The election

[David Bean]

Dear all,

You can read the results in full on the main board thread, but I thought I'd just write to inform you that I was elected SSC Debates Officer, and thus the Convenor of the Society. Thanks to all who turned out to vote whichever way you voted, but the real work begins now, and I hope everyone will be ready to lend a hand in making this one of the most exciting years in St. Andrews debating in memory. My email address is dmb6, so please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any ideas, suggestions, etc. that'll help the Society throughout the coming year.

[Al]

I can remember the days when the Debates Convenors would insist their correct title was President of the Union Debating Society. Now, it seems, Debates Officers insist their correct title is Debates Convenor. It's a topsy-turvy world.

Congratulations, by the way.

[hr]We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.

[Eliot Wilson]

Well, the Convenor is multi-titled: properly, he/she is simultaneously SSC Debates Officer, Convenor of Debates, President of the University of St. Andrews Union Debating Society AND Speaker of the House. 'The Convenor' seems to be current shorthand, but it's a matter of taste and usage.

[David Bean]

Yes, I suppose I'll refer to myself for the same of conversation as 'Convenor', but I'm not going to be anal about the titles in any way. (Still, it's nice to have a dozen new aliases...)

[HP]

I'm sure the society will be in good hands once you take over in April. Looking forward to your debates!

Hendrik

[Eliot Wilson]

Said it before, say it again. Formally, as far as the Association is concerned, Mr. Bean does NOT take over in April: he is, as of last night, SSC Debates Officer and Convenor of Debates. Any arrangements made between outgoing and incoming officers are fine but they are informal.

[Anon.]

[s]Eliot Wilson wrote on 00:08, 23rd Mar 2003:
Said it before, say it again. Formally, as far as the Association is concerned, Mr. Bean does NOT take over in April: he is, as of last night, SSC Debates Officer and Convenor of Debates. Any arrangements made between outgoing and incoming officers are fine but they are informal.


So if one wanted to be a complete oik, one could theoretically do the whole "Stop! There has been an election" routine at the debate this coming Thursday?

[Magus]

So if one wanted to be a complete oik, one could theoretically do the whole "Stop! There has been an election" routine at the debate this coming Thursday?


So, is anyone offering to do it?

[hr]
Goodnight to principle, sincerity, and honour!

[Pam]

Please no. David, congrats to you for winning, but no more pomp. I can't take it anymore.

[Eliot Wilson]

No more pomp? You've come to the wrong place, Pam...

[Al]

[s]Eliot Wilson wrote on 00:08, 23rd Mar 2003:
Said it before, say it again. Formally, as far as the Association is concerned, Mr. Bean does NOT take over in April: he is, as of last night, SSC Debates Officer and Convenor of Debates. Any arrangements made between outgoing and incoming officers are fine but they are informal.


I do not see why arrangements for the transfer of "power" should be different for the SSC Debates Officer. It was always the case that incoming, non-sabbatical officers took over in April. This was a formal arrangement. And when did the Students' Association start messing around with formality?

[hr]
We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.

[David Bean]

[s]Pam wrote on 14:41, 24th Mar 2003:
Please no. David, congrats to you for winning, but no more pomp. I can't take it anymore.



Explain?

[Pam]

We've done it once this semister, and I think that we might be able to wait till fall to do it again. Why should we prevent freshers from being able to wittness the Debating Society in all its splendor? And seeing how this has been a rather odd year as far as elections are concerned, when (traditionally) do we actually go about installing the new convenor?

[Eliot Wilson]

Traditionally, and by anything other than Hendrik's engagingly wacky logic, you install the new Convenor at the first debate over which he or she is to preside.

I like the idea of installing Convenors; makes them sound like shower cabinets.

[peter]

Is Bean to be installed on Thursday? If so, it would be nice if the board had have been told, as opposed to finding it out on the sinner.

On a lighter note (he said, trying ot get a job on Radio 4), at least Bean will be much easier to carry to the chair than most... we could throw him...

Peter

[Barry Joss]

Sigh. It may well once have "always been the case" that officers took over in April, but I think you may find that that was because term times were a shade different, and as a rule the elections came later in the year. Thus, the first meeting at which an officer would be official tended to be in April.

The notion that the Convenor continues in office for some time after the election is (a) a nonsense and (b) mere convention. I don't know when you graduated Al, but it seems also that your information is sorely out of date as I certainly can't remember a Convenor who ever insisted on being anything other than Convenor. Even in St Andrews things change.

Finally, Peter, you needn't learn about it on the Sinner, you're on the Board. Make the decisions yourself, the Society is yours now - put a stamp on it and make it work. Part of the problem of the Society lately is its slavish repitition of the pointless and unamusing. Maybe it was hilarious to say "ooo" once, maybe it was side-splitting to say "how much" and so on, but none of you know who did these things or why you just keep doing them.

The very definition of tradition perhaps? Well, maybe. But for Christ's sake, show some initiative. Don't all wait to be told.

[Okocim]

As far as I can remember the Convenor has always been installed at the start of the third term.

I illustrate this assertion with a reference to the time in 2000 when Liz Fletcher stood up from the board seats to make a point of order 'as Convenor Elect' so to persuade Lee Schama to hold a vote in the house over the issue of the board of ten election that year which the Union had declared invalid. If she had been installed immediately following the Association elections, then she wouldn't have needed to do this.

[Al]

Someone's in a bad mood! I would suggest that titling your post "rant" does not give you a right to be so rude and condescending. You are undoubtedly right that St Andrews has changed. It has changed for the worse. I remember when people used to treat other people with decency and respect.

[hr]We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.

[Eliot Wilson]

Okocim, you are right with regard to Fletch in 2000 (I should know; I stood against her, and was elected to her Board at BOTH AGMs), but calling herself 'Convenor Elect' was a courteous fiction. My original point stands; any handover of power in April is a convention rather than a rule. The real transfer of power, so far as the Association is concerned, is instantaneous.

[Barry Joss]

[s]Al wrote on 20:54, 25th Mar 2003:
Someone's in a bad mood! I would suggest that titling your post "rant" does not give you a right to be so rude and condescending. You are undoubtedly right that St Andrews has changed. It has changed for the worse. I remember when people used to treat other people with decency and respect.

Rude and condescending? I was merely pointing out that my memory of the Debating Society is also a long one, and that it is very, very detailed indeed and I defy anyone to show themselves more of an expert on the matter than I. I presume you mean my remarks to Peter? Well, I stand by them.

Peter is a friend of mine, but I worry about Board members constantly complaining that nobody told them what to do. I mean no disrespect to him personally, but I find the atmosphere in the chamber of late - and I am a regular attender still - to be utterly flat and stale, a case of little more than people going through the motions. Endlessly repeating what they did last year and with no real concpt of why they do it.

But this I find also to be true of the Association and other bodies in St Andrews. Yes, it has changed for the worst. All the fight seems to have gone out of the place as we amble from one indistinguishable year to the next. So much needs to be done, so many people should be making themselves known and felt and instead we simply plod. I despair.

As for treating people with decency and respect, I fail to see where I did not and would be delighted to be shown. I merely said that I didn't know when you graduated, but that my sure and certain knowledge of the last decade of the Society seems to be more current than your own.

As for Okocim, I think quoting Liz Fletcher's year as in some way demonstrative of the way things are done is slightly fatuous given that I just said that the traditions of the Society are quite other. And, for the record, it was I who had the Union overturn those Board elections so my recollection of them is quite clear.

I believe I am also right in saying that the Standing Orders of the House, with which I doubt more than a dozen people have more than a passing familiarity, state that the Convenor should be installed at the first debate after election.

Finally, the notion of a "Solatium" debate is a conceit that was revived some years ago by Lee Schama and had not, to my knowledge, been the practice for at least the preceding twenty and more years. And Mr. Wilson is correct, there is no Convenor Elect any more than there is this deeply irksome fiction of Convenors Emeritus.

Stop it. Learn what the terms mean before you use them, you bloody morons! Now THAT was rude.