First of all, I'd like to say that the General Manager is there to look after the financial stewardship of the Union and oversee its financial arms - not to have anything to do with anything that looks like policy, and that includes representational structure. Over many years too much power has been handed over to permanent staff already, and to allow any say whatsoever on representational matters would create a dangerous precedent.
Second, we don't need another sabb - if there are problems getting minutes for a committee, why doesn't the chairman just find himself a minutes secretary? It can't be that hard. For God's sake, I've been here arguing over several years that the DoSDA position shouldn't be scrapped as useless, and I happen absolutely to believe that it shouldn't - but I most definitely don't think we need any more sabbaticals than we have now.
Al - they didn't get rid of the VPC; they just made it firstly an appointed position with the title 'Head of Media, MArketing and Design' and then a staff position with the title 'Design and Marketing Officer'. The rationale for doing this at the time was that what matters in someone in that position is their design skills, not that they've been elected, and I supported that reasoning at the time it happened. Unfortunately, what has happened is that the incumbent of that position has lost the accountability that an elected sabbatical used to have to the student body they were meant to be serving. To me, one of the greatest challenges the Association faces isn't its representational structure, but the accountability of its permanent staff. Formally Board is supposed to hold staff to account by means of its Staffing Committee, but historically it has proved itself utterly incapable of doing so effectively. Were I still a student, and particularly if I remained involved, that's something I'd want to ask some serious questions about.
Now, Lid initially said that James' suggestion of electing the SRC at annual general meetings of the committee would fail the cross-capmpus test; well, as exnihillo has already told us, no test exists, but even if it did a vote that took place at an AGM is just as cross-campus as one that involves going into the library to swipe your matric some time during the day. So it's a viable solution - but is it the right one? Would it really improve turnout just because there were fewer positions on the ballot paper - and, presumably, fewer election posters around town? I doubt it; so the question becomes much more one of how worthwhile the positions actually are, and whether their presence helps or hinders the operations of the SRC.
I think it's a pity Ben Reilly abstains from this discussion, too, because I always thought he had the right idea about this; I think the plan he proposed in our year together as sabbs was basically a good one, but (depending how sympathetic a view you want to take of either party) either he couldn't explain it clearly enough, or the honourable members of the SRC were too stupid to understand. There were, I think, some unnecessary complexities to his plan, but in essence what he was saying was that we should declare that each committee would have a certain number of members, and candidates would simply stand to be elected to that committee - so those candidates who placed high enough on the poll would get elected to the committee, and whoever topped it would become its chairman and Officer. That way you get rid of all of Ben Spiers' pointless positions (ooh, looky, I mentioned Ben Spires again! Somebody go and give Bonnie a heart-massage) and keep the size of the SRC exactly as you like it - you could even decide that the SRC proper excludes the non-officers completely, if you wanted to. The down-side, as far as I saw it at the time, was that it's possible a person, say, standing for the first time, might not want the potential responsibility of becoming a committee chairman, whereas someone who already had plenty of experience mightn't like not being able to do it just because of an electoral fluke - but then you could alter that by having the chairmen elected separately from the committees and, I don't know, letting the losing chairman candidates take up any positions that remained vacant.
I'm sure there's a ton of other points I wanted to raise, but then I've got my own election campaign to worry about for now.
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Psalm 91:7