USI Congress 2013

bbuzz

http://rabble.ie/2013/03/28/usi-shambles/

Was anyone at it? Care to share your views?

I'm glad UCDSU disaffiliated, doesn't seem USI are even trying to change. I've never been to USI congress, but this is just the impression I get.

errlloyd

Ok I am going to reply to this with a full breakdown of congress and what happened. It's probably going to be a long post, but I am a big believer in transparency. (Edit, this post is 3000 words)

Firstly my name is Chris, I was one of the campaign managers for the #no2usi campaign in UCD. I am a class rep and a final year law student. I attended congress last year and wrote a report of how it works (on a good year) on boards here. That thread got quoted heavily and used against me in the campaign by USI and the University Times in Trinity, so I am quite aware that what I post people will read (hi Ronan). I am going to start from the very beginning, outline exactly how congress slowly pushed UCDSU to one side, until a point where the relationship between the UCDSU delegation and the rest of the floor became untenable.

My opinions are my own, and do not represent that of the UCD delegation. The below is subject to inaccuracies, I did not keep a live diary. This is from memory.


Congress selection

In the thread I linked above I talked about how UCDSU could get more out of congress if we treated it differently. As part of that I felt we needed to select the delegation earlier, prepare more and go in with aims and objectives. I passed a motion calling for that in council in October. UCDSU President Rachel Breslin put in place a policy on how delegation was to be selected and prepared, and Education Officer Shane Comer put that policy into action.

Emails were sent out inviting people to apply for the delegation. The application forms were anonymously sent to the exec who individually scored them using a scoring scheme and a delegation was selected. The delegation included a number of "new" features. For example Observer Editor Emer Surgue was a completely impartial observer brought alone, a member of Youth Labour in UCD was brought along, a member of YFG UCD was brought along. There was a society Auditor on the delegation and a person specifically representing the Irish language. The delegation also made sure it represented the No and Yes side of the referendum. By my count their were 9 active no campaigners and 9 active yes campaigners on the delegation. It is important to note this. At some stage I expect an accusation will go out that the NO campaign tried to sabotage UCDSU's relationship with USI. That did not happen - this will become clear.

The majority of the most aggressive no campaigners failed in the selection process.

Delegation preparation

The delegation met a week before congress (which we didn't do last year) and discussed every single motion to be debated, probably around 150 in all. During that time the idea was that members of the delegation who came out on the same side on motions would identify each other and work together, those on opposite sides could at least practice against each other.

Aside from that some contact was made with other delegations in order to drum up early support. The only motions were mandated on were ones that had passed our council. Everything else was free vote.

The delegation leader would be Shane Comer. Rachel Breslin was out of the country participating in a very important event which had been organised months before, she would miss the first (and definitely least important) day.

Arrival and day 1.


During the first day there wasn't anything out of the ordinary compared to last year. The debate in the room was much more conformist than before so little was contentious. The motions we discuss first are motions for renewal, which means motions from four years ago set to expire, we vote on whether to keep them. I became frustrated and tweeted my frustration that rather than looking back over the last few years on the success of these motions, the debaters exclusively debated as if the motions were new and their potential for the future.

An example is a motion about running a campaign to get women involved in USI by running a number of campaigns. The motion mandated the equality officer to run a campaign urging women to run in student union elections. During all of this discussion no one asked the obvious question. "If this motion has existed for four years, how come we've never seen the campaign".

After motions we had officer reports. Officer reports just consisted of out going officers thanking their friends for a great year in office. It was the first time that weekend I heard someone mutter the term "circle jerking" it wouldn't be the last. The exception to this is John Logue, who to be fair talked about his year. Officers were questioned, but most of the questions were very weak.

Following this we had more motions. We had moved onto welfare, almost every welfare motion gets 100% support. Despite having no one speaking against motions the room would still allow debate to continue while there were people on the for side. Usually these were people trying to share experiences of say mental health, suicide or abortion. Occasionally these were person, mostly they were professional. Frequently if we tried to move on with a procedural motion ending the debate it would get voted down on the idea that "look at all the people who want to share their experiences".

In my mind the room was becoming either a circle jerk or a support group, not a debating chamber. Still, there had been little mention of UCD or disaffiliation and the room seemed relatively fair and balanced, this wouldn't last.

Finally there were elections hustings. We had two candidates in elections, Paddy Guiney for campaigns and Eoin O Murchu for Irish Language. Both were very good. The other candidates included a number of re-running officers. The questions were delivered through the chair and usually comprised of more kind of wishy washy stuff, no one seemed to be tackling the big issues.

Finally we had a delegation meeting, which was addressed by presidential candidate (unopposed) Joe O Connor. Our council had voted for RON and we were mandated to do so. In the event of a significant change in circumstances the delegation can overturn a council mandate by a two thirds majority. Our council had given Joe a number of requirements with the general agreement that if he addressed them we would vote for him. As it happened, we were the only people not voting for him, so it didn't matter to him much. While he had improved since council, we unanimously agreed that overturning our decision would be anti-democratic and set a bad precedent.

That night the delegation almost all took part in the socials. We were drinking, but most importantly we were canvassing. Eoin O Murchu was our candidate for the Irish Language, he's a brilliant candidate. He's also a final year med student and has never been in the union at all. He wasn't able to be there so we had to canvass for him and Paddy.

Day 2

The day started at 8am. Breakfast and debate and 9. More motions, a second motion about encouraging women in USI got voted down. Interestingly some of the speakers against disagreed with the idea we needed more female involvement (to be fair more than half of officer board were already female) but others (and I was one) just felt the motion didn't do anything. It was a back pat feel good motion, but didn't address the problem at all.

The above ties into a recurring theme at congress, people don't debate the motions at all. If the motion is called "mental health", they debate on whether mental health is good or bad (hence the one sided debates we had) if the motion is called "austerity" they debate whether austerity is good or bad. This was one of the few motions people stood up against and said "the idea is good, the motion is kack" and it was.

After motions there was a panel discussion on the future of higher education. Which to be honest, I will put my hands up, I skipped. The panel was a senator, an academic and a td. IE it was no better than a LawSoc or L&H debate. I needed time to refuel and get some exercise and fresh air. If any of you feel as a delegate I let you down in this time, I apologise. Anyone who missed that session got given out to at our delegation meeting, and threatened with being sent home. So you can be assured we didn't skip anything else.

After that there was a two hour break while polls opened. During the first hour we had a delegation meeting which was separately addressed by both education candidates. Council had voted for Re-Open Nominations for them too, it had also given second preference to one of them. Again while the room universally agreed that one candidate in particular was a
vast improvement, we agreed not to overrule council.

We had an hour left afterwards, so we canvassed for paddy and got dinner.

It was that evening that cracks began to form in our relationship with everyone else. Shortly after debate re-opening our motions began to come up. Below I will detail specifically what happened next for each motion. I am not opening debate on them, the important thing is that it wasn't the results of the debate, but the mood and manner of the debate that made this happen.

The first was a motion on schools. The year before two motions had been passed calling for secularisation of schools, and the revoking of state funding to private schools. This motion (submitted by me personally) called for the motion on funding to be delayed until secularisation was a reality. The logic was that state funding was the only thing keeping protestant schools (in most cases) but secular schools (in some cases) open. Without it they would cease to exist, or become so expensive no one could access them. I know this has holes, I know it is an imperfect stance, but to me it was the lesser of harms. To me this is also clearly not a debate about state funding, or about secularisation. I stressed during my speech, that those mandates were passed and I didn't dispute them and didn't want to argue them. Inevitably, I guess, the opposition side just talked about private schools. We were accused of verbal trickery, on the live twitter feeds we began to come under attack for being D4 ect ect. After a number of UCD students tried to steer the motion back on track, we eventually gave up. It failed.

The second motion was a motion on drugs problems. It asked for USI to do some research into taking a position on the decriminalisation of drugs. That is all; it didn’t call for a position to be taken, just research. This motion was included in the “national affairs” section of the clar. Which means it was not considered an “Irish student issue” and required a 66% majority to pass. How drugs, is not considered an Irish student issue is beyond me. We proposed a procedural motion 9e to have this motion considered a student issue, it failed, this is important for what happened later. The room did not consider drugs to be an Irish student issue. The motion failed, barely.

Our final “national affairs” motion was on gun crime. This isn’t a student issue, fair enough. It got procedural motion 9b. This meant we didn’t debate it.

The session ended, we mostly watched the end of the Irish match, and split.

Day 3

At this stage to be honest days are kind of blurring together. Anyone who has been at a conference will know this happens; you’re in the same room of a hotel all the time, so you can’t tell much. So my timeline might be kind of off. A number of important things began to happen, firstly in his speeches John Logue began to make some references to UCD leaving, they were just little jokes, but I think he kind of opened the flood gates.

Very small things began to happen. For instance one of our speakers (who had prepared a 4 page speech on a topic) was waiting to speak as a session came to an end. He would be the next, and final, speaker. We put in a procedural motion to allow 5 more minutes for him to speak for his first time. These motions pass unanimously every single time, this one failed.

Finally a motion came up on Israel and Palestine. The motion was the only motion from the “international affairs” section. It basically stated that the conflict in Israel was bad for Palestinian students. It was not considered a student issue and required a 66% majority to pass. Someone submitted a procedural motion 9e, and the room voted that the motion SHOULD be considered an Irish student issue, and therefore needed just a normal majority. The inconsistency was blindly obvious. Speakers from UCD spoke for and against the motion, it passed. I argued against saying simply that if we wanted to have this motion, we also needed a motion on every other conflict in the world, because otherwise we would look like we were picking the only conflict in the world involving the Jews and passing a motion on it. I didn’t accuse anyone of being anti-sematic, but I said the motion might be interpreted that way.

An increasing amount of hostility was directed towards UCD on twitted and in voting as the day went on. Paddy won his election for campaigns, Eoin lost for the Irish language. It is fair to say that had Paddy’s election come a day later there might have been more trouble.

Eventually one of the lads kind of lost it a little. He went up and had a go at the room for being inconsistent. He had been a staunch YestoUSI voter, and he expressed that he had been wrong. There existed a swear jar, donations to which go to a charity. Before starting his speech he made a pretty hefty donation, though he only swore once. He was expressing his anger.

The Gala dinner took place that night. This is important. During the dinner there is a tradition that the steering committee does a comedy routine. They take the diaries of three “characters” from the week based on caricatures of delegates. Often it’s a lefty, a culchie and a D4. This year one of the characters was a UCD student. It fairly slated us but we laughed along. After that they award prizes. Some dud prizes like best quote, best picture and best tweet, but some real prizes, best male delegate, best female delegate, best delegation. Each has 4 nominees, decided by steering, the majority of which are former USI. I got nominated for best male delegate (despite only speaking 3 times I’ll add), two of the girls (Rachel Breslin, and a no to USI campaigner) got nominated for best female, and we got nominated for best delegation. The point I am trying to make here is very important. We tried our best. We honestly represented you to the best of our abilities, regardless of what side we were on. We didn’t go down there to burn bridges or take the piss.
Rachel won best female delegate. Very few people were clapping. When our nomination for best delegation was announced an audible boo went around the room. That night small arguments began to break out at the social.

Final day, final straw

A motion came up on Austerity. The submitter himself admitted it had been submitted by text message. It called for an unaccountable group to be formed to create alliances with other anti-austerity movements. The problems with this motion were not anything to do with austerity; it was just a terrible motion.

Affiliations against Austerity
Proposed by MSU
Congress Mandates
Officerboard to set up a committee whose function it is to establish ties and affiliations
with other groups in our society who oppose austerity.

Before it started we asked steering to raise standing orders (to increase time), they told us we wouldn’t need to as this motion would fall into another session. With 4 and a half minutes left in the session the motion was called. The president of TCDSU tried to call standing orders before it was too late, but once the first speaker is called you can’t. All we needed the speaker to do was speak for 4 minutes of 5, giving us time to call standing orders. We made this clear to him. He spoke for his full 5 minutes, he said nothing. He made snide jokes and jabs about our delegation. 5 people, mostly UCD but also others were queuing up to speak against, and he blocked us out.

When the vote was called the room kinda laughed. We voted against but 2 thirds voted for. Most of our speakers against that motion had been YestoUSI, they were the first to stand up. But there was no discussion among us. No one even looked around to see what anyone else doing. We had never mentioned walking out. We just did it as individuals. As we walked out we were jeered, shout at, given an ironic standing ovation.

It was clear, our presence on the floor, regardless of what we said, was affecting the debate. Motions that never would have passed were passing simply because we opposed them. We had to leave, because we were derailing the whole process. We got slated on twitter, we agreed not to return to the floor as a group, and although any individual was allowed to no one did. We did respect that and expressed that respect to him.

As a group we agreed the statement to be published.


TL;DR

We tried our best, **** still went down. As usual I am open to all and any questions. PM or forum as your preference dictates. I’d appreciate if you are going to attack me personally you don’t hide behind anonymity, and I’d appreciate any mods enforce this against first posters.

Dani Pacheco

Something to note as well was that the Austerity motion which was filibustered was also the same motion which the speech was prepared for when the guillotine fell and standing orders to raise proceedings were denied, two days earlier. When the time extension was denied, there was one proposer and one person (speech guy, who funnily enough got 9a'd/9b'd 6 times before he could actually speak) but the second time two days later, on the thursday, there was 4 people sitting on the opposition side and there were 6 on the opposition side, 5 of which were UCD delegates.

The hostility towards the UCD delegation as congress progressed was an awful reflection on other delegations and their attitudes towards the college. I honestly can't describe how baffled I was by how some delegations acted.

Great post Chris, sums it up v well.

bbuzz

@Chris,

I think what's most striking is the contrast between your post about last year's congress and this year's.

The amount of abuse you all got on twitter is ridiculous & extremely ironic since USI then passed a motion on the #ThinkBeforeYouClick campaign. I was also annoyed at the amount of people that kept repeating that you walked out because the austerity motion passed, even the University Times tweeted that.

Thanks for your post, I think its important to let students know why you walked out because it seems there were very legitimate reasons.

Does anyone know if the USI publishes the minutes of congress, and does the UCDSU delegation have to give a report to council next week?

errlloyd

There are no minutes, and we do not have to give a report to council.

In the informal delegation meeting we had after walking out it was said many times we had to justify this decision to our council. I imagine a report will be delivered to council.

I guess in defence of the people who abused us on twitter, not everyone will have noticed that it was blatant philibustering during that motion. Not everyone will have noticed the subtle jabs given by the speaker. Not everyone knew why we walked out.

Many people think we walked out because we were pro austerity or something.

themont85

Farce of an organization which showed this week why it is outdated and just a talk shop for some of the most over inflated egos. A complete and utter waste of money. It is the manifestation of all the worst things about student politics and has been for years.

Earth to some of these delegates, nobody gives a **** what a bunch of Irish students think of the oldest human conflict in the world. At least be a bit hipster and pick something original. And they're shocked UCD students decided this wasn't worth 120k a year.

Riamfada

I would like to see USI reply to this.

errlloyd

Riamfada wrote: »

I would like to see USI reply to this.

I doubt they will. In any case it is difficult to identify the individual person I would blame for things becoming a mess at congress.

The hostility in the room just increased until it reached a critical mass. There was no one fanning the flames as such. There were a number of isolated incidents each involving different people. So I guess it would be difficult for anyone to respond individually.

Just a question - why was a delegation sent when we have disaffiliated? Is this to do with some sort of membership timing overhang? I presume there will be no representation for UCD next year?

Why are people being paid for to go to a hotel with OUR money for this absolute crap?

IrishKnight

Rojomcdojo wrote: »

Just a question - why was a delegation sent when we have disaffiliated? Is this to do with some sort of membership timing overhang? I presume there will be no representation for UCD next year?

Why are people being paid for to go to a hotel with OUR money for this absolute crap?

From my understanding the disaffiliation wasn't immediate. We are still members for this year and from what I hear, next year too, but after that we would no longer be members.

errlloyd

Rojomcdojo wrote: »

Just a question - why was a delegation sent when we have disaffiliated? Is this to do with some sort of membership timing overhang? I presume there will be no representation for UCD next year?

Why are people being paid for to go to a hotel with OUR money for this absolute crap?

I think the referendum was run by both sides on a reform agenda, and while we were still members we thought it valuable to present that agenda. We didn't really expect congress to go the way it did.

As it happens, rather than talk about the reforms that would bring UCD back, congress just talked about more self promotion initiatives to stop other colleges leaving.