ULU council happens. Again.
The second meeting of the academic session of University of London Union council happened in the ULU building at Malet St on Monday evening. The only real motion of the evening dealt with the closure of the Chemistry and Life Sciences departments at Kings’ College, which was proposed by the KCLSU president David Dunn. After a number of procedural issues with amendments, as well as technical problems with delegates and speakers not being able to hear each other the discussion centred around whether the Kings’ issue should be dealt with by ULU, since it was such a college specific issue. The problems with the UCL podiatry department, which was dealt with at the last council, came up again, but mainly due to the fact that the Kings delegates either opposed said motion – to oppose the transfer of the UCL department to UEL – or abstained from the vote in question. The vote was carried by a large majority, despite many points against the motion being raised in advance by Mustafa Arif, ICU President. The practical implications of this are that ULU will act to support Kings’ campaign to oppose these departmental closures, and given the passage of two such motions it would seem that a precedent has been set as regards ULU opposition to departmental closures.
The small and specialist colleges officer’s resignation letter was also read out which explained that the reason for his resignation stemmed from the fact that ULU felt the need to investigate a number of claims he made about the computer provision at Heythrop to back up the ballot box Heythrop has for ULU elections and that this led to him feeling that he was not trusted by the executive and could hence not carry on in his role.
The much-heralded ‘transformation’ project for the University of London Union – ULU – was also a major topic of discussion at ULU council on Monday evening, following another presentation in the issue. The vagueness of these plans proved to be a stumbling block, as was the general scepticism of many council members towards many aspects of the plan.
The Transformation project seems to have split into two fundamental areas: The physical reconstruction and repair of the ULU building in Malet street, and a general review of all aspects of ULU governance and representation processes. It was felt by some present that the governance issues should be dealt with first, to ensure that the structure of the new building was viable for the use of the new representative structure. No firm plans have been made as yet, and the discussions are likely to roll on for some time.
Feedback is encouraged from all ULU members, and should be submitted through the new ULU website, at www.ulucube.com, which also has up to date information on the plans themselves.
