All motions bar one passed at the Union General Meeting earlier this term, continuing a long standing trend in which most proposals that reach quoracy pass at the student vote.
The UGM included motions to create an International Student Committee and for YUSU to lobby for the new York City FC Stadium to be built near the Heslington East site. The latter campaign, spearheaded by student Jason Rose, has attracted a lot of attention on a Facebook group set up to support it.
Democracy and Services Officer Lewis Bretts commented on the results of the UGM: “I’d suggest most UGMs pass because students agree with them! In many cases motions have been through the YUSU committee structure, and been reviewed by various different elected representatives and going to UGM is about securing a strong mandate from the Student Body. That said, motions are contested, and motions do fall – it’s up to YUSU members to get involved and have their say.”
Week 4’s motion to “Make Union Materials Accessible” failed to pass because not enough students voted for it, despite around 750 of the 13,000 students at the university voting – around 5.8%. Bretts’s response to this was to say that “to achieve this we used the website, daily info, flyers, banners, Facebook, emails to stakeholders and Twitter as well as word of mouth.”
“I’m particularly pleased that we’ve managed to get speeches filmed (by YSTV) this year in order to make them more accessible, and we’ll be developing this area in line with the Strategic Plan.”
Luke Malkin, who chaired the UGM also said it was successful and praised YSTV’s work at it, encouraging students to attend them in order to “learn more.”