Class Rep training junket?

14-10-2011 02:56AM

banquo wrote: »

No reason to let facts get in the way of destroying our best hope of starting a new, better type of welfare fund - the first of its kind in the country - and establishing the only actually proven way of getting the information to people who need it. Which is what I spoke about today. Funny how that got turned into 'Rob made it clear he thinks the junket is more important than the welfare fund.'

If someone actually wants to talk to me in an in-depth, no soundbite, agenda and slander-free discussion I am more than happy to do so. But if you're going to jeapordise students' identities by publishing their student numbers without their permission, suggest that I stop doing casework so I can pay attention to you on the internet and then tell astounding, remarkable lies about me then don't be surprised if I don't get around to responding to you.

/exits thread

Yes I had one.
Why was capitation cut before you cut a totally useless expense?

Norrdeth · 14-10-2011 10:50AM

LeixlipRed wrote: »

Nordetth, please don't close the thread, Ciaran is still adjudicating on whether we'll have a UGM. Once that's announced, assuming it is, it's part of this continuing issue.

Don't worry, I'm going to keep it open.
Just playing with people.

Seren_ · 14-10-2011 10:54AM

To be fair, I actually think Naoise said that the capitation budget had been increased slightly this year. So it's more to do with the clubs/socs applications for capitation if they didn't get enough money. And of course you can appeal the decision.

But back to the actual point of the thread, imo the training should have been postponed until after the UGM. I know that would mean the losing of the deposit for the hotel etc, but how can the training go ahead when a large percentage of the student body is against it?

Dr. Nguyen Van Falk · 14-10-2011 11:43AM

this is gettin off topic but Games and archery didnt have their capitation cut, think only young FG and someone else had theirs cut and that was said to b mistake on his part they would b open to appeal, the rest where the same or increased,

LeixlipRed · 14-10-2011 01:29PM

921 valid signatures, what a brilliant coincidence

The Returning Officer will be calling the UGM shortly. FEE will release a statement later on.

LeixlipRed · 14-10-2011 01:55PM

The UGM will take place on Wednesday, at 6pm in Iontas. All students can attend and a quorom of 5% of the union, or 428 students is required. The motion before it will be the cancellation of the SU Class Rep Training Junket. Which is taking place as we speak. Democracy eh?

itzme · 14-10-2011 02:20PM

So you're saying that the SU constitution is un-democratic? or that it is is democratic but should have been ignored? or that democracy didn't work in this case?

Seren_ · 14-10-2011 02:32PM

It will at least put a precedent in place for future years.

Also, I don't think the lecture hall in Iontas can hold the amount of people needed to reach quorum?

LeixlipRed · 14-10-2011 02:33PM

I'm saying that 1000 students said they didn't want this to take place. The Exec knew about that and knew a UGM would be called to vote on the issue, allowing students to actually have a say on it. And yet they still went ahead with the training.

Why would I say the constitution should be ignored? We were using it to achieve the cancellation...

LeixlipRed · 14-10-2011 02:34PM

Your Text Here wrote: »

It will at least put a precedent in place for future years.

Also, I don't think the lecture hall in Iontas can hold the amount of people needed to reach quorum?

Haha, good point. I'll email Ciaran and push for the green between JH1 and Arts Block as the only suitable venue.

Seren_ · 14-10-2011 02:37PM

JH1 would probably be the only room able to hold so many. The only thing is I know most of the rooms in JH are block booked in the evenings for seminars/societies.

LeixlipRed · 14-10-2011 02:39PM

I think this sort of meeting would be best suited to an open area anyway, slap up a soapbox and let the debate speak for itself.

itzme · 14-10-2011 02:45PM

I'm not dismissing and wouldn't dismiss the 1000 signatories and the effort it took to get them, I'd be surprised if that was achieved many times in the history of NUIM, so like I said earlier congratulations on that.
However, from your earlier posts you said that according to the constitution the meeting must take place 3-5 days after the submission of the petition. So unfortunately for the signatories the petition was submitted too late. While I can understand your desire for the Su to cancel the training especially with the movement and momentum the petition has, you must at least admit that they are fully entitled to continue the training this weekend.
Its worth noting that I didn't say you were asking for it to be ignored, I saw three options and asked you which of those your comment on democracy was.

LeixlipRed · 14-10-2011 02:49PM

Well I would argue that the decision to go ahead with the training itself was deeply undemocratic. There are issues with the constitution itself. I'm wrecked and drained after this whole thing. If you want to come along to that UGM and we can chat about it. Or some other stage on here. In my opinion, aside for the issue of principle, we disagree with the junket, they think it should be held, the whole thing is and was a farce. And from my reading of the constitution at least one breach of it has taken place this week and the thing isn't worth the paper it's written on.

cython · 14-10-2011 03:12PM

LeixlipRed wrote: »

Well I would argue that the decision to go ahead with the training itself was deeply undemocratic. There are issues with the constitution itself. I'm wrecked and drained after this whole thing. If you want to come along to that UGM and we can chat about it. Or some other stage on here. In my opinion, aside for the issue of principle, we disagree with the junket, they think it should be held, the whole thing is and was a farce. And from my reading of the constitution at least one breach of it has taken place this week and the thing isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Just to raise a point regarding postponement or cancellation of the training -- as has been pointed out here already, many hotels operate a policy of a non-refundable deposit, or even sacrificing the entire cost in the event of cancelling at a certain notice to the booking. Now I do not know if this is the case in this instance, but given the amount of the hotel's resources that could potentially be devoted to this, and the hole it could leave in their takings were it not to go ahead I would not be surprised if there were a significant financial penalty to be incurred by the SU in the event of cancellation or postponement.

If this were the case, then the SU would stand to be lambasted for wasting money literally on nothing (well maybe democracy, but it's potentially not even a necessary expense for that), especially if the attendance at the UGM supports the training in the end, and the money has to be "respent." Whether you accept it or not, the timing of the petition did not lend itself to allowing the SU to cancel the training this weekend, with less than 48 hours notice before the reps were due to depart. That is not to blame any of the organisers of the petition, but rather to point out that the SU may have been in a lose-lose situation in terms of money being "wasted" whether or not they agreed to FEE's call for the training to be rearranged.

LeixlipRed · 14-10-2011 03:22PM

They paid a deposit, if they'd cancelled we'd have still saved students' money. And we would not have criticised them for "wasting money" in this case because in our eyes that would have been a saving on the €5,000 they are definitely going to spend now.

As for how much the deposit was, neither Rob nor Naoise never specified.

cython · 14-10-2011 03:33PM

LeixlipRed wrote: »

They paid a deposit, if they'd cancelled we'd have still saved students' money. And we would not have criticised them for "wasting money" in this case because in our eyes that would have been a saving on the €5,000 they are definitely going to spend now.

As for how much the deposit was, neither Rob nor Naoise never specified.

And if a UGM were to support the off site training and they had to go and arrange it all again, including double payment of any deposit(s)? There would have been no saving to be made there, rather it would have made the whole thing more expensive with the deposit being paid on the double. In that scenario students external to the whole petition issue could feel rightly aggrieved at both FEE for the timing, and the SU for the decision.

You still have not convinced me that the petition was not ill-timed.

DB21 · 14-10-2011 03:36PM

LeixlipRed wrote: »

Well I would argue that the decision to go ahead with the training itself was deeply undemocratic. There are issues with the constitution itself. I'm wrecked and drained after this whole thing. If you want to come along to that UGM and we can chat about it. Or some other stage on here. In my opinion, aside for the issue of principle, we disagree with the junket, they think it should be held, the whole thing is and was a farce. And from my reading of the constitution at least one breach of it has taken place this week and the thing isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Would you mind quoting the article that was breached? It's just for you to call the constitution worthless means the hours I spent reading it, before attending a 2 hour council last year to amend and approve it was a waste.

itzme · 14-10-2011 03:49PM

I have to agree with DB21 in asking you what you mean here. You could argue that the decision was undemocratic.... Now unless you are going to argue over the abstract concept of democracy and your personal opinion on how it should be implemented in NUIM, I'm assuming you are referring to the agreed form of democracy that is governed over in NUIM by the SU constitution. So by saying you could argue it is undemocratic you are stating that the SU has breached the constitution, please explain.

LeixlipRed · 14-10-2011 03:50PM

And do you honestly believe a UGM would have voted for this junket to take place.

We collected 921 valid signatures. We guesstimate from discussing amongst the petitioners that about 80 to 90% of people who were asked to sign the petition did so. Let's take the most negative case and assume it was 80%. So the sample size of people asked is c.1150. With a sample that large the margin of error for a subsequent vote on this issue from a random sample of students numbering greater than 30 would be close to 3%.

In English, you can say with 95% confidence that if 428 people attended the UGM and voted on the issue that between 77% and 83% would vote in favour of cancelling it.

Of course, the arguments delivered at the meeting may have swayed people, etc but I believe that scenario you predict would never have occured.

Anyway, FEE and the students who supported this cause had no intention of wasting a larger sum of money, obviously that would be run counter to our mission statement. What we intended to do was to persuade the executive that with such large numbers against the trip that they could not go ahead with it in good conscience.

Plus a vote on NOT cancelling the junket at the UGM would not mean the SU would have to run the training off site. If they'd tried to we would have gone after them again. Essentially a postponement was never an option, they would have had to cancel or go ahead. And we know how that ended up

Plus to clarify, FEE were unaware that if the trip went ahead the meeting would take place anyway, regardless. We interpreted the constitution stating that a UGM cannot act in retrospect to mean it would not actually take place if the trip went ahead. The Returning Officer had a different interpretation and it goes ahead. A mistake or misunderstanding on our part quite possibly, but I, and the other FEE members have no problem admitting we messed up or may have not ran this thing perfectly.

What we did do is send a message to the SU that you don't rule by decree, you are accountable to the student body and you are in those positions because students voted for you. And in that sense, we were successful to an extent. We ultimately lost, the trip went ahead but at least the memory of challenging them, exercising the constitution as it was intended is there for students in future. And of that I'm proud.

itzme · 14-10-2011 03:55PM

cython wrote: »

And if a UGM were to support the off site training and they had to go and arrange it all again, including double payment of any deposit(s)? There would have been no saving to be made there, rather it would have made the whole thing more expensive with the deposit being paid on the double. In that scenario students external to the whole petition issue could feel rightly aggrieved at both FEE for the timing, and the SU for the decision.

You still have not convinced me that the petition was not ill-timed.

You raise some interesting points here about the timing of this and the potential impact and cost of the outcome. Having said that to be fair to FEE, I'm assuming they only found out about the training and its cost at the time they announced it here (last week). So it is likely that any change to the plans would lead to the possibility to lose/double the deposit.
This does raise the interesting question about the amount of notice the SU should give in future when they are spending over €X,000 so that it can be debated by the students without the possibility of losing money on deposits.

LeixlipRed · 14-10-2011 03:55PM

On the constitution breach, I was not referring to the UGM or the decision to host the junket, those are debatable points.

Also, what I say next is my own personal opinion and I don't speak for FEE.

I believe Rob was in breach of article 10.1.13 of the constitution when he gave a statement to the Student Observer without consulting the other members of the Exec. Naoise informed me that he was not aware of any such statement two days after it was printed online.

That's just my opinion and tbh, I couldn't give a flute about it, the whole operation over there is joke.

LeixlipRed · 14-10-2011 03:59PM

itzme wrote: »

You raise some interesting points here about the timing of this and the potential impact and cost of the outcome. Having said that to be fair to FEE, I'm assuming they only found out about the training and its cost at the time they announced it here (last week). So it is likely that any change to the plans would lead to the possibility to lose/double the deposit.
This does raise the interesting question about the amount of notice the SU should give in future when they are spending over €X,000 so that it can be debated by the students without the possibility of losing money on deposits.

We only found out about the constitutional arguments on Monday so it was a bit out of our control.

I'll speak for FEE again and say that any point if we were to invoke some constitutional clause that ended up costing the Union more money than this junket that's taking place right now we'd have had no problem simply backing down. You can take a point of principle too far and we'd never want money wasted on a hollow victory when it could be used to help students.

cython · 14-10-2011 04:29PM

itzme wrote: »

You raise some interesting points here about the timing of this and the potential impact and cost of the outcome. Having said that to be fair to FEE, I'm assuming they only found out about the training and its cost at the time they announced it here (last week). So it is likely that any change to the plans would lead to the possibility to lose/double the deposit.
This does raise the interesting question about the amount of notice the SU should give in future when they are spending over €X,000 so that it can be debated by the students without the possibility of losing money on deposits.

Actually, I realise my post wasn't the clearest in that sense. I should have been more specific and said that rather than the petition itself being ill timed, the attached call for the training to not go ahead being delivered when it was was poorly timed if they actually expected to get their way

LeixlipRed wrote: »

And do you honestly believe a UGM would have voted for this junket to take place.

We collected 921 valid signatures. We guesstimate from discussing amongst the petitioners that about 80 to 90% of people who were asked to sign the petition did so. Let's take the most negative case and assume it was 80%. So the sample size of people asked is c.1150. With a sample that large the margin of error for a subsequent vote on this issue from a random sample of students numbering greater than 30 would be close to 3%.

In English, you can say with 95% confidence that if 428 people attended the UGM and voted on the issue that between 77% and 83% would vote in favour of cancelling it.

Of course, the arguments delivered at the meeting may have swayed people, etc but I believe that scenario you predict would never have occured.

You fail to account for a lot of variables with that statement, such as not everyone signing being automatically against the trip, but perhaps believing that the student population should have their say, or simply that the SU needed to justify it.

LeixlipRed wrote: »

Anyway, FEE and the students who supported this cause had no intention of wasting a larger sum of money, obviously that would be run counter to our mission statement. What we intended to do was to persuade the executive that with such large numbers against the trip that they could not go ahead with it in good conscience.

Regardless of your intentions, or your beliefs as you stated above, it seems very naive and myopic to deny that such a scenario could ever possibly arise.

LeixlipRed wrote: »

Plus a vote on NOT cancelling the junket at the UGM would not mean the SU would have to run the training off site. If they'd tried to we would have gone after them again. Essentially a postponement was never an option, they would have had to cancel or go ahead. And we know how that ended up

I never said that it would mean they would have to run it off site, but surely even the most blinkered among us can see that if a vote to cancel it fails, logically it can go ahead. An oft-quoted definition for insanity is "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results" - sounds very familiar in light of your above statement. Said statement also smacks of bully tactics, as well as being reminiscent of a child throwing the same tantrum repeatedly until they get their way.

Alt_Grrr · 14-10-2011 04:30PM

"A Union General Meeting (UGM) has been called for Wednesday the 19th of October. The meeting will take place in Iontas at 6pm. All Maynooth students may attend the meeting a quorom of 5% of the union, or 428 students is required. For more information on UGMs, please consult the MSU constitution attached below."

so it seems that a UGM will take place after all

LeixlipRed · 14-10-2011 04:35PM

Bully tactics? Trying to account for the money of ours they're pissing away? We wouldn't have repeated the call for a cancellation because we didn't get our way, I think I've clearly stated throughout the last week mistakes I've made or FEE have made and that we've no issue with being defeated democratically. We would have repeated the call for a cancellation because they'd still be wasting money. Do you honestly think we'd start another petition and go again? Do you know how much time was spent on this thing? It'd be impossible.

The point I'm making is, we wouldn't follow a "no vote on cancelling the junket" with a capitualtion were we suddenly agree that it's ok the junket can take place. We'd still openly criticise it.

itzme · 14-10-2011 04:36PM

LeixlipRed wrote: »

Well I would argue that the decision to go ahead with the training itself was deeply undemocratic.

On the constitution breach, I was not referring to the UGM or the decision to host the junket, those are debatable points.

I'm sorry but you are being very unclear here, you have stated that you believe the decision to go ahead with the training is undemocratic, please justify this you can't just throw out statements like that.
Yes I see you were potentially clever with your wording and that "decision to host the junket" is not the same as "decision to go ahead with the training", but lets be adults you've made a serious statement, please either back it up sufficiently or possibly it was just that your tiredness got the better of you.

LeixlipRed · 14-10-2011 04:43PM

I disagree with the democratic principles of the Union. I'm a democratic socialist, I believe that the situation from July to October where the Exec rule by decree is undemocratic. I believe class reps never consulted their classmates about this junket. I believe that is undemocratic. Have you followed all of this thread because these aren't new opinions.

Also, I've no idea what I'm being unclear about, maybe that is because I'm tired and I'm not playing games with words. The whole ****ing thing is a farce. Read the previous 25 pages to see thousands of words written by me as to why it is.

LeixlipRed · 14-10-2011 05:03PM

Anyway, I think I should chime out of this thread for a while, haven't slept in four days properly and I'm wrecked. I'm not avoiding any questions (except those from Lordgoat :pac:) but if anyone wants specific details I'd ask them to just PM me or contact me some other way with the proviso that someone can publish it here no problem. I'll post the FEE statement later but I just want to say thanks to everyone who helped collect signatures, the boardsies who helped argue the cause on here and thanks to everyone who signed the petition as well!

itzme · 14-10-2011 05:27PM

Well thats fair enough, I think that clears it up. You can understand the confusion, you have explained a number of things that you personally think are undemocratic not that the SU have in any way broke the constitution, my stated assumption was you were talking about a constitution breach.

On the whole being unclear and reading the thread comment, I have read all 25 pages of the thread, have not been playing with words and have always tried to be clear and explain at any time I'm making assumptions for instance, on this topic, I specifically asked at the start if you were talking about your personal view of the implementation of democracy or a breach of the rules in NUIM and said which I was assuming. When I was asking what you had meant by your comment, it was on this assumption it is not my fault that you had missed (assuming you had) this quote from my earlier post.
"Now unless you are going to argue over the abstract concept of democracy and your personal opinion on how it should be implemented in NUIM, I'm assuming you are referring to the agreed form of democracy that is governed over in NUIM by the SU constitution."

Class Rep training junket?

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