News

Two different versions of the proposed OUSA student constitution will be put to student referendum on May 23 to June 2.
The move comes after Colleges and Communications Officer Francisco Hernandez and Finance and Services Officer Dan Stride collected signatures from enough students to force the Exec to send the alternative constitution to the referendum, despite Hernandez’s motion being defeated at the Exec meeting of May 5.

 
The “alternative” constitution was authored by former Executive member James Meager and OUSA life-member Kyle Matthews. Last year it missed being ratified by seven votes when sent to a student referendum.

 
Effectively the main difference between the two constitutions is that they propose two fundamentally different structures for dealing with motions.
 

The “orthodox” constitution, which has progressed through the PolCom committee process, will send motions to the Executive first. The Executive then have a choice whether to send the referendum straight to referendum, or whether to refer to motion to an independent mediator, who would then judge whether or not the motion should be sent to referendum according to a clear set of criteria.
 

The alternative constitution would send all motions to a Student General Meeting where the merits of motions could be debated before proceeding to a referendum.
 

The fact that both constitutions will now be voted on at the upcoming referendum means that OUSA will be asking students to choose between the competing constitutions.

 
Matthews told Critic that he thought the upcoming referendum would be interesting, and estimated that “only 10 to 12 people will probably have read both versions” before they vote.

 
He added that it was a difficult situation, since students were effectively being asked to decide between two constitutions instead of being presented with a single cohesive document that had the support of the entire Executive. Matthews thought that this was representative of the fact that “OUSA hasn’t got themselves together this year”.
 

OUSA President Harriet Geoghegan told Critic that the orthodox constitution was formulated as a response to student feedback on the current process, and was designed to engage with students online to increase participation.
 

Asked about the alternative constitution, Geoghegan said that it was effectively more of the same and that students “had been complaining for years about the archaic SGM model”.