Let me cook v2

[fattyhope]

I propose that only positions of general committee members if terminated or resign to be filled without an SGM.

Looking at other societies similar in size to UQCS, they only nominate their t3 and officer (or its equivalent) at the SGM/AGM and bring in their "general committee" either through interviews or google forms, this has also been brought to my attend by members as they have found the SGM/AGM shit posty and long. Multiple potentially great candidates have had to leave the SGM/AGM as they cannot reach the section to give their speeches for a general committee member position last few SGM/AGMs have gone way to long (last year was 3-4 hours).
However I list my concerns:

• Nepotism could be involved when choosing general committee positions
• Time consuming (to conduct interviews)

This constitution will allow members of our society that does resign/terminate to be filled through a more informal process (e.g. Google Forms to gather potential candidates, committee then voting on that).

• This reduces nepotism (less) and does not pressures the t3 + t6 equivalence to vote people in (other societies do this I believe).
• Time efficient
  This also naturally allows officer positions who (actually) become vacant to be filled by a general committee member as opposed to when a general committee member resigns or is terminated, a vacant spot isn't actually created but the workload of the committee remains the same. My concerns with nepotism with this constitution still lingers, hence I have added another constitution where if 4 of the management committee resigns (officer and general in this case) , an SGM must be called as something in the society might be evidentially (or not) be going wrong (suggested by Iain - Thanks).

This constitution would allow an SGM to be called when required as 4 out of the 6 years, an SGM has been called. I would also like to comment that although an SGM wasn't called in 2023, the committee was actually ran by only 11 people (if I recall correctly). Although the 2023 committee stayed afloat due to Limao and Rachel been extremely productive and organised, this may be not be the case in future management committees. In 2024, we had someone resign day of AGM as they applied as a joke (multiple roles), we have also had certain individuals showing up to SGMs/AGMs nominated themselves for "troll" positions even after multiple warnings. We also had 3 resign/terminate due to inactivity and an SGM was then called again to bring on another 3 which also another 2 was terminated due to inactivity.

Running a committee is already extremely difficult, with less people onboard we struggle more. I hope the rest of the society can see the angle committee is coming from and the conversation I have opened up, I wish to see what people have to say about this.

Thanks,
Jackie

[TheOnlyMrCat]

Some concerns with the specific wording here. I'm also not sure how this reduces nepotism on committee, it seems to encourage it in the sense that a smaller number of people get to decide who can join the committee.

[TheOnlyMrCat]

the number of votes of the members of the Management Commitee in favour equals or exceeds the number of members of the Management Committee needed to constitute quorum of a General Meeting of the Society

Replace "the number of members of the Management Committee needed to constitute quorum of a General Meeting of the Society" with "half (1/2) the total number of members on the Management Committee". (Otherwise, you'll need more votes than it's possible to have committee members)

exceeds twice the number of votes of the members of the Management Committee.

Should be "exceeds twice the number of votes of the members of the Management Committee against." (Otherwise you'll need more votes than you have votes)

[TheOnlyMrCat]

I'd recommend including a time frame for this clause, such as:

9.5 If four (4) or more members of the Management Committee have resigned or been removed from office since the previous General Meeting, a General Meeting shall be convened by the secretary by sending out notice of the meeting within fourteen (14) days.

Also: must be called for what reason? What business should be transacted at that meeting?

[TheOnlyMrCat]

I think you need to renumber these clauses as well, to fit the new 9.5 in

[TheOnlyMrCat]

This clause currently does not have a provision for re-creating positions on General Committee when members resign or are removed. It only allows positions to be created at a GM, be left unfilled at that GM, and be later filled by (was Society, now is Management Committee). Did you want to add a clause allowing Management Committee to create new General Committee positions?

[TheOnlyMrCat]

Actually scratch this, this is a Bradley question

[bradleysigma]

Putting my thoughts here, but alas, I'm in a rush, so they might not be as coherent as I'd like.

The 2013 AGM minutes are nicely segmented with timestamps.

• Preliminaries & Reports took 45 minutes;
• Elections took 91 minutes;
• General Business took 64 minutes;
• Recesses were 29 minutes.

As such, elections occupied 40% of the meeting. This was the largest category, but not a majority. General committee would only be a subset of this, and I'd estimate it would be about 5% of the overall meeting. Removing the election of general committee from the AGMs would thus only have a minor impact on the meeting runtime, and I don't think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

I think it is not a good idea to take away the society's members ability to decide the size of the committee, and over half its membership, and hand it over to the committee. In addition, the Single Transferable Vote method of electing general committee members has the effect of preventing committee from being a monolith, and thereby allowing different segments of the community to have a voice on committee.

Finally, given the lack of thought that has gone into the title of this pull request, I'm concerned that an equal lack of thought has gone into its content.

[jgat]

The 2013 AGM minutes are nicely segmented with timestamps.

I was the president in 2013, and I'm guessing that's a typo. Our AGMs were definitely shorter than 3.8 hours back in the society's infancy days (the problem of success I guess 😅).

Cheers.

[q-horton]

I oppose this resolution and echo much of what Bradley has said. I'd also highlight that the substantial change that this makes appears to contravene some of the reasoning that you present. The changes would:

• Alter the existing 8.8 to remove broader society input into the election of general members outside of general meetings and limit this to exclusively the management committee
• Enforce SGMs in cases where they are substantially likely to have been called anyway