Amendment - Clarify wording around general meetings

[oli-cs]

Clarifying the word "calling" in section 8 and 9 about who can vote and run at a general meeting

Description

The constitution currently says that only members that obtained their membership prior to the calling of the general meeting can contribute to the formation of quorum and can run for committee positions.

In practice this has historically meant that you must have a membership prior to when the committee tells you when the meeting is, and prevents a group of people from strong-arming the society into passing amendments and electing people to the detriment of the society.

However, in this context "calling" could mean either "when the meeting is arranged and people are notified of the date of the meeting" or "when the meeting commences". These are two very different meanings, so the wording should be clarified.

This amendment's purpose is to assert that all references to the "calling" of a general meeting should be replaced with "when people are notified" of a general meeting so that the definition of "calling" is not up to interpretation.

[UnicornsOnLSD]

I'm sure you saw this last year but in practice there are many people (including current committee members sometimes...) who don't have a valid membership but go to the AGM anyway. We've always haphazardly added them into the voting system on the day, which obviously goes against this. HackSoc is a bit of an awkward case here in that the only reason you ever really need a membership is to join the Discord and vote in elections. Is there a clean solution to this?

[oli-cs]

The thing that a membership does (outside of allowing you to access the discord server and voting rights) is prove that the people running and voting care enough about the society to have a membership, despite not requiring it for HackSoc events. I think that it's reasonable that if you're required to have a membership to vote, you should be required to have a membership to run.

[heychoogle]

in which case anyone with a HackSoc membership at the time of the general meeting can run

I think this in principle is okay IF nobody with a membership prior to the meeting being called at all wants to run after being offered given notice at the AGM of the position(s) nobody is running for. Obviously, hand in hand with that, I also think that prior to an AGM convening it would be best if we gave notice to members by way of the discord of positions with no eligible candidates running.

In my opinion, the situation should follow a general order of: Meets the criteria of having been a member prior to the calling of the meeting, and is running (a regular candidate) > meets said criteria but did not initially run (just a valid member within the constraints)> if and only if absolutely nobody meeting that criteria desires to run, allow someone that does not meet the criteria (must have joined before the AGM but, as we may want to clarify, not during - which I'm sure will, at some point, inevitably be a situation that occurs at some point in the future and would be best to mitigate now because there's no reason not to)

I think the proposed idea as-is slightly undermines the underlying criteria we're trying to define clearly here, and is fair but should only be considered where those with a valid membership for the purposes of voting and running have been firstly notified prior to the AGM, and secondly offered and in both situations all declined their chance to run. Equally, I think it causes a bit of a stir when you consider that rightly someone running, a non-voting member in the a given election pursuant to the parts of the amendment we're simply clarifying here, shouldn't and in my opinion would not be allowed to vote in this scenario despite being allowed to run (hence why in my view this should be a complete last resort).

[oli-cs]

I think it causes a bit of a stir when you consider that rightly someone running, a non-voting member in the a given election pursuant to the parts of the amendment we're simply clarifying here, shouldn't and in my opinion would not be allowed to vote in this scenario despite being allowed to run (hence why in my view this should be a complete last resort).

That's a fair point, I've adjusted the proposed amendment slightly to stop non-members (i.e. those who can't vote) from running and to assert an order of priority. I've also been reminded that if roles are not filled then an EGM can be called to fill them at a later date to give people time to meet the criteria, so the adjustments I've made employ that to make the process as fair as possible.

[treeinsect]

im not sure that the changing the wording to 'notification' clarifies this tbh, to me 'notification of the meeting' would mean whenever you're notified about the meeting, i.e. when nominations are announced, and considering hacksoc is a free society i think it would be a bit silly to say you have to have a membership before nominations open or you won't be eligible. cause who remembers to renew their hacksoc membership anyway? sleep deprived as shit rn so i can't tell if im agreeing or disagreeing with you but imo the wording makes it a bit ambitious sooo there's my comment

[oli-cs]

Who remembers to renew their hacksoc membership anyway

This is also a fair point, I recognise that there will be people who forget to renew their membership on a regular basis, so I've updated the wording to be "within 5 student union days of notification of the general meeting" which will give people a week from notification to renew their membership, while still serving the purpose of preventing groups of non-members from showing up on the day and strong-arming the meeting

[heychoogle]

This is now moving from a wording change to definitionally changing the point of the amendment, not sure if I agree with it now.

If you have been notified of the meeting, 5 SU days seems arbitrary - that in many cases is literally half the time between public notification and occurrence of the meeting. 5 SU days doesn't at all serve the purpose of "preventing groups of non-members from showing up on the day and strong-arming the meeting", because it gives people 5 days (possibly more given you can obviously obtain a membership on non SU days) to say "Hey, I'm going to run, you need to sign up for this membership, don't worry though you have a week to sign up".

If you forget to renew your membership, something you only need to do 3 or 4 times ever, then I feel like that's on you - especially if you know you'd intend to run for committee or want to vote in a society. I could maybe see renewing your membership the day of notification, or the following day if it was announced very late, but I think this arbitrary period of 5 SU days completely changes what we were previously trying to solve and the entire point is undermined by that.

[oli-cs]

I think this has really become two issues now, so I'm separating it into two amendments - one about what "calling" means, and one about who should be allowed to vote

[oli-cs]

It turns out that, after reading through the constitution again, this wording change already has the desired effect on who can vote and run without any additional amendments due to the provisions laid out in 8.6, 9.4, and 9.5