31.01.2012 Amendments and Supplementary Agenda

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Student Council Tuesday 31 January 2012 at 6.30pm in Francis Bancroft Room 1.02.6, Mile End Amendments and Supplementary Agenda

5.4 Vice President Education and Welfare Action Plan (pages 2-5)

Student Council is asked to note the activities of the Vice President Education and Welfare. 5.5 ATMs on Campus Report (pages 6-7) A report requested by ‘ATMs on Campus’ policy passed at the meeting of Student Council

held on 13 December 2011. 5.5 Researching the need for a Students with Disabilities Representative for Barts and The

London (To be circulated) A draft of the student survey requested by ‘Researching the need for a Students with

Disabilities Representative for Barts and The London’ policy passed at the meeting of Student Council held on 13 December 2011.

14.1 Amendment to The Publication of Executive Officer Calendars retitled Mahoosive Union

Calendar (page 8) Proposed and accepted by the proposer of the motion Ozzy Amir (Campaigns Officer (Mile End)).

15.1 Amendment to The Union Budget made simple (page 9)

Proposed and accepted by the proposer of the motion Ozzy Amir (Campaigns Officer (Mile End)).

16.1 Amendments to Respecting Democracy (page 10)

Proposed by Oscar Williamson (Vice President Education and Welfare) and Dominic Bell (Vice President Student Activities) and accepted by the proposer of the motion Ozzy Amir (Campaigns Officer (Mile End)).

19.1 Amendment to QMSU support for a London wide student manifesto and campaign on

the London Mayoral and GLA Elections (page 11) Proposed and accepted by the proposer of the motion Ozzy Amir (Campaigns Officer (Mile End)).

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0 25 50 75 achievement level: 100

A. mums and dads mentoring scheme

I will: I will have achieved this when: what I have done so far: O J

A1 Recruit parents Recruit parents in Science and Engineering to provide mentoring and gain funding.

- 50 parents have been recruited and trained. - Funding has been gained.

- Project being carried out in SBCS and SEMS. - Recruited 16 parents in SEMS. - Funding not needed, only incentives.

A2 Recruit kids To promote the scheme and recruit an appropriate number of kids for the parents who have been trained.

- Four kids have been recruited for every parent

that has been trained.

- 72 kids in SBCS and 27 in SEMS.

A3 Project takes place The project starts to take place and there is a benefit felt by both the kids and parents that demonstrates a demand for future years.

- Meetings are taking place at least once a

month between the parents and kids. - Qualitative feedback gathered from those

involved demonstrates the project has been valuable to them.

- Planned events for participants. - Meetings taking place between the Parents

and Kids.

B. academic societies


B1 Project plan To create a sustainable plan that allows for the development of academic societies that provides opportunities for student development, representation and improving retention.

- The plan is in place by mid December 2011. - Resources and support has been identified for

future years by April 2012.

- No progress

B2 Gaining commitment To gain commitment from four societies and departments to be involved in a pilot project over the coming year and for their individual needs to be identified.

- Commitment is gained from four societies and

departments. - Individual timelines have been put in place

and progress is taking place.

- No progress

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B. academic societies


B3 Provide support To have identified the main areas of support needed by academic societies to fulfil the project aims and training opportunities begin to be provided.

- At least one training session is developed and

run on gaining sponsorship.

- No progress

C. improving the learning/welfare experience


C1 Pre-Printed Reading Packs Reading packs are provided in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences for modules that do not have a single core text book.

- All the modules not providing reading packs in

History and Politics have been identified by end November 2011 and all other departments by January 2012.

- The Vice Principal for HSS has committed to a faculty wide policy on reading packs.

- 75% of all relevant modules in History and Politics have reading packs available to them by semester 2.

- 50% of all relevant modules in HSS have reading packs available to them by 2012/13 academic year.

- This is a feature of the Student

Experience Seminar. - The College are considering making

these free for students starting in the next academic year.

- Commitment gained from HSS.

C2 Vocational skills After reports of a lack of dedicated skills training in some departments I will identify the needs and ensure training is made available.

- Identified essential skills currently not being

offered in departments. - At least two additional training sessions have

been provided.

- Going to develop a project that will allow

PGR students to conduct research for the Union and build skills whilst earning money.

- Working with IT to get licenses for specialist software that students need to gain skills in.

C3 International students Run at least one event a semester that gathers information about the international student experience.

- An event takes place at least once a semester. - A report is created from each event

- Don’t believe in international specific

events but will look at doing research.

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D. research led decisions


D1 Creating an evidence base for claims To ensure that the Union is representing the true student experience the opinions should be evidence based.

- A searchable evidence base has begun to be

created. - At least three identified issues have either

been supported or not with a minimum of two pieces of evidence.

- I am planning to create an evidence base on

qmsu.org which will store the research from all Union and College surveys.

- Will design a calendar of when surveys are taking place to prevent overlapping and survey fatigue.

D2 NSS Respondents The NSS is the primary student satisfaction survey that influences the development of the University and the Union needs to be more active in promoting and using it.

- The number of respondents has increased by

5%. - At least one department in each faculty has

had a report written by a student using the quantitative data and open text comments which has then been presented to the SSLC.

- Response rate is up 2% on this time last year.

D3 Student Experience Seminar The SE Seminar is a great opportunity to communicate with all academic departments on a topic at once, so its findings must be explicitly evidence based

- The topic has been decided by the Course

Representatives. - There is a 24.5% increase in the number of

respondents in the survey for the SE Seminar. - At least 10 course reps take an active role in

the SE seminar. - A minimum of one staff member per a dept.

attends the seminar.

- The topic has been chosen as learning

resources. - 5 course reps currently actively involved.

additional information

The following is additional information regarding the work I have been doing in my role: J

- We are putting together a cross-campus welfare survey. The university and the NHS can’t gather data about drug and alcohol use among medics. Their primary duty of

care is to patients, so if they learn of anything which may impair the a medical student’s fitness to practice they are compelled to inform the GMC. The school and the NHS will have input in the questions, and we will remove any personally identifying information, crunch the data and produce a report for use by the school and the NHS when planning their welfare provision for young people in Tower Hamlets.

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additional information (continued)

The following is additional information regarding the work I have been doing in my role: J

- I want to get students involved in gathering and crunching statistically robust data and producing evidence based policy recommendations. For example: working out the

impact of SBCS’s restructuring on teaching hours; reviewing the impact of redundancies in SMD and the library; and modelling effect that the imminent changes to security guards contracts will have on students. This will give undergraduates practical skills, give postgrads practice working with others, give the SU a more authoritative lobbying position, and – budget permitting – put some money back in the pockets of students.

- I’m looking into the Union bidding directly for retention, employability, entrepreneurship, student experience and retention money in the college. Some very weak projects have been awarded funding after non-competitive bidding processes. There is little incentive to come up with a good proposal if your funding is uncontested. We should bid for this money; even if we don’t get the award it should force the proposers of the more underwhelming proposals to man up a bit.

- We’re hosting an open meeting between SBCS students and the head of their department to address the restructuring. I’m happy to update on the background to this in my verbal report.

- I have spoken to staff, students and councillors about our membership of the NUS. We have reviewed our mechanism for affiliations at the Board of Trustees, and it appears that the 1994 Education Act requires that we need to pass them anew each year. I favour a referendum on our membership of the NUS, and I would campaign for us to disaffiliate.

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5.5 ATMs on Campus Report

Background In April 2008, the lack of availability of cash machines on campus was highlighted and a feasibility study was conducted to consider increasing the supply of ATM’s into new locations. No bank contacted at the time were interested in providing further ATM’s onto the site was they considered that it was already well provided with ATM’s at the former Barclays Bank site and in West Square (adjacent to Drapers). In June 2009, Ethan James (Commercial Operations Manager) approached Hanco in regards to the provision of additional ATM’s on campus in three sites, the Village Shop, Ground Café and Drapers Bar. These were selected due to need to get cash available in the student village, the popularity of a cashpoint in bars and based on locations where the SU turned over the most physical cash. These were installed in September 2009 on a self-fill basis whereby cash received through the outlets was then transferred into the ATM’s and dispensed. Operation The ATM’s have all been popular from a customer perspective but each have had a number of issues. The Village Shop – The ATM proved so popular that it was often out of cash by lunchtime and we were unable to obtain any more cash from other outlets to keep it filled all day. This caused a lot of disappointment amongst customers who felt that it was unreliable to rely on out ATM at this site. This was sited as one of the most common complaints about the students’ union in a survey conducted in May 2011. Ground – This ATM was also popular and was maintained with cash the majority of the time. However there were a number of issues whereby cash was not dispensed correctly to customers causing local complaints. The ATM had a major breakdown in April 2011 and was not repaired by Hanco for at least two weeks which resulted in a build-up of cash on site. Coincidentally, our cash courier also missed their scheduled collection resulting in safe limits being exceeded to c£40k which is a dangerously large amount of cash to hold.

Drapers Bar – This ATM frequently had connectivity issues to Hanco’s network, resulting in frequent engineer visits, periods of out of service and a new router. A representative from Hanco (now YourCash) re-tested the site in October 2011 and advised that the signal was not strong enough in the location and that it should either be re-sited or an ADSL installed for its operation.

Reconciliation and Audit Our finance department found have found it very consuming to reconcile the balances of the ATMs. Hanco supplied no transaction reports or management information. This is archaic and made the system not fit for purpose. Reconciliation therefore had to be done from small paper slips from the ATM machines, and if they became detached from the paperwork we had no other record of the ATM activity. The slips also only showed the numbers of notes by denomination, rather than the financial value. The slips did not contain a Grand Total or report number so you were unable to verify whether or not you had received all of them. The transaction data must have been available as if there was a dispute, they had the information. Our Auditors PWC were not content with the systems available to control the ATMs. In their audit report for 31st July 2011 closing accounts they state that ‘The cash machine is re-stocked during the year using takings from the retail outlet’s till, meaning that some of the daily cash takings are not banked directly. As such there is an inherent risk of fraud operating such machines’.

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Future Provision The Students’ Union will continue to press the College for the provision of additional ATMs on campus and will roll out cash back in the Village Shop in February 2012, with the intention of rolling this out to most outlets in Summer 2012.

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14.1 Amendment to The Publication of Executive Officer Calendars retitled Mahoosive Union Calendar

Proposer: Ozzy Amir (Campaigns Officer (Mile End)) Seconder: Edoardo Palombo (Welfare Officer (Mile End)) QMSU notes:

1. The Union spends approximately £150,000 a year for Executive Officers (this includes salaries, staff costs, training, HR etc)

2. Those executive officers are mandated by policy formed as a result of the various democratic structures of QMSU.

3. Part of the job of Student Council is to hold these executive officers to account and to make it so information on the Union's activities is as open and transparent as possible.

QMSU believes:

1. It is important for students to be able see what their Executive Officers are doing and prudent for the overall understanding of what Executive Officers do with their time.

2. Creating a large display of Executive Officer timetables offers a simple way of displaying things like their regular meetings, forums and other activities they may be involved with and is an effective way of communicating with students about the work Executive Officers are doing.

QMSU resolves:

1. For the VP Education and Welfare to make a real life display that executive officers can physically update to display their availability and to present a finished display at the next council meeting.

2. This display must be completed to a high standard, be aesthetically pleasing and demonstrate a high level of craftsmanship. Use of craft materials is strongly encouraged, although Council do not require the application of raw pasta shells (subject to amendment). Obviously colour will form an integral part of this display and as laid out in the title, the display must be of larger than expected size. Extra consideration should go into new and innovative ways of demonstrating meetings and availabilities with the use of humorous pictures and visual puns amongst other things which generally liven up the display and make it so that viewing it is a pleasure and not a chore.

3. There must be some form of electronics involved in the display, for example flashing lights and buzzers.

4. Council will judge this creation at the next meeting and will be asked to give the display a score out of ten.

5. Any attempt by other sabbatical officers or staff members to prevent or otherwise hinder the creation of this display will be met with the full wrath of Student Council.

6. There will be a budget of £200.00 allocated to the creation of this display. This will not come out of any campaigns or liberation budgets.

Because this item is proposed by the proposer of the motion, this amendment has been accepted and adopted into the motion.

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15.1 Amendment to The Union Budget made simple

Proposer: Ozzy Amir (Campaigns Officer (Mile End)) Seconder: Oscar Williamson (Vice President Education and Welfare) QMSU notes:

1. The total expenditure of QMSU in the year 2009/10 was £3,798,111. 2. Where this money goes shapes how QMSU functions over the course of the year and has a

profound impact on its strengths and priorities. 3. Information about how QMSU spends its money is either difficult to locate, understand,

incorrect, or out of date. 4. We note that some things are sensitive for commercial or other reasons.

QMSU believes:

1. The biggest barrier to any new project is often a lack of funds. 2. An understanding of the financial realities of QMSU will lead to a better-informed Student

Council and better-informed policy making. 3. While certain councillors have allocated budgets for use as per their job descriptions, the

spending of a large majority of funds is usually decided independent of any democratic process.

4. Though the financial and practical realities of such an arrangement may be understandable, detailed and easily accessible information on how QMSU spends its money should be made available for Student Council and the wider student population to view.

5. It is only when this information is made accessible and public that Student Council and the wider student population can scrutinise the allocation of funds and see if money is being spent according to the priorities of the students.

6. The publication of an easy to understand budget for the wider student population is long overdue.

QMSU resolves:

1. To mandate QMSU to publish the entire budget of QMSU for the year 2011/2012 and every year thereafter.

2. That this publication be formatted in such a way to allow the information contained within to be easily understandable by those students unfamiliar with complicated budgets.

3. That the publication be broken down into various sections that outline what proportion of the overall budget is spent is which area of QMSU.

4. To ensure that this information is accurate and up to date. 5. For this and all other data to be displayed in such a way that makes comparisons easy, for

example through the use of graphs and pie charts to visually demonstrate the allocation of funds.

6. For all data to be presented in such a way that makes comparisons easy, for example, through the use of graphs and pie charts to visually demonstrate the allocation of funds.

7. That all the above be completed and within 30 days of the passing of this motion. 8. For it to be available online. 9. To be available in hardcopy for those counsellors who request it. 10. In the event of a commercial concern (or other justification), data may be presented in a

redacted form, on the condition that such a decision is fully justified in an accompanying explanation.

Because this item is proposed by the proposer of the motion, this amendment has been accepted and adopted into the motion.

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16.1 Amendment to Respecting Democracy

Proposer: Ozzy Amir (Campaigns Officer (Mile End)) Seconder: Jeeves Wijesuriya (Vice President London) QMSU notes:

1. That QMSU has stringent regulations regarding the proper procedures being followed during the elections.

2. This Union is committed to the principle of full democracy, advocating the right for any member of QMSU to stand for a position in a free and open election.

3. Current election byelaws neither prohibit nor allow Sabbatical Officers to campaign for other candidates.

QMSU believes:

1. Sabbatical officers, as figureheads of the Union, should take the lead in respecting and upholding the democratic principles of QMSU.

2. Sabbatical officers have great influence by virtue of their positions over other students. 3. That as prominent members of the Union, Sabbatical Officers can influence election results

depending on whom they endorse. 4. This runs the risk of elections being skewed so that students not in particular circles, or

candidates not as heavily involved in particular areas within QMSU, are at a disadvantage, thereby undermining the concept of a fair election open to all.

5. This also exacerbates the concerns that student politics, and involvement within the Union in general, is restricted to certain cliques.

QMSU resolves:

1. Add the following clause to the Bye-Laws:

“5.6.2 Executive Officers not standing in the elections cannot be a supporter or endorse any candidate or slate for the duration of the elections”

2. To mandate Executive Officers not standing in the elections to not support or endorse any

candidate or slate for the duration of the 2012/13 elections. Because this item is proposed by the proposer of the motion, this amendment has been accepted and adopted into the motion.

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19.1 Amendment to QMSU support for a London wide student manifesto and campaign on the London Mayoral and GLA Elections

Proposer: Ozzy Amir (Campaigns Officer (Mile End)) Seconder: Dominic Bell (Vice President Student Activities) QMSU notes:

1. Students’ Unions across London have been drafting a manifesto for the London Mayor and GLA candidates to respond to student issues since September 2011.

2. The manifesto will be made public in mid-February 2012 3. ULU will be hosting a Mayoral Hustings in March 2012

QMSU believes:

1. This manifesto poses a number of highly important students' issues which the London Mayor and GLA can support, improve and/or resolve.

2. The number of Students’ Unions and students in support of this manifesto is extremely important in influencing politicians, external organisations and the public and building student voice across London.

3. The manifesto and the campaign will be an extremely useful tool in getting students to vote in the London Mayoral and GLA elections.

QMSU resolves:

1. To support the demands made in the manifesto. 2. To actively support the campaign led by London based Students’ Unions. 3. To back-up the London wide campaign with local action to be determined by a subcommittee

which includes student councillors and other students. Because this item is proposed by the proposer of the motion, this amendment has been accepted and adopted into the motion.

Documents

31.01.2012 Amendments and Supplementary Agenda