barriers for students to nominate themselves in elections”. Before this, sabbatical candidates had to have support from 50 students and volunteer candidates needed 15 in order to run in elections.
Caulfield’s motion wants to bring back this nomination threshold. It concludes: “voting for positions which one is not familiar with can become randomised, so some protection is needed to ensure candidates are fit for positions that they are nominated to”.
Brig readers will recall that Caulfield ran for VP Education at the recent Union elections and was unsuccessful.
Students’ Union Starbucks affiliation
Proposed by Roach and seconded by Larkin, this motion wants to get rid of the Starbucks franchise in the Union and “cease all trading with Starbucks as soon as is practicable”.
The motion also states that “Starbucks coffee tastes bad” and is “expensive and overpriced”.
No more drug disciplinaries
This motion, again proposed by Caulfield and seconded by Larkin, wishes to remove “use of illegal drugs” from the offences section of the Union’s discipline document.
This would mean that students would not face disciplinary action “from the simple possession, or personal use, of a reasonable amount of an unlawful substance”.
Save our NUS delegation
Caulfield and Roach’s motion seeks to make the NUS delegation “more democratic”.
Currently the lead of Stirling’s NUS delegates is automatically given to the Union President. If they cannot fill the role, it is then passed on to another sabb.
The motion states that the current delegation should pick a leader themselves this year and recommends that an election process should be held in future.
Sustainability policy updates
Proposed by VP Communities Zoe Crosher and seconded by VP Education Katie Gethings, this motion wants to update the Union’s sustainability policy from 2019 “to reflect current practice”.
The motion believes this will “increase its accuracy” and “make it relevant for the future”.
Feature image credit: Jonathan Boomer/Pexels
Film, media and journalism student. I like writing about my inability to eat gluten.
