UMSU SGM rejects two of nine Students’ Council proposals
The University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) held a special general meeting (SGM) earlier today to consider various changes to its Constitution. As reported in Parkville Station this week, the nine proposed changes were:
| # | Title | Passed? |
|---|---|---|
| 2.1 | Definitions and nomenclature | Passed |
| 2.2 | Noticeboards | Passed |
| 2.3 | Burnley Campus Co-ordinator Honoraria | Passed |
| 2.4 | Media Officer Honoraria | Failed |
| 2.5 | Consent | Passed |
| 2.6 | Accessibility requirements for meeting locations | Passed |
| 2.7 | Gender specificity correction | Passed |
| 2.8 | Spelling error | Failed |
| 2.9 | Operations Sub-Committee meetings | Passed |
Historically, UMSU SGMs have passed all constitutional changes without much dissent or even comment, and this SGM started off like that. However, this SGM broke with tradition by motion 2.2, which proposed to remove the requirement that notice of general meetings be posted on noticeboards (and instead requiring them just on the website) being spoken against. Ultimately, despite dissent, that motion passed.
Motion 2.3 was uncontroversial, the crowd confident that the Burnley Campus Coördinator should become a paid position. At motion 2.4, however, concerning the honoraria of the Media Officers, the wheels started coming off. (In keeping with the editorial we published this week, one of your intrepid Parkville Station editors both spoke and voted against this change.) The chair of the meeting, UMSU interim President and General Secretary James Bashford, asked the vote be taken three times before finally declaring the motion failed, not reaching the 75% of votes in favour required.
The meeting then chugged through the rest of its agenda without too much controversy, although levity took hold by motion 2.8 (to correct the spelling of ‘calendar’ at one place in the constitution) and ultimately that motion failed, with the spelling error remaining “to remind us that we make mistakes”.