You Want A Referendum? Call One!

Quick – when was the last time you read the UEA Union Constitution?

How about the UUEAS Bye-Laws 2013? No? Never?

They lay out your rights as a member of the Student Union – which, if you’re a student registered as studying at UEA, you are by default, just as much as any major Union Committee or Management member is. It’s hardly surprising you’ve never heard of it, because if you’re not on the Union Council itself (or even if you are) no one’s ever explained why you should care. But you should.

This singular piece of legislation means that any ordinary students who aren’t members of the Union Council can, at least theoretically, overturn any unpopular Union decisions.

And it just might prove crucial to reversing decisions made by the Union Council which a majority of students disagree with.

But, before we get to that – let’s backtrack a little here. How many times has the Union Constitution been downloaded online this month, in total, by anybody? Fifty? A hundred? 38.

(And three times more by me, because I found it online and reloaded it a couple of times. Thus bringing it to a total of 41.)

Click here to read the constitution

That’s thirty-eight, out of the approximately seventeen thousand students, almost all registered members of the Union, studying at UEA. That’s 38, out of a Union Council of almost 150. In a sure victory for democratic representation, the document governing the rights (and laying out the means of opposition) for Union members has probably been viewed by less than 0.2% of them (if we’re being generous),  in a month where there’s a greater-than-usual amount of outrage at the Union.

This means that no-one reads it. This means that the vast majority of students have only the vaguest idea what, precisely, as members of the Union they are entitled to do. This is wrong.

Let me make this perfectly clear: the Union’s “Constitution” and “Bye-laws” documents say that students can call for a referendum, on any unpopular Union Policy, by means of a petition.

Download the document at the link above. Scroll down to the second page, about halfway down, to the heading called ‘Referenda’. It reads;

“A Referendum may be called on any lawful issue, in accordance with the

Constitution and these Bye-Laws, by:”

–          A resolution of the Trustees

–          A resolution of the Student Officer Committee

–          A majority vote of Union Council; or

–          A Secure Petition signed by at least one thirtieth of the ordinary members.

‘Ordinary members’ just means ‘students at UEA’, who by default belong to the Union. Got a campus card? Got a Sports Association Membership? Use the libraries to write your essays for seminar? Spend money in the Union shops on your way to lectures? Great. You’re a member.

A ‘Secure Petition’ is defined as:

“a written request to the Union from ordinary members, which shall be fixed in a pre-arranged place or places or held securely on-line, and shall state the name, school and year of each signatory”.

There are approximately 17,000 students enrolled at UEA. 1/30^th of that is 567, or with a nice even rounding up, 600. That means that if students are unhappy with a decision made by the Union – a change of smoking area in the LCR, a banning of a product, the LCR door policy – they can petition the Union to call a referendum, whereupon all students can vote to decide the outcome they want.

In plain English: if you can gather 600 signatures on a petition, to call a referendum on a Union decision, either on paper or online, and include each student signatory’s name, school and year, the Union has to listen to you and give a referendum.

You can then vote to overturn the decision at referendum.

Instead of complaining about decisions that they don’t like and don’t feel represent them, students can put an online petition together and lobby the Union against the changes, on any online petition site – for example, change.org or thepetitionsite.com – about a recent issue, such as ‘Burger Van.’-gate.

 So if the Union is a true democracy, why is this fact not more widely known?