The Students’ Union Executive is asking you to vote for a new constitution which they will then propose to the University Governors.

Copies of the new and old constitutions can be collected from receptions if you wish to see them but in summary this is what is being proposed and why:

- What is the constitution? -

This is the legal governing document.  This defines who our members are, details our structures for making decisions and states our aims etc. 

- So why change the Constitution? -

All committee structures derive from it and our Bye laws have to be "consistent with it".  A massive re-write of the bye laws is taking place at the moment to bring the Union up to date and to make it more flexible and responsive to student demands so the constitution needs to be changed to let this happen.

 - So what has changed? -

Under section 4 (Membership), every student will now automatically be a member of the Union unless they tell the President (Finance & Governance) they do not wish to be.  This is to help us to get more people involved in elections.  In future this would mean that a smartcard would probably define Union membership although we would still choose to issue NUS cards if students wanted them.

Also under section 4, in part 2, we have removed the categories of associate, life and honorary membership.  The Executive felt when discussing this that Life and honorary membership were very rarely used and not really understood.  They were also relatively meaningless as any former student could always apply for affiliate membership anyway. 

The language of the document has been changed with Union President becoming Union President (Finance & Governance).

The document now recognises the new structure of the SRC and renames it the Union Council (in line with most other Unions) and also incorporates the new quoracy calculation as agreed by governors.

The document also adds in the new Trustee Board structure and defines clearly that budgetary and employers’ responsibilities now lie with it rather than the Executive or the Council (in line with Charity Law).

And that is about it!

Please Vote yes and support these changes!