What is censure?

[Monster Sink]

What is a motion of censure? I've heard lots about it in the last week or so but I don't know what it means.

[[James]]

The internet is a wonderful thing.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=censure

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[Monster Sink]

The reason I asked was because I heard it being bandied around the union on Wednesday, following one of the meetings on Tuesday night. Just wanted to see how it was relevant.

[flarewearer]

Quoting monster sink from 12:23, 23rd Mar 2006
What is a motion of censure? I've heard lots about it in the last week or so but I don't know what it means.

Just noticed your username, I take it you are a listener to ISIHAC?

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[BenEsq]

Motion of Censure.
i) This can be tabled as any motion but relates to the actions of one or more
office-holders of the Association. It must be related to a specific issue
and will not be seen to apply to anything more than that issue to which it
specifically relates. It requires a simple majority to be passed.

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Lions and tigers and bears...Oh my!

[RJ Covino]

So who was being censured this time?

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[exnihilo]

A sort of official slap on the wrist from one's Association colleagues. It will be entered into the minute that they disapprove of your actions and that you have been chastised.

There's also the Motion of No-Confidence, which is a sterner slap on the wrist, and which also indicates the displeasure of one's colleagues with one's actions.

They are both meaningless, as they carry no real penalty, and they don't add up to anything. There is no effective way of calling to account any officer of the Association.

[Monster Sink]

I do listen to ISIHAC, but not often enough to work out why you refer to it. My username is based on the Pixar film.

It's a slap on the wrist then? I thought it was going to be more important than that.

[exnihilo]

When it was conceived, it probably was. People would have taken censure by their peers badly, and would normally resign after a No-Confidence motion. Nowadays, people tend to brazen it out.

Personally, I'd have it such that x number of censures was sufficient to throw someone out of office.

[Lid]

Wouldn't a motion of recall be an effective (if not totally and utterly unpractical) method of calling an officer to account?

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We are not drunks, we are multi-millionaires

[exnihilo]

Indeed, but as it's all but impossible to have a Motion of Recall (trust me, I tried), it's purely academic.

[Ben Reilly]

A motion of censure is in relation to a specific act, and merely says that the Students' Association does not approve of them having done it. A classic example would be when Rory O'Hare managed to let a large fee increase for post-graduate students go through Court without objecting. The SRC censured him for this.

A motion of No Confidence occurs when the members of a committee no-longer have any confidence in that person's ability to fulfil their remit.

[Iain]

"Monster Sink" comes from the ISIHAC round of "give us a clue" (radio version!) where if I remember correctly; Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden were given "Monsters Inc." to verbally mime and the best they could come up with was to play their alter egos Hamish and Dougal and describe a large kitchen item instead.

So there you go. See I'm useful for something.

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[Guest]

Quoting exnihilo from 17:25, 23rd Mar 2006
Indeed, but as it's all but impossible to have a Motion of Recall (trust me, I tried), it's purely academic.

Couldn't you call an EGM and pass a motion dimissing them from their office? Assuming you were quorate, would not achieve the same thing?

[Ben Reilly]

Quoting from 17:32, 23rd Mar 2006

Quoting exnihilo from 17:25, 23rd Mar 2006
Indeed, but as it's all but impossible to have a Motion of Recall (trust me, I tried), it's purely academic.

Couldn't you call an EGM and pass a motion dimissing them from their office? Assuming you were quorate, would not achieve the same thing?

Getting three-hundred signatures is not that difficult. If what had been done was a big enough issue, it could be done in less than a week.

[flarewearer]

Quoting monster sink from 17:02, 23rd Mar 2006
I do listen to ISIHAC, but not often enough to work out why you refer to it. My username is based on the Pixar film.

There's a Hamish and Dougal sketch where they are playing sound charades and trying to do "Monsters Inc.", and it they are washing the dishes in the bathtub...

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[exnihilo]

Quoting Ben Reilly from 17:57, 23rd Mar 2006Getting three-hundred signatures is not that difficult. If what had been done was a big enough issue, it could be done in less than a week.

Then it has changed since my day. It used to be the case that twenty signatures were needed to call an EGM to discuss the Motion of Recall and that for that to be quorate 20% of the student body needed to be present, which was infeasible.

[RJ Covino]

Quoting Ben Reilly from 17:57, 23rd Mar 2006
If what had been done was a big enough issue, it could be done in less than a week.

So what was done then?

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[Frank]

Yeah, what is our association disapproving of on our behalf?


Frank
[s]Not in it for the gossip[/s]

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"There is only ever one truth. Things are always black or white, there's no such thing as a shade of grey. If you think that something is a shade of grey it simply means that you don't fully understand the situation. The truth is narrow and the path of the pursuit of truth is similarly narrow."

[Bonnie]

Tobias-- it was changed because it had been so impossible.

The censure thing: I'm surprised it hasn't been posted, seeing as minutes of SSC are public. I was not at the meeting and tus I'm not bound by any in camera rules.
David Bean drank and got embarassingly drunk in front of school children, their parents, members of Collegegate and debates sponsors at a formal schools debate. Besides this inappropriate behaviour, he was also outrageously rude to the clerk during his speech.

Not exactly actions becoming of a member of the Students' Association.

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