One of my projects this summer is to re-write the societies handbook, a document which I hope will empower societies to be able to find solutions to their challenges and answers to their frequently asked questions rather than having constantly having to come to the Union which is frustrating and time consuming for them.
I've recently been in contact with an associate member of one of our societies twittername @Sk1mble who has raised some issues some of which are frustrating societies at the moment, you can view his blog here. I thought that it might be useful to address some of those issues via a blog so other society members and committees can view my response.
Paying Society Membership
Not so long ago societies were taking cash payments from their members in payment for their society memberships. Unfortunately, there were occasions where this money was not paid into the correct account or was not paid into the society funds at all and was therefore unaccountable for. Therefore, society memberships can be bought on-line at the Kent Union website using the 'worldpay' service or alternatively can be paid in-person at the Mandela reception on campus by card or cash between 9-6 Monday to Friday in termtime. Kent Union tries to discourage societies from handling cash where possible although for some events this is unavoidable.
Online Society/ Volunteer Group Elections
In the recent past societies held elections at their own Annual general meeting with a 'returning officer' sent to societies in order to ensure that elections were fairly conducted. The Union holds its own main elections on-line through the MSL web-based system. Considering the growth of the number of groups, the reported inconsistencies between society elections and the time taken for the volunteer returning officers (members of societies federation committee) to attend all of these meetings it was decided that society voting would be cast on-line. Benefits of using the on-line system include the ability to track the number of people voting, consistent, fair and accurate elections across the board. Groups would still have their hustings debates and A.G.M.s but would cast their votes on-line.
However, based on feedback given throughout the year by societies anecdotally and at societies federation meetings (once a term) it was felt that where the on-line system was beneficial it was not yet able to effectively fulfil all the needs of societies such as being able to see who has been nominated for positions and stand last-minute if a position was not going to be filled, for instance or being able to find out the results immediately. MSL have been contacted to see if these changes to the system can be made ideally giving individual groups admin control over their own elections rather than it having to be done centrally.
In light of this, for 2012-2013 societies and student led volunteer groups will be encouraged to use the on-line system but will be able to request a volunteer returning-officer if they wish to hold a paper-based election.
Some societies have had to request the results to their elections or have been kept waiting for prolonged periods which is something I am looking into as I don't believe that this should be the case and that election results should be transmitted automatically.
Constitutions and Membership fees
Societies and volunteer groups write thier own constitutions based on a core document provided by Kent Union. Any changes to this must be approved by the individual society membership (usually at a general meeting) and Vice-President Activities/ societies federation committee or volunteer committee (elected representatives.) These changes are rarely refused unless they conflict with Union policy i.e inclusiveness, cause significant overlap with the activity of other societies or the law.
Societies may set their own membership fees, notifying Kent Union of any changes. They must be at least the minimum fee and must charge associate members (non-Kent Students) at least £1 more than full members (Kent Students). At the last societies federation meeting in the third term of 2011-2012 it was voted to increase the minimum fee to £5 from the previous £3. This was agreed as part of a new funding package to give increased funding to the smallest groups who most need the financial aid. The details of this new funding package will be published in the societies handbook which is currently being designed.
General Bureaucracy
Kent Union and myself personally acknowledge that the Union's systems are clunky and not member-friendly enough. So much of what is currently done is paper based and office centric and here are some of things we're working on at the moment.*A new full time staff post has been created to help with the administration and development of sports and societies
* A new form is being put together in order to make organising events simpler, consolidating these into one easy to use form.
* Looking into on-line video training sessions
* A new comprehensive societies handbook
* Facilities where student groups can view their accounts on-line
* Transport tender looking into providing more accessible transport for student groups
* Increase to the sports, societies and volunteering development funds
* Building of two purpose built storage facilities for our student groups
* Student led stand-out (employability) sessions worth £150 each in society fundraising (see previous blog)
* Cross training of activities staff to provide answers to basic student queries
If you have any additional suggestions please feel free to contact union-activities@kent.ac.uk
Thank you for your reply, which touches on some of the points I raised in my original blog.
ReplyDeleteWhile I digest and think about your comments I wonder if you could comment on the following, which an associate member of the Mountaineering society posted as a comment to my blog:
"This doesn’t seem to be happening for the societies (yet), but as an alumni I have been basically forced out of UKCMC (mountaineering) sports club by the Union.
"I can understand some of the decisions they have made; priority space on trips and on transport should be given to students as alumni are likely more able to take care of themselves, for example. However, one week I turned up at the Sports Centre and was told by the reception staff I wasn’t allowed in because I wasn’t a student. No warning had been given that this change was coming.
"The Union’s stance on sports clubs now appears to be “This is a student club, for student people!”. The UKCMC committee were more than happy for alumni to be members (it’s quite useful in a sport like climbing to have people who know what they’re doing around!), but when they asked the Union they were told it’s a change of rules and non-students were now not allowed to use Kent facilities as part of a club.
"Of course, I had paid to join the club, and had paid to join the Sports Centre. I could also rent the wall to use outside of club time.
"However, coming in as part of the club and being an active club member? No chance.
What the hell?"
HI, I'm going to ask Matt Harris VP (Sports) to answer this as I'm sure he can be more comprehensive in his answer than me.
DeleteCheers
I don't want to take this to e-mail because I think it's better to maintain this as a public dialogue to which others can contribute.
ReplyDeleteYou said:
"Not so long ago societies were taking cash payments from their members in payment for their society memberships. Unfortunately, there were occasions where this money was not paid into the correct account or was not paid into the society funds at all and was therefore unaccountable for. Therefore, society memberships can be bought on-line at the Kent Union website using the 'worldpay' service or alternatively can be paid in-person at the Mandela reception on campus by card or cash between 9-6 Monday to Friday in termtime. Kent Union tries to discourage societies from handling cash where possible although for some events this is unavoidable."
You haven't really addressed the crux of my concern, which related to the difficulty of maintaining a grip on the membership list for the purpose of issuing membership cards, checking membership prior to giving privileges and so forth.
It's not always practical to check the online list of members or to otherwise use the (frankly quite bad) web services to maintain the membership list and this causes us considerable organisational problems.
This is an example of the kind of problems to which I was referring - you've decentralised control for the society and taken more of the role traditionally performed by the committee under the aegis of the SU. This is an organisationally patronising ethos and I think is offensive to the dedicated young people who become members of the committee precisely in order to take up some genuine responsibility.
You said,
"However, based on feedback given throughout the year by societies anecdotally and at societies federation meetings (once a term) it was felt that where the on-line system was beneficial it was not yet able to effectively fulfil all the needs of societies such as being able to see who has been nominated for positions and stand last-minute if a position was not going to be filled, for instance or being able to find out the results immediately. MSL have been contacted to see if these changes to the system can be made ideally giving individual groups admin control over their own elections rather than it having to be done centrally."
Altering the system to fix the major bugs I highlighted and which you acknowledge above would certainly make online voting a more realistic proposition.
"In light of this, for 2012-2013 societies and student led volunteer groups will be encouraged to use the on-line system but will be able to request a volunteer returning-officer if they wish to hold a paper-based election."
This is acceptable and serves as a good compromise until you have been able to fix the online voting system. I wonder though if a process of consultation was engaged upon before the online voting system was implemented? I would think surely some society committee members would have pointed out the issues with the existing system long before the elections came due?
"Some societies have had to request the results to their elections or have been kept waiting for prolonged periods which is something I am looking into as I don't believe that this should be the case and that election results should be transmitted automatically."
Quite.
I will again leave the subject of bureaucracy alone for those with more experience to comment.
I will plead however that, if you are to adopt more web-based solutions, please ensure that they are well tested and are suited adequately to the function they are supposed to fulfil. From where I'm standing the SU has a history of introducing buggy, potentially insecure web services that are not fit for purpose.
Societies can obtain a printed copy of their members list from the Mandela office (between normal opening hours) or any administrator can view the members list through their page on the Kent union website.
DeleteAny decisions I have been involved in which may have been seen to take control from societies is certainly not my intention (although many of these decisions were made prior to my involvement with Kent Union). Kent Union has a responsibility for its groups and their members of which there are many. There are also limited resources with which to do this and occasionally centralizing some of these functions does make the task more manageable. Where the processes are still far from where I would like to see them, there is ongoing progress to create systems which allow society autonomy whilst maintaining a level of regulation for the benefit of the members by the Union.
I am not happy with the level of consultation with groups prior to the implementation of the on-line system and I hope lessons have been learned with this. It was by consultation with students that the decision was made to offer physical voting as an option again.
One of the reasons that I stood for election and re-election to this post was in order to represent the voice of our student groups within the Union. As ex-president and before that committee member of one of the larger societies on campus I experienced these frustrations with the Union's sytems myself and wanted to address and improve these ineffective and frustrating systems.
I was a member of one of the teams of "dedicated young people" suffering website crashes, membership issues, access issues, room cancellations, limited funding and not being able to get hold of my representatives. I also think that re-running for election, standing by decisions I made last year continuing to be the voice of our student groups at Union council, at Kent Union's board and in University meetings proves my dedication in this task. I appreciate that a lot of this goes on behind closed doors but I hope that these blogs help to advertise this in some way.
Thanks for your comments.
I wish you hadn't felt the need to be so defensive; I understand that a majority of the protocols and procedures have been in place for some time and that furthermore a lot of them have been designed by committee rather than by any particular individual.
ReplyDeleteI was not attempting to denigrate your commitment or drive to improving the lot of student societies and would ask you to view the rest of this conversation in that light.
I'm more interested in focusing on potential solutions to the issues involved than attempting to determine where the blame should lie for any particular problem. I'm also aware that for each society it's difficult to perceive the larger whole of all the societies and see the effort involved in keeping everything organised.
What I would like to see is the devolution of "power" to society committees. Even the need for a union-appointed returning officer seems like unnecessary hand-holding, for example. I'm sure there must have been incidents that prompted this decision but the rationale is not clear when our society was ticking along for 30 years without issue and without any real involvement from the union.
You say that progress is ongoing to help societies to maintain their autonomy and I am pleased to hear it; I should be interested to hear more about plans of this ilk. I believe that any regulation should be at the minimal possible level required to satisfy the National Union of Students and the University.
If autonomy is the goal, however, may I ask why in the last year the responsibility for room bookings has been assumed by the SU rather than remaining with our secretary as has been the case heretofore? This is simply another level of bureaucracy and delay in one of the core requirements of our society, which often has 5-10 rooms booked on campus for every day of the week.
I didn't mean to seem defensive its just important that my position on these society challenges is clear.
DeleteIn the example of returning officers attending elections, this was to help to ensure that elections were being run fairly and consistently in an attempt to avoid disputes that were arising (and still arise to a lesser extent) over elections. Similarly with the cash handling, these decisions made have been in response to the membership across the board. With improved training and mechanisms the ideal would be for all societies to be able to do this themselves in the long-run but we are not yet there. I'm happy to accept that AGS may be a society that has never had trouble with its elections or cash handling for example but if this is the case it is in a minority. Perhaps this is in-part due to the fact that their is retained knowledge and experience through associate members as most societies have a much shorter memory.
The regulation of our societies are mainly driven by the law, charity regulations, health and safety rather than NUS and University although there are some exceptions with the latter.
The room booking system is I agree unsatisfactory. previously groups could book rooms in the colleges by contacting the timetabling office or the college masters. However, last year this was centralized with the timetabling office at the University's will. Requests were sent via the Union to the office 'for approval' but the Union had little say over who got what room etc.
The system is inflexible with no face-to-face contact with students in my eyes causes everyone a lot of extra work. I am in ongoing meetings with the University with regards to this and am meeting with the academic registrar and timetabling representatives at the end of the month so fingers crossed.
It's good to hear that you're trying to fix the problem of centralisation and I do take your point that the AGS has an unusually long memory for a society (in general the 'geek societies' - Anime, AGS, more recently SFX - seem to keep more graduates around than most societies).
DeleteI would like to see the use of returning officers, centralised cash handling etc. as a response to existing problems rather than a blanket provision afflicted upon every society but I do understand that prevention is generally better/easier than cure. I'm glad you're aware of the issues and are dedicated to a return to greater autonomy however.
Good luck in dealing with the timetabling issues.
(For Some Reason Matt couldn't post successfully so I copy pasted for him)
ReplyDeleteHi,
Kenny has asked me to comment on your query and will aim to do so as efficiently as possible, irrespective of being in the post less than 3 weeks.
Firstly, it is not the union that decide upon membership to the facilities at the Canterbury campus; that is a policy that is held and implemented through Kent Sport which is an entirely separate body to Kent Union and to an extent the University itself. To my knowledge, the membership scheme changed at the beginning of the summer last year and was implemented at the start of the academic year, namely September 2011. We as representatives of the Union and you, our members, can only try to influence policy set by Kent SPort for the betterment of the sports clubs and their members, be it paid, associate or alumni.
It would seem that the message regarding the change of membership policy was not far reaching enough for Alumni or associate members to comprehend, and that can be the fault of both Kent Sport and the Union, to an extent.
With regard to the statement "Student clubs for Student people", i would disagree. I think you are confusing the stance that each body, thus Kent Sport, Kent union and the University of Kent, currently hold. As a union, we encourage the participation of associate members alas priority it seems is given to current students in terms of access to the facilities, as far as I am aware. I would urge you to contact Kent Sport for a more detailed breakdown of their membership and there advertised stance on non students.
Matt Harris
Thank you for your reply, Matt. I appreciate that you're being thrown in at the deep end here.
DeleteI am a bit confused as to who runs Kent Sport. Could you please clarify? I would like to take this matter up with them as the move to exclude associate members from events in the sports centre (especially when they are already members of the sports centre) is to my mind unacceptable.
Kent sport are essentially part of the commercial arm of the university like Kent hospitality
Delete