Commencing ten minutes later than proposed, the March University of Sydney Union (USU) Board meeting began at 2:08pm Thursday 28 on campus.
Naz Sharifi, the 2024 USU president, welcomed and kickstarted the meeting beginning with the intention to “move swiftly” through the agenda.
The monthly board meeting took place in the Holmes Building after a private executive meeting that student media was not privy to. Sharifi explained to Honi Soit that this meeting “discussed confidential and commercially sensitive matters, relating among other things to tenancies and legal arrangements.”
Regardless, Honi was eventually allowed in, shown our seat, and the proceedings were made public.
The March meeting’s agenda included the ‘circular resolution policy’, ‘new clubs application appeal’, USU approval items, finance reports, a refresher of USyd’s Strategic Plan, and the executive reports.
This board meeting comes weeks after Andrew Mills, previous USU CEO, resigned on March 11 after three years of service.
Starting off, Motion 11 was a lengthy discussion that included amendments and changes to the “circular resolution policy” — a communication tool the board uses to make balanced decisions. Under this motion was the discussion of a club application appeal which took the board almost 20 minutes to come to a consensus.
Essentially, the discussion involved a finance club that is under consideration for being “too similar in nature” to another existing club.
Ben Hines argued that this club “wants to provide trading practice and different tools to what other clubs offer” and believes that this distinction is enough to accept the club.
One board member questioned if “we need four clubs within the Finance major.”
Another board member suggested “having a bigger club” to combine the two but the USU president immediately re-centred the conversation as “that would be prescriptive of what clubs should do and USU does not prescribe or practise this.”
The contentious debate carried on; Onor Nottle (Honorary Secretary) stated she would be cautionary to not take the recommendation of accepting the club despite “people on the board have[ing] had personal experiences” and to instead take considerations from club or staff members like the Clubs & Societies Committee (CNS) who have worked to oppose the club.
When asked to comment Sharifi said, “after a robust discussion the Board concluded, with the aid of the experiences of Directors, that the appeal should be upheld and the club allowed to register.”
Regardless, this motion was put to a vote with 8 ays and 3 nays and was therefore approved by the board after over 20 minutes of debate.
Finally, the proceedings moved forward. The varying iterations of motion amendments and procedures seemed to be confusing to follow which was raised by one of the senior executive members. The executive commented on the frustration with the disorganised agenda and suggested the “board needs more discipline with board papers.”
The president acknowledged this frustration and said amendments are “more ad hoc” but apologised with the commitment to make board papers easier to access in future procedurals.
More delays in administrative detail are evident as Sharifi told Honi that “there were a number of policies up for approval, after deliberation on the substance they were remitted for further amendments.”
The board moved to discuss the welfare of international students which included brainstorming “new tools” to engage with Chinese student communities such as WeChat – a Chinese instant messaging, social media, and payment app – which was put to the senior executives to look into.
In response to a survey by the USU to better understand International students interest, Grace Wallman said, “given ESL/EFL international students might have been less likely to participate in [such] survey, we should do more research on the extent of the need and demand for multilingual resources in the interests of the USU being as accessible as possible.”
There did not seem to be mention of the moving of Queer Action Collective out of Queer Spaces however the board moved to discuss resolutions that had passed on the previous month. These included the appointment of the first Ethnocultural Officer for Debates Committee and a discussion about the future of autonomous spaces such as the opening of the Disability Communities Room which can be expected later in April.
Much unlike the Student Representative Council’s monthly fiasco, the USU board meetings are quiet, ordered, and somewhat stricter with sparkling water and black table cloths antithetical to six hour yelling matches and fatigued Honi coverage. However, a lot of the amendments and motions were moved in a style that felt like the board are still acclimating to their roles, and each member’s styles despite being in function for over a semester.
Unfortunately, Honi is not able to gain access to the meeting minutes until they are approved at the next board meeting this month.
However, in a post-meeting comment, Sharifi revealed that in the next few months, students can expect the board “to ensure that we are providing the right services and support for members as we see the rising cost of living crisis impact students.”
Despite only briefly touching on the cost of living crisis after the council, it is unclear how the board will achieve this commitment given their hands will be full with the 2024-2025 USU board elections, handovers, and onboarding/offboarding process that are soon approaching. April 10th was the closure of the candidate application and students can expect an updated list of candidates and what is next in the election process in the next few days. The dates of the elections are May 6th to May 10th and campaigning will commence digitally on April 27th.
Stay tuned as Honi Soit will continue to cover the election and upcoming USU Board meetings.
(12/04, 6:34pm) NOTE – the following sentence was amended:
In response to a survey by the USU to better understand International students interest, Grace Wallman said, “given ESL/EFL international students might have been less likely to participate in [such] survey, we should do more research on the extent of the need and demand for multilingual resources in the interests of the USU being as accessible as possible.”