Yes or No? Your Guide to the New SU Constitution
It can be a little tricky to wrap your head around all of the changes the New SU Constitution is going to make – which is why we’ve written a guide to the pros and cons of voting ‘yes’ in the upcoming Referendum.
Pros?
Cons?
There will be a larger Sabbatical Union with officers across all campuses. This means that there’ll be elected Education, Welfare and Events officers for both the Carlow and Waterford campuses, as well as a full time Wexford Campus officer. There will be full-time officers in place for all students to access for anything they might need, with an overarching President to manage the team and ensure that the entire student body of SETU is being represented at an executive and national level.
There will be the elimination of several part-time officer roles. These include school officers, the clubs and socs officer, and so on. These roles are traditionally filled by part-time students elected by either the student body, or class representative council. These duties will instead be absorbed by the full-time executive, and there will be campus officers for each specific satellite campus instead.
There will be a larger budget and a bigger platform to support students for the overall Union. Due to higher student numbers, the budget provided to the Student Union as a whole will increase to support the growing student population. The larger sabbatical team and overarching President will also mean that decisions made by the student body will have a wider platform due to the wide scale of the campus.
SU Services may change in availability and price range. Due to the new managerial structure and the need to standardize operations across the Students’ Union so that all students have the same options, aspects about the services that the Students’ Union provide are subject to change. This might mean that servicers that were once free may incur a small fee, for example.
There will be one overarching President to speak for the best interests of all the students. With one President representing the Students’ Union, it is envisaged that this will make communication with the University executive much easier. It also means that on a national platform, the President will be able to represent huge numbers of students to show the student movement that SETUSU is a major player in student politics.
The President will not always be geographically available on every specific campus. While the President will be available via a designated phone number, representing the student population at large involves travelling from campus to campus, meaning that the President will not always be on your specific campus at all times.
There will be several structures in place to support Union-wide budgeting, HR matters, legal matters, and insurance matters. This includes the Board of Governance, which will be composed of students and sabbatical officers alike to monitor the Student Union’s spending, handling of assets, employment and HR matters, legal matters, and so on. There will also be an Executive Class Rep Council composed of students, which will be responsible for deciding what issues are campus-specific and what issues are college-specific.
These additional structures will require additional volunteers from the student body, which may be difficult to source. This could prove difficult in some respects especially due to the ongoing demands of being a student at SETU. It will be the Student Union’s responsibility to ensure that all student representatives are supported in their dual roles as reps and as students.
Remember to get out there and vote on the 29th and 30th of November for the chance to win in over €1000 worth of prizes!
Yes or No? – Your Quick Guide to the Constitutional Referendum
