Guild Council Honorary Life Memberships Voting Result 17-15 Nov 2016

1. Honorary Life Membership Vote
17 – 25 November 2016
Guild Council

2. Honorary Life Memberships
Options:
1. Remove the HLM completely as an Honour.
2. Leave the system as it is, with elected Officers responsible for informing
the Sabbatical Officers who to nominate, and the Sabb team compiling a
list which is taken for approval to Guild Council (Shadow Council.)
– See History on the next slide for details of attempts to modernise the system in the
past few years.
3. Nominations, as per Guild Awards, Teaching Awards and other quality-
based proposal systems.
– This would mean at least one, and preferably two windows of opportunity – an “all
student” nomination stage, and an “elected officers” nomination stage.
– This would also mean a judging stage; where all nominations would be judged according
to set criteria in order to determine who would be short-listed for the award.
– Shadow Council would be the final approval body, to sign off that they were happy the
nomination and judging procedures were fair, just and reasonable – Shadow Council
would not be judging the candidates; only the process. This is judicial review in a
procedural setting.

3. Honorary Life Memberships
History:
The HLM have traditionally been proposed in Handover Council, a year in arrears. This meant that the previous years’
Sabb Officers (and any other already graduated students) would be proposed near the end of the year after they had
left – this was disruptive to the memory of Sabbs, let alone other contributing students; and acted to limit numbers of
proposals to not many more than the Sabb teams.
To clarify: If a member of Council joined in October, they had no memory of the previous Sabbs anyway (as they left
office in the July before this student started) – and at the point that HLMs were voted on the Councillor would be a
rising second year having completed their exams; and potentially leaving Council at Handover anyway.
These conversations could take from 1-2.5 hours in addition to meetings that were already 4-5 hours long. This is why
Handover as a concept was abolished in the 2015-16 year and Convention Councils created instead to take place in
May; before exams – this is so that Specialist Councils spend time planning their year ahead, rather than spending hours
discussing old business.
The proposal of HLMs was moved to October, and for the year just past; rather than a full year in arrears, in 2014-15 –
with staff changes over time the structural support of ‘living memory’ on process and procedure had been broken and
there was no continuity to knowledge in terms of who was to be proposed in any given year; any system that works in
arrears is prone to systemic failure in the event of rapid change.
The use of paper records (stopped completely in 2013-14) also contributed to delays – and also meant that ‘awards in
advance’ were impossible to record. Digitised membership records allow us to hold an award of an HLM in abeyance
until a student has graduated; this also means that students can be proposed in any year they are members, and the
records changed accordingly to award the HLM after they graduate.
The current system is not fully transparent, hard to explain or conceptualise and (like all honours systems)
contains within it enough flaws to look to a casual observer like an abuse of process or ‘medals for my mates.’

4. Honorary Life Memberships
Result – Option 3 is the solution for HLMs:
• Nominations, as per Guild Awards, Teaching Awards and other quality-based
proposal systems.
• This would mean at least one, and preferably two windows of opportunity – an “all
student” nomination stage, and an “elected officers” nomination stage.
– Suggestions welcome, but suggest Elected Officers/Reps propose in March, and ‘all student’
proposals are gathered in June.
• This would also mean a judging stage; where all nominations would be judged
according to set criteria in order to determine who would be short-listed for the
award.
– Suggestions welcome on judging panel – who should be involved.
• Shadow Council would be the final approval body, to sign off that they were happy
the nomination and judging procedures were fair, just and reasonable – Shadow
Council would not be judging the candidates; only the process. This is judicial
review in a procedural setting.
• Suggestions welcome as to the exact details of nomination stages and judging stage.
Shadow Council approval would happen at the earliest opportunity
after stages 1 and 2 – might be once a year, or twice; depending on
how judging is arranged.

5. Honorary Life Memberships
Vote Record:
Shadow Council – 9 cast of 12
• David Chalmers – option 2
• Alex Gewanter – option 3
• Eaindra Cho – option 3
• Charles Beaty – option 3
• Matthew Burton – no vote
• Azhar Chaudry – no vote
• Kamya Gopal – option 3
• Jack Hindson – option 3
• George Livesey – option 3
• Vanessa Ng – option 3
• Anam Shaikh – option 3
• Wallace Wang – no vote
Block Votes – 16 cast of 42
• Sabbs (VP Activities) – 5 x option 3
• Liberation Council – 1 x option 3
• Sustainability Council – 1 x option
2
• International Students’ Council –
• Games and Campaigns Council – 3
x option 3
• Societies Executive – 5 x option 3
and 1 x option 2

6. Honorary Life Memberships
Vote Record:
• 56 votes in play.
• 19 quoracy minimum for any option. (56/3)+1
• 33 votes is qualified majority if all votes are cast.
• 9 Shadow Councillors could block or decide.
• Secret Ballot at the point of casting a vote.
25 votes cast – vote is quorate.
9 Shadow Council votes – vote is quorate.
Option 1 had no votes. No-one wanted to remove HLMs entirely.
Shadow Council votes for Option 3 by qualified majority of Shadow Council.
Council block votes 14:2 in favour of Option 3 – a qualified majority of those
votes cast.