General Meeting, BNSR 10, 2/11/19

17:05 – Meeting Start

Member votes on amendments to the Constitution

Members voted on the motion to changes to the Constitution under the following headings:

Removal of the Vice President Role

• For: 17
• Against: 0
• Abstain: 5

Motion passed.

Gauging membership interest in the following Committee roles

Smash and Bailrigg Officer

• A member stated that the role is necessary as if the Smash and Bailrigg role were to be removed, there wouldn’t be a Committee member to set up Smash Weeklies.
• Karen stated that Smash Weeklies is not under the jurisdiction of the Esports Coordinators.
• A member stated that the benefit of having the Smash and Bailrigg Officer role is ensuring that Esports Coordinators don’t have to make themselves available to set up for Smash Weeklies. They also added that having a dedicated role would also ensure that the person filling the position would most likely have an interest in Super Smash Bros. and the Bailrigg events.
• Kieran stated that as he and Isaac will be leaving next year, the Bailrigg events would need a Smash and Bailrigg Officer to ensure the smooth running of future Bailrigg events.

• For: 0
• Against: 15
• Abstain: 9

Community Officer

Kieran made the following points about the Community Officer role:

• The role requires a lot of work as it has currently had two reforms since its introduction, neither of which were successful. He also added that the role is very time-consuming.
• The community Discord channels are not used very often as certain communities have their own dedicated means of communication that is not the community channels on Discord, for example, the Fire Emblem community have their own dedicated Discord server.
• Maintaining the Community Cast podcast is too much work.
• All Committee members should be doing the Community Officer’s role.
  • A member agreed with this point.

A member stated that scouting interests throughout the membership can be assigned to a different role instead of the Community Officer or alternatively to the moving the responsibilities of the role into a dedicated section for all of the Committee to inherit from.

• Ben suggested moving it under the Executive Policy section in the Constitution.

• For: 15
• Against: 1
• Abstain: 8

Engagement Officer

Katie stated that splitting the roles into Publicity Officer and Social Secretary would create a more well-defined workload for both roles.

A member asked what the difference between the two roles is.

• Ben stated that the role of the Publicity Officer would be to ensure that events that the Society run or are involved with are advertised on the Society’s social media while the role of the Social Secretary is to plan, organise and contact the external parties needed to organise events.

James stated that there already has been an unofficial split in terms of responsibilities between the two Engagement Officers that would mirror this suggested split.

Katie clarified that the split would not make the responsibilities associated with the Publicity Officer and Social Secretary mutually exclusive; bidirectional delegation would be allowed between the two roles.

• For: 18
• Against: 0
• Abstain: 6

Equipment Officer

• Ben stated that he believes having a dedicated role would help the Society.

• Jack stated that equipment storage and safekeeping isn’t effective without the role.
  • Kaite agreed.

• A member suggested that the Society should have an inventory check.
  • Ben agreed.

• A member asked if the Equipment Officer role was the Society’s equivalent to a Health and Safety Officer which the Society needed to have to be allowed to operate according to Students’ Union’s regulations for societies.
  • Ben stated that this is not the case as the Society is a Tier-1 society meaning that health and safety responsibility falls onto the President and does not require a dedicated role.

• For: 0
• Against: 16
• Abstain: 6

Member votes on amendments to the Constitution

Members voted on the motion to changes to the Constitution under the following headings:

Redefining the responsibilities of the Esports Coordinator role

A member asked how many Esports Coordinators the society currently has.

• Ben responded by stating that the Society has two; Ryan and Karen.

A member asked what redefining these roles would entail.

• Ben stated that redefinition, in this case, would mean that the responsibilities of the role would remain mostly the same but would become more accurate to the current needs of the society.

• For: 12
• Against: 5
• Abstain: 12

Motion passed.

Redefining all time periods in the Constitution from days to hours

Ben stated that this motion would become effective at the beginning of the next term.

• A member asked why having the motion being effective from the beginning of the next term is necessary if the new motion makes the sanction system more lenient.
  • Ben stated that having the motion be applied from the beginning of the next term would make recording violations of the motion easier to record.

• For: 15
• Against: 5
• Abstain: 4

Motion passed.

Committee Sanctions

• For: 15
• Against: 4
• Abstain: 5

Motion passed.

AOB

A member suggested recounting the vote on the removal of the Vice President role as they were unsure if their vote was counted correctly.

• The membership and the Committee decided against a recount as a difference of one vote would not have changed the outcome and a Committee member had left the meeting.

A member suggested having a better method of vote counting.

• Ben stated that the current method of vote counting, raised hands and manual counting, is the most efficient method of counting.

A member suggested having a different method of voting as an alternative to voting in person.

• This was decided against as this was attempted previously and removed after an unsuccessful trial.

A member suggested counting the number of people in the room to make sure that everyone votes during motions.

A member suggested starting the General Meeting earlier to ensure that people don’t leave the meeting before the meeting is concluded.

• Ben responded by stating that the Committee will take the suggestion into account.

17:50 – Meeting End