The General Meeting, held on Monday of Week 1, failed to meet quoracy. The meeting was called in response to the yourvoice campaign regarding the restructuring of the college bars. There were other items added to the agenda, such as a discussion about rent inflation and a motion regarding LUSU’s support of the NUS demonstration. 200 members of the student body were required to be in attendance in order for the meeting to take place, at the final tally there were only 138 attendees.
Ste Smith, LUSU President chaired the meeting as Libby Martin, VP Events and Democracy, was unable to attend due to illness. Mark Swindlehurst, Head of Facilities and Jo Hardman, Director of Commercial Services attended the meeting to support their decision to restructure the managerial system of the bars and as they were unable to discuss the motions due to lack of quoracy they agreed to hold a question and answer session. This was followed by a discussion based around Chris Witter’s points regarding rent inflation.
Much animosity was felt with regard to the lack of attendance from JCRs and CCOs. Had all of the JCRs and CCOs been in attendance the number of attendees would already have been over 150, needing only 50 attendees from the general student body. Smith was asked to comment on this situation and had this to say, “I don’t think it is acceptable. Your officers are your elected representatives. Your officers should be at the forefront of that. We say we are all LUSU. These are supposed to be highly engaged individuals. Yes, they should have been in the room, and I will be having a word.” Much frustration was felt by all attendance that these bodies of elected students were not present.
Due to the lack of quoracy at the meeting Smith pledged to take the motions to Union Council, which meets on Wednesday Week 3.
