I believe the requirements of becoming a Registered Charity with the Charity Commission affords a necessity for Students’ Unions who wish to comply with the law in this area to adopt a clause which states that their Board of Trustees – or other executive governing body – will reject any decisions, even democratic ones, which call for breaking the laws and regulations set down in the Charities Act 1993. This I can understand.

What I cannot abide is the three other clauses adopted by USSU which essentially permit the Board of Trustees – four of whom are not elected – to reject all democratic decisions taken by way of Referenda and Motions at AGM outright if these do not fit with their own judgement of what is in “the student interest”. It is akin to Parliament conducting a full referendum on some issue of vital national importance, only to then reserve the right to completely ignore the results. Nothing is more preposterous than this arrangement.

Of course, this constitution had to be approved by the Board of Trustees before it could be referred to the Annual General Meeting. It may come as some surprise for readers to learn that neither the Trustees nor Sabbaticals I have spoken to about Clause 63 had even read the bloody document! How on earth they agreed to the single most important document that governs how USSU works without reading a single word of its contents defies belief.

As for rejecting the motions, it is precisely what I guessed would happen when I submitted them. The “democracy” at USSU is nothing short of a shambles. At our last ‘You Decide’ meeting (which is the USSU equivalent of Manchester’s General Meetings), the President’s partner wrote an article for the paper stating multiple times that things were “agreed” and policies and perspective were “agreed to”.

What he failed to mention in his recollection of events was that not a single vote was taken during the entire event! How things were “agreed to” is beyond me.