ULFM Transparency Issues

BurningBridges · 01-11-2011 9:22pm #1

Source: http://www.ulsuelect.com/?p=354

ulsuelect.com wrote:
ULFM: Immediate issues concerning transparency!

You may have noticed that the two previous pieces of commentary on ULFM on this website were entitled: “Long run governance issues”. This served to indicate that the issues highlighted weren’t necessary of immediate concern, but it would be prudent to fix them within an appropriate time frame, because as more time passes, the higher the chance that something negative will occur.

This post is focused on the short term, i.e. now!

A few weeks ago, a UL student (not the author of this article) made a request for the minutes of the board meetings for ULFM (as was allowed for in the original version of the ULFM constitution). Below is the correspondence (with names and email addresses removed as determined appropriate):
From: UL Student
Sent: 20 October 2011 16:26
To: SUCommunications
Subject: Minutes of meetings

Dear Ms O&#8217; Brien,
Could you send me a copy of all the minutes of the ULFM board of directors meetings that were mentioned in the original ULFM constitution as having to be published to the website.
Kind regards
From: SUCommunications
Sent: 20 October 2011 17:59
To: UL Student
Subject: RE: Minutes of meetings

Hi,

I&#8217;m snowed under with work at the moment and will forward them to you at the weekend.

We will not be posting the minutes on the website as we do not feel it is necessary.

May I ask why it is you are requesting these minutes?

Kind Regards,

Kelly O&#8217;Brien

Communications Officer

Oifigeach Cumars&#225;ide

&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;

University of Limerick Students&#8217; Union
From: UL Student
Sent: 20 October 2011 19:11
To: SUCommunications
Subject: RE: Minutes of meetings

Hi Kelly

Thank you for your speedy reply.

The reason I am requesting the minutes is because I am curious.

Kind regards
From: SUCommunications
Sent: 20 October 2011 19:15
To: ULStudent
Subject: RE: Minutes of meetings

Do you have any questions off the bat that I can answer now?

I can get the minutes to you at the weekend or on Monday at a stretch. Nicole has the electronic copies of them so I will have to get her to send them to me.

If you&#8217;re interested in the radio, maybe you&#8217;d like to get involved with it?

Kel

Kelly O&#8217;Brien

Communications Officer

Oifigeach Cumars&#225;ide

&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;

University of Limerick Students&#8217; Union
From: UL Student
Sent: 20 October 2011 19:33
To: SUCommunications
Subject: RE: Minutes of meetings

Hi Kelly

I have no questions off the bat.

An electronic copy of the minutes over the weekend will be fine, thanks.

Kind regards
From: UL Student
Sent: 26 October 2011 22:30
To: SUCommunications
Subject: Minutes of Meetings

Dear Ms O&#8217;Brien

This is just a reminder that you said would send me a digital copy of the minutes of meetings for ULFM by Monday of this week. I have yet to recieve them.

Kind regards
From: SUCommunications
Sent: 30 October 2011 17:28
To: UL Student
Cc: Members of ULFM Development Board
Subject: RE: Minutes of Meetings

I decided to hold off until Wednesday so that I could clear the decision with the ULFM Board of Directors.

We have decided to respectfully deny your request as we do not feel &#8220;curiosity&#8221; is a valid enough reason to request official minutes.

Furthermore, we have decided to implement a system for requesting minutes.

From now on, this is the procedure:

Arrange a meeting with the Communications Officer to obtain an Information Request Form.
Fill out this form stating name, address, email, reason for requesting information etc and return to the Communications Officer with a photocopy of your current UL Student ID and a &#8364;2 administration charge.
Your request will be discussed at the next ULFM Development Board meeting.
You will be notified of the decision via email.
Should your request be granted, a hard copy of the minutes will be posted to you after you have signed a non-disclosure agreement.
Hope this clarifies matters.

Kind Regards,

Kelly O&#8217;Brien

Communications Officer

Oifigeach Cumars&#225;ide

&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;

University of Limerick Students&#8217; Union
I smell an attempt to intentionally make it needlessly complicated and time consuming to request minutes. This new procedure means you’d probably have to wait about 2 weeks to see anything and that’s based on the assumption that you are allowed to. Along the windy road to transparency there are several bumps, curves and nasty potholes.
First you have to arrange the meeting with the communications officer who may be conveniently busy.

Then you have to fill out an Information Request Form. The only difference between the form and sending an email from your UL email account is they ask for your address (123 it shouldn’t matter road) and they ask for a €2 fee (which is a petty means for deterring people from requesting minutes)

The board gets to sit around and discuss the best reason to inform you you aren’t allowed to have the minutes.

If you’re lucky, they tell you that you’re allowed to see the minutes!

You then get thrown a non disclosure agreement which could say anything! (For some reason only God knows… maybe SpinFM will steal all of ULFM’s good ideas!)

Then the minutes get sent to you by snail mail (the intentionally slow delivery method.) It would be unfortunate if they posted them to the wrong address and you never received them

If the mail man delivers your mail, you’ll still probably be bound by the non-disclosure agreement that you can not act upon anything written in the minutes. (Or, God forbid, spill the beans on how amazing ULFM is to another radio station)

The question instantly comes to mind: What is ULFM trying to hide & why?

Why is it that the Communications Officer and the rest of the ULFM board are intentionally rejecting proper requests for minutes?

One can only speculate as to why… possible reasons may include:
Incompetence

Misappropriation of any resources (including funding, equipment, etc…)

Overwhelming sense of superiority and ‘greater good’

THEY FIGURED OUT HOW FIG ROLLS ARE MADE!

Personally, I really hope it’s the last point.

Is the elected communications officer really allowed to do this ??? What could she be hiding ?

Stuxnet · 01-11-2011 9:29pm

should'a used quote tags not code tags :pac:

i reckon they figured out the figs

Nockz · 01-11-2011 9:44pm

I don't even like Fig Rolls but if it means so much to everyone, I'll suck up the 'administration fee' and request these delicious minutes.

Pre-heat your ovens folks! Because in a minimum of 2 weeks, I'll have figured it all out!

Ginge Young · 01-11-2011 10:04pm

I can request the minutes of any Clubs and Societies Executive meeting, without an administration charge and a non-disclosure agreement.

I can view the audited accounts of the students' union.

I can request any minutes of General Meetings or Class Reps Council.

Yet when it comes to the Board of Directors of ULFM I have to jump through that many hoops? It is fair to put procedures in place, but with all due respect to anyone involved with ULFM this is a joke. In light of every single thing that has gone on boards, this just seems like another attempt to one up certain posters here.

All I can suggest is that this is brought to the Students' Union Executive for review based on transparency and that all minutes are made available to them so they can judge. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that information discussed in those meetings is that sensitive that such a procedure is needed.

Edit: Perhaps a request could be made on the grounds of investigating whether or not information in the minutes is so sensitive that this procedure is needed so that a request can then be made to the SU Executive to look at it? No hate to anyone, maybe there is information I don't know about, but from what I know this is the HEIGHT of sillyness.

Nockz · 01-11-2011 10:11pm

Who knew running a radio station for students could be such serious business?

BurningBridges · 01-11-2011 10:19pm

Source: http://www.ulsuelect.com/?p=428

ulsuelect.com wrote:

But wait, there’s more!

This site has just seen more emails which have been sent to the Communications Officer requesting minutes for ULFM board meetings. In this case, this is the reply received by a UL student (not the author of this article) after requesting minutes. The student in this case choose not to identify themselves in their emails. (Two headings, #4 & #5, haven’t been published by this website as they do not relate to the minutes or transparency of ULFM)

From: SUCommunications
Date: Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 4:56 PM
Subject: RE: ULFM board of directors
To: UL Student
Cc: Members of ULFM Development Board

Dear Anon,

The ULFM Development Board have discussed your requests.

“1. I formally request the minutes of all previous meetings of the ULFM board.”

– We have decided that, as you have not provided us with your identity nor furnished us with a reason for requesting the minutes, we are respectfully declining your request.

“2. I also request a change in the ULFM constitution to allow an individual to request and receive the minutes of ULFM board meetings and reinstate the previous version of the constitution with the minutes required to be available online.”

– We have unanimously voted to abolish the ULFM constitution and make it into a working document to be featured in our forthcoming ULFM handbook of Rules and Regulations. We have also decided not to publish the minutes of our meetings online. If an individual would like to request minutes, we have decided that they must request the minutes in person by presenting a filled out information request accompanied by their current UL ID card and a €2 administration fee. They will also have to sign a non-disclosure agreement should their request for minutes be granted.

“3. I also request a change in the ULFM constitution to require an AGM once a year to elect a board. The powers currently held by the communications officer in the current ULFM constitution is ridiculous. The board are all appointed by the communications officer and it is a hard task to represent the voice of students when students can’t get involved with the running of the station.”

– We have unanimously voted to abolish the ULFM constitution. We have decided that we do not need to hold an AGM for the simple task of electing a board. The Communications Officer is elected by the students and represents their voice. Therefore, any student appointed by the Communications Officer also represents the students voices.

…

Kind Regards,

Kelly O’Brien

Communications Officer

Oifigeach Cumarsáide

———————————–

University of Limerick Students’ Union

In relation to the reply received for point #1, this might be acceptable. However, from the previous emails we’ve seen and published earlier, we already know that even if you do give your name, email address and student id number as well as a reason you still have no guarantee of receiving any copy of the minutes! Basically the Communications Officer implies that if this student identified themselves they’d receive the minutes… this is a delusion.

Point number 2 tells us that for the second time in under 2 months, the governing body for ULFM has decided to change the document under which ULFM operates. What was the point of the previous 2 constitutions?!? The second half of point number 2 just reaffirms what we already learnt from the other emails published; that a needlessly complex and time wasting method has been introduced to request the minutes.

Point number 3 establishes that the Communications Officer likes the a governance structure where they are 100% in control. There shall be no AGM, no ability for students to have input into the governance of the station, and the Communications Officer will appoint all members of the board. This is Ireland… we have to leave a door open for cronyism, right? The slippery slope the Communications Officer provides, that since they are elected by students, that anyone they appoint can also represent students’ voices is sooooo far fetched! Yes Mr. Putin, all your appointees fairly represent the people.

and this is more of it

KellingtonDawg · 01-11-2011 10:19pm

The procedure is in place to stop people wasting our time.

Nockz · 01-11-2011 10:21pm

What possible repercussions could ever be set in place for breaking the rules of the NDA they will tie you under?

@KellingtonDawg: Your first email said it would be easy to get them as they were stored electronically. Copy and paste into an email and you might just waste 30 seconds of your day.

Polar Ice · 01-11-2011 10:22pm

KellingtonDawg wrote: »

The procedure is in place to stop people wasting our time.

But spending loads of time devising policies and procedures to limit peoples access to information isn't wasting time?

It probably takes as much, if not more time to prohibit people accessing things that it would to just make things transparent.

Nockz wrote: »

What possible repercussions could ever be set in place for breaking the rules of the NDA they will tie you under?

Public spanking?

Imagine the legal costs if they seriously ever wanted to actually enforce it!

BurningBridges · 01-11-2011 10:38pm

KellingtonDawg wrote: »

The procedure is in place to stop people wasting our time.

looks like all the first guy was missing was a home address to post the minutes to him even though you said that an electronic copy already exists ? why waste money on paper when you can hit forward in your emails.

What's the non disclosure agreement about ? Does it contain the secret formula that keeps ULFM's listenership so HIGH ?

Nockz · 01-11-2011 10:45pm

Hey guys, I have an idea for a thread;

ULFM: Us wasting their time or them wasting our money? What do you think?

KellingtonDawg · 01-11-2011 10:47pm

Listener peak is refreshed every time the encoder is restarted. 51 is the peak for today alone. Good research though.

sceptre · 01-11-2011 10:48pm

I closed a thread on this last week because of idiocy. It's not difficult to see the same idiocy developing as it already has.

While I personally would be quite unlikely to post email correspondence unless that had been agreed with both parties in advance (in boards-land we've got a general rule against it), it's not particularly a crime. Happily for those that like to post such things, it's all there on a different website (linked in the first post of this thread - it's www.ulsuelect.com ) where standards on what constitutes idiocy (see the previous ULFM thread on this forum if you're curious) may be different. Not higher or lower, just possibly different.

Curiosity is probably a good enough reason and should be a good enough reason as long as the constitution of the organisation allows members of the organisation to request the minutes. But either way, a repeat of the last thread on the topic is something the universe could do without. Especially a mere week after the closure of the last roundabout thread on the topic. No, that's not an invitation to start another one in a week and a half.

Locked. Kindly have some cop-on, folks. That's all folks, by the way. You can complain by PM if you're especially aggrieved by the decision to close this but please read the previous thread first.

Oh, yeah, fig rolls. They use a goo-injector for the "fig" mulch before the dough is baked. That's never really been secret. Now you know.

ULFM Transparency Issues

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