Annual General Meeting 2020

[15:21] Felix: I will largely take my report as read.

Abigail Thomas (Postgraduate Representative): What are our plans for the future?

Felix:

It’s largely about the people that we interact with and what the society can do.

Robert Jeffrey: What are your plans with managing and building a connection with those first years coming in next year that will have been isolated?

Felix: We are going to be a lot better about introducing the CSSA in lectures, especially first year lectures. […​] Specifically, à la “here is the CSSA and here is an event that we are running that you can attend in an online capacity.” It’s something we will need to think really hard, and talk to other student societies about.

Angus Atkinson: What is the status of the common room?

Felix: With regards to the physical one? We have put in a request with upstairs to be able to open it with restrictions in place on Monday, but I have not heard a report back yet. […​] Certainly, I would be surprised if we do not open in the next few weeks — it’s not something we have complete control over.

Jeffie: What is the nature of the restrictions we’re talking about?

Felix:

These restrictions will be negotiated — people’s expectations change all the time and CECS’s expectations are stricter than many places but are developing. It’ll basically be whatever we need to get the room open.

Talyah Livanes: Would you hope to get more student engagement in a virtual common room?

Felix: We’ve been curating the Discord as a common room-esque space, and I’m keen to see that develop further. Transferring the common room online — which is what we’ve been trying to do — is a goal.

Samantha Blakley: How healthy is the organisation, how resilient will it be to challenges about this year.

Felix: That is a very broad question, and one that I’ve thought about a lot. The CSSA has a long and rather interesting history; when I took over the reins of the society…​ there had been a bunch of infighting, and then the infighting sort of petered out. But as a result all of our internal organisational structure went out the window rather quickly, and I wasn’t aware of what was missing in time to get it all back up again so I’ve had to actually build them from the ground up.

We’re in a very good financial position — we have a bunch of flexibility financially. Student motivation is the thing we’re lacking the most, and something that a number of people including myself have put a lot of thought into how to get students engaged…​ there’s small things and big things…​ and I would say…​ who knows. If it’s a situation that puts strain on our financial situation, we are in an excellent position. If it’s a strain that would further harm our ability to engage with students, it’s always going to be tough, we’re at least now in a position where we have thought about it; in the short term, we at least have done the thinking part.

Abi: If we have a lot of money and not enough student engagement, should we be creating some kind of indirect exchange of money for student motivation?

Felix: If you have any ideas on how to do this, the society is really keen!

Talyah: Could we get more out of collaborative events with ANU Sports et al.?

Felix: We had a bunch of collaborative events that fell through.

If you have an event you would like the CSSA to run, you can run it — and if there’s something we can do that can help you with that, please let us know, whether or not you end up on committee — that goes for anyone.

Talyah: Are you hoping to do events with regards to students and clubs from other universities?

Felix: I can let Leo speak, but in short yes. We have huge plans — actually in the very near future; I think with the OUCC we have been looking into a programming competition.

Jeffie: What has the CSSA actually done in terms of events, and in general since the beginning of the year?

Felix: We have the Discord up and running, there was the Minecraft server, we tried to run an online games night — it was somewhat disappointing.

Jeffie: Where have you been promoting them?

Felix: We put some things out in the newsletter, stuff that’s happening on Discord generally go on Discord, stuff gets posted to Facebook…​

Dana Pye: I’m not sure we actually got around to putting EGN on our Facebook page…​

Felix: That would explain a lot.

Jeffie: I’m largely asking because I haven’t seen any of these events.

Felix: This is exactly why I want a dedicated communications person.

It’s a very fair question — the answer to “what we have run” is “not much”, and the events that we have run have been quite disappointing.

Jasmine Delaney: You mentioned a newsletter? Where is the newsletter?

Felix: Oh, it’s by email! It’s not regular — we’ve sent out two this semester. If you are a CSSA member and you haven’t opted out of the newsletter, you should get it.

Felix: You can just take your report as read and ask for questions.

[15:35] Christopher Ward (Treasurer): Laughs, then speaks deliberately; I take my report as read, are there any questions?

Jeffie: How much of the initial cost of buying the vending machines has been paid off?

Chris: Oh, like easily all of it — the vending machines cost like, almost nothing. Although, the purchase of those were on a previous report…​

[15:37] Felix: I’ll just summarise what this stuff does. Basically inserts an object section which is necessary if we were to incorporate, and also clarify any tax obligations. It cleans up a bunch of not clearly defined wording, and renames a bunch of positions on committee…​ that’s mostly what it was. It also adds specific responsibilities to the treasurer and secretary that weren’t there before. And it specifically says that we have to notify members by email of the time and location of the general meetings.

Samantha: In section 12 on funds, why have you repealed and replaced instead of writing the changes out individually?

Felix: To make it shorter in text form — to write it as a bunch of individual amendments would have made it like two pages. It is much faster to write it out a repeal and replace — there are a number of sections that are written out as a repeal and replace.

All in favour.

[...]

Talyah (Candidate): You spelt my name wrong :(

She is referring to the ballot for General Representatives.

Talyah: It’s okay. Laughs. I totally expected it, it’s fine — it’s not the end of the world. Chuckles.

[...]

Talyah: Is the Zoom able to hear us clearly?

Chris: Yeah, the Zoom is well micced throughout the room.

Jon: Coolio, is there anyone that doesn’t wanna speak to their position? …​cool, y’all wanna have a fat chat? Nice.

We normally have two short questions to candidates. In the interest of not being here all day, please do not be a pest, and also please don’t ask your mates questions that make them look good or ask people you don’t like questions that make them look bad, it’s not Question Time we don’t care about your dumb antics. Cool! We’ll give people two minutes to talk.

Do we wanna just go from right to left and start with Vesty?

(General Representative, Candidate for General Representative)

[15:46] Sylvester: Hello, my name is Sylvester, as you can see, my statement is literally two words: “yeet it.” I’m just going for Gen Rep.

Reason I want to go for Gen Rep…​ I’ve been International Rep before, and what did I do that year? Nothing, because I’m not good at organising events. What I’m good at is helping out at events, but I’m not really good at organising events. The good thing about me being a Gen Rep is to keep the common room open, cause they got rid of CROs, and I want access to the room, and that’s pretty much my motivation.

Jon: Thank you Sylvester. Applause. Does anyone have any questions for Sylvester?

Sophie Chinn (Vice-President): What is one thing you would like to improve on, because you were Gen Rep last year?

Vesty: Uh…​

Elias Yuan (General Representative): Literally anything would work, Vesty.

Vesty: What would I like to see committee improve on…​

Jon: The number of zinger boxes I get to eat.

Vesty: More organised? Slightly more organised?

Jon: Cool. Okay.

(Candidate for Secretary, for General Representative)

[15:48] Jon: Next one on the firing line. G’day, I don’t know your name — are you Tom?

Thomas: I’m Thomas, I’m running for Gen Rep and Secretary this year. I first joined the CSSA this year when I was walking past the common room and Elias said, “_Join.” _Audience laughs. So…​ now I’m here.

If I were secretary I would…​ write minutes. Pause. I’d publish minutes. I’d LaTeX minutes. I’d…​ give minutes to the person who’s in charge of communications to distribute further. I’d write minutes.

Also, I’ve heard that the CSSA common room needs to be less smelly. I’ve only been there twice, and then it closed, like, after I became a member — like, very shortly after — so I would fix the smell. That’s a promise. That’s an election promise.

Chris: How would you fix the smell?

Open a window at least once.

Chris: We don’t have a window. Audience laughs. And therein lies the problem, right?

Jon: Humorous or not, please don’t interrupt candidates' speeches. Continue.

Thomas: Yeah I haven’t been there much…​ because it closed. That’s my statement that’s what I’m going for, please choose me, thank you.

Applause.

Jon: Any actual questions?

Sophie: What do you think of CSSA’s online common room, and how would you reduce the smell in there?

Audience laughs.

Thomas: Good question. Personally I haven’t had much of an issue with the smell of it — depends on what room you’re in when you’re accessing the Discord.

But I think the Discord hasn’t been as…​ I’m looking forward to see how it improves next year as things become more streamlined and students know that the CSSA exists, because I think that’s one of the biggest issues at the moment, especially for students that are in adjacent fields like maths and physics. The only way that maths and physics students find out about the CSSA really is if they’ve got friends who know about the CSSA, and I think that there’s a massive world of who are people doing adjacent degrees, who would be interested in this sort of stuff, who they do coding as part of their degree but they just don’t really identify strongly as comp sci students, and I think those are the students who we can really reach out to, and who can really benefit from the support of a community to go to when you have troubles with your code, or if you’ve got a problem. Especially with physics moving more and more towards incorporating Python into coursework — there are so many students who almost feel left behind by not having those underlying programming skills who could really be helped out by the society.

(Industry Representative, Unopposed Candidate for Industry Representative)

[15:51] Jon: Sandy? Got anything hectic to say?

Sandy: Um…​ industry baby.

Deliberate applause.

Elias: Report, Sandy.

Sandy: Am I allowed to swear?

Jon: Yep.

Sandy: ’Rona fucked it this year, but next year, I promise…​ I’ll do something. Oh! Also, let me know if you have any connections in Canberra to help get us local sponsors, cause that’s on my mind.

(Candidate for General Representative)

[15:51] Jon: Jeffie?

Jeffie: G’day, my name is Robert Jeffrey, people call me Jeffie. I was Vice-President two years ago, between 2017 and 2019. I did mostly organisational stuff, paperwork and the like.

And since then, being on committee, I’ve really been thinking about how we can reach out to first year students and build more community, especially going into this next year when we have, you know hopefully not, but most likely we’ll have people coming in who are new students who have never been on campus. It’s going to be really hard to build those connections you need to do well in university, and I know personally a lot of my study has come from talking with other people about interesting stuff. As a result I really think it’s an important thing for the CSSA to try and build events and build ways of allowing students to get to know each other, and build connections to succeed as they’re coming in.

I think one particular thing we really need from my experience of running Market Day this year, is that we really need some good incentives to get people to join as members. To be frank, the CSSA common room is the only real reason that you should really join the CSSA, at least from a like an incentives perspective. So it would be nice to have more reasons and more events that are regular, that is inclusive to people that aren’t in the normal, small group that generally hang around the common room.

Basically I wanna try and build community.

Jon: Thank you Jeffie. Anyone got questions?

Samantha: With your proposed goal of community building, why does being elected allow you to do that more effectively than being only a member?

Jeffie: So that is a good point. I think the main thing there is then you can leverage the rest of committee. Honestly you can do it separately, but I think the two big things are you wanna be able to make it ‘The CSSA’ doing stuff. If you’re just individuals setting up events, that’s good for the immediate event, but it doesn’t really build the longer lasting connections with community that really sell students on coming to later events. And the other thing is, you know, I’m in honours this year, and I have time to work on a lot of these things, but I can’t do everything by myself. So it is really nice to use the committee to talk with people to set up events that other people can fill in different gaps in it, to overall just make it a more efficient process to building up a community, that isn’t just one person doing it.

Jon: Cool. Happy days…​

(International Representative. Candidate for International Representative, for General Representative)

Jon: Bing bing bong Leo do you want to say anything?

Leo: I think some of you haven’t met me before. I’ve done a lot of study events, and I’m the International Rep for this year. So beyond supporting our international students which I have done especially at the beginning of this year, with COVID, because most international student have lockdown.

Beyond that, I’ve got three ideas for next year. So the first one is actually the international dinner — which has been cancelled because of the COVID stuff. I’d like to bring it back hopefully at the end of this year or next year. I’ve discussed this with UniLodge’s managers, and they basically approve it.

The second thing is international restaurant discount. So I have friends in the Malaysian student organisation. They have, like, 27 local sponsors — which I need help from Sandy — yeah, 27 sponsors from local restaurants and cafes. Why don’t we have some? I got one this year from the ANU ShareTea — it’s a bubble tea thing, you can get a free upgrade. And I’m thinking, look, we have Urban, we have other bubble tea, we have different restaurants around the campus — I want to reach out, and get some international taste, and bring that to our members.

And third one, which is the most important one, is our international partnership program. I have launched the pathways recently, with Osaka University Computer Club, and I’m reach number 5 at the end of this year, and I’m hoping to reach number at least 15 by the end of next winter. So…​ hopefully we can build a formal coalition between universities all around the world, so it’s more like a point-to-point relationship — 

Jon: Leo, can I just get you to wrap up there?

Talyah: With the partnership program, what can we see coming from that?

Leo: For now…​ we’re currently laying the foundations for the programs. If we want to attract other universities or other clubs, we need to show them we’ve done something. So, what we have planned is some competitive programming events, and some […​] what I’m aiming for is exchange opportunities. When our students go to other universities, if we have like local support, that’d be great. Hopefully we can get more, because this program would be really interesting if we’ve got more than 10 universities join us. What I hope to do next year is actually lay the foundation, so the International Rep afterwards can build from that.

Jon: Thank you Leo.

Applause.

(Diversity Representative. Candidate for Diversity Representative, for General Representative)

[15:58] Jon: Next…​ Dana.

Dana: I’m only shaking a little bit this is fine. Um…​ I’m Dana, my pronouns are they/them. I’ve been the Diversity Rep since last year, I had a bunch of plans for all kinds of interesting things to do that of course didn’t happen because nothing happened. I’ve set up a CS queer Discord group which has some people in it. I’ve been talking with ESA queer and women’s, Science queer, and CECS Diversity & Inclusion just about kind of getting community among various diverse people in CS and other STEM fields. It can be quite isolating. I’ve tried, or continue to try hard to basically keep CSSA spaces inclusive, and just nice places to be, cause we haven’t always been, and we’ve made a lot of progress recently and I’d like to keep that up.

Jon: Cool. Thank you. Any questions?

Sophie: This is kind of directed both at Diversity and Industry. How is Industry and Diversity going to work? I know that some industry like to target for diversity sort of things. What would you two want to present?

Dana: I’m absolutely happy to do diversity-focused industry events if industry wants to do that. I’m happy to send word around to diversity committees on that.

Sandy: I know, like, our biggest sponsors like Accenture they are having diversity as a…​ focus for them? They have like a planned out initiative for women in their company. I’m sure if we chat to them, they’d be happy to do events specifically for diversity.

Dana: I’m absolutely keen to do those.

Jon: Business time.

Samantha: Are there any aspects that CSSA’s specifically organised or run that you would improve on to make the space more accessible to a diversity event?

Dana: I mean there’s always improvement in this sort of space. One of the reasonably obvious things that we should do is to have image descriptions on everything we publish, which having a Communications Rep would really help with. I can’t think of any really specific examples cause I haven’t been in the room for 6 months, so there’s nothing really fresh in my mind as problems that have specifically come up that need dealing with. General moderation of the online spaces, something that we’re all kind of working towards as committee generally.

Jon: Cool. Okay.

(Candidate for General Representative, for Secretary)

[16:04] Talyah: Hi. Talyah. A lot of people know me as Cappy as well because I run the ANU Students' Discord server. I’m running for both Secretary and General Rep, just because I know I can probably engage more of an online community and stuff through what I’ve done so far, definitely offer some tips and tricks and working towards building that, and of course towards actually constructing events and stuff as well, because of course there is already a built community that I’m part of and I can definitely merge the two. And it would be something that I would continue to work with as the year progresses and as we go towards a kind of adaptive kind of environment with university. It’s something I’d, yeah, keep a big focus on if I was to become a General Rep for you guys. Yeah.

Sophie: How did you find CSSA, cause I believe you do a Bachelor of Arts?

Talyah: I actually have done a few computer science courses. I knew that the society was there through Market Day and stuff. Yeah, so even though I’m part of ANU School of Art and Design, I have done some courses with the intent to minor in IT until I found out I couldn’t do that. Laughs. Um, but I still am very much involved with the community because I have done work and stuff like that within the industry so I can lend advice.

Chris: Why are you specifically running for the Secretary role — you haven’t actually addressed that role?

Talyah: General Rep primarily! I looked at Secretary and I was interested by it, but I know that I’m probably not quite up to speed for it. So I’d much prefer to be up for the General Rep role, be involved with how the club runs for a year, and if I decide to, you know, try again I’d probably see what other positions I’d like to explore as well.

Jon points around at the candidates, announcing their names.

Sophie: I don’t think the people on Zoom saw your fingerpointing.

Audience laughs.

Chris: Yeah they didn’t see the people he was pointing at.

Audience laughs more.

Jon: Cool okay um…​

Sophie: Okay, Zoom people, there’s Sylvester — 

Chris: No they can see him pointing they just can’t see Sylvester.

Sophie: There’s a person here, a person here…​

Chris: Yeah, there are people in the auditorium. They are definitely real.

Audience laughs.

Talyah: A question on the ballots, do we just leave our names blank?

Jon: You can vote for yourself. […​] That’s what I was trying to clarify earlier — absolutely do vote for yourself number one if you don’t like yourself then don’t vote for yourself number one, I…​ it’s a free country. Sort of. Okay. Elias, do you wanna fire away?

Elias: Uh…​ could we start at that end?

Silence. Metaphorical crickets chirp.

Sophie: Elias is taking minutes!

(Damn right. Look at these words go. There are 4117 of them by this sentence.)

(Treasurer, Candidate for Treasurer, for General Representative)

[16:07] Jon: Alright then. Uh…​ Chris, you have anything radical to say?

Chris: Sure…​ I’ll make up some words. I’ve been Treasurer for the last year taking over the reins from Faiz, who had some interesting ideas about accounting. Laughs. So in the last year I’ve moved us onto Xero so we can actually track our expenses and uh income and actually have some invoices and know that they’ve been paid. Yeah, been doing that for the last year, I also do most of the maintenance for the vending machines. […​] Any questions?

Sophie: What are your future plans for the vending machines now that COVID…​

Chris: Yeah, it’s an interesting one. I wanna talk to the ANU cleaners and see if we can get them to sterilise them every day. For the minute they’re still off until we can work that sort of thing out, but it would be nice if we could get that sort of thing to…​ but like we need to also discuss it with the school and see if they have anything to say.

Talyah: Have you guys already got the hand sanitiser and thing set up?

Jeffie: It’s less that they actually need to be clean, and more than we need to convince the school that it’s clean — sorry that sounds bad. As in, the point is that we need to guarantee that it’s clean, rather than just trusting people to hopefully sanitise.

Felix: Tells Chris about the pink vest sterilisation brigade.

Chris: We should get in touch with them about that. Yeah.

(President, Unopposed Candidate for President)

[16:10] Felix: I’m unopposed, and I’ve said a lot for the President’s Report, so I’ll say nothing.

Sophie: TL;DR?

Felix: Says a bunch of things really fast that summarise the President’s Report.

(Vice-President, Candidate for Vice-President, for Secretary, for General Representative)

[16:10] Jon: Coolio. Sophie.

Sophie: Hello! I’m Sophie. I’m the resident biologist, so I actually don’t study computer science whatsoever. I also asked a few questions because I wasn’t here for the beginning bit, because I was doing what Vice-Presidents kinda do, which is go off and do random jobs.

So, Vice-President, I believe, is basically a minion on steroids. You go around doing things, and you do a lot of like things in the background. So, instead of me running an event per se — like I don’t have an event I can sort of tag myself in — I guarantee you that as the previous Vice-Pres, I had a hand in almost every event. But, my name is just in the credits not as “this is the Vice-President’s event”. […​] VP is very much a supportive role rather than a direct lead role, so I believe that the main purpose is to support the committee and run the society when the committee is busy. This is why I believe it’s empowering to have people on committee that aren’t computer scientists, because it helps when you have different workloads, and different backgrounds, and people that are available at different times so you can help run the society from the shadows, I guess.

Also, for the upcoming sort of year, I’d like to do some more pastoral and managerial kind of things. Because running a society in person is kind of exhausting, but running it online is even more so, and I would like to see, like I would like to push myself if I am reelected to focus on more pastoral — “How is the committee doing?” — as well. Because it’s not just the students out there that are affected. I want to make sure that everyone on the team is sort of recuperated so that we can help the students better.

So, TL;DR, I’d like you to consider what role you think I would do best in. If you’d like to be more pastoral and supportive like a steroid minion sort of work, choose me for VP. I am also a bit of a nut for paperwork and emails, so if you want to see me in Secretary, choose me for Secretary. But if you just want me to hang around and give advice, Gen Rep is also good too. Yeah, thank you for listening.

Jon: Any questions for Sophie? …​cool, I have one question then.

Jon: Do you foresee for the next year that your mum’s massive friggin’ car will still be available for CSSA service?

Sophie: Yes um…​ okay so for people that don’t understand this reference; I used to drive a nice small little Honda Jazz, I used to zip-zip around everywhere, and now my brother who is on his Ps took my car, and now I am stuck with a 7-seater Honda CX9…​ so, I’ve successfully had one crunch — that was my fault backing into a letter box — and someone hit me once! I guess it’s like, even if I am not elected to committee, I am still happy to help out. But, you guys will just have to chip in for fuel. But if I’m on committee, it’s free.

(General Representative, Candidate for Secretary, for Vice-President, for Treasurer, for General Representative, for Diversity Representative)

[16:14] Jon: Elias?

Elias: So…​ um you guys will see me on like most of these ballots because I was actually suggested to shotgun by Pete. But, however — yes I take Pete’s advice — however I’m actually primarily running for Secretary. As you can see I’m taking the minutes for the meeting right now. I hope to…​ same as Tom…​ actually publish the minutes, and…​ Laughs. In addition to that, there’s a lot of paperwork stuff that could be taken off the load of the President.

So the President has been doing a lot of work in excess of their role, this year — so I’ve been sold. So I think maybe the executive and the committee in general could take off some of that load and I think I would really love to help to do that, and…​ I’ve been involved with the CSSA since I got here, which was actually before I started — I, um, helped with Market Day before I was a member. So that was fun. And yeah, I would love to see the society grow. Pls vote for me.

Jon: Any questions for Elias?

Sophie: What examples of workload distribution would you like to implement? I absolutely agree with you about the workload distribution — from my experience I know that the President and Industry have a lot of work on their hands — how would you in Secretary be able to even out the distribution?

Elias: So, maybe taking more of a hand in helping organise events. Especially the paperwork that comes with it. Helping with a lot of the communications that go to upstairs and any people that we would be communicating with — which, as is described in ANUSA constitution, of the Secretary role, and just things like that. As you mentioned, the general paperwork nut type thing.

Felix: Just a show of hands, out of people that have nominated, or people who haven’t nominated today, would be interested in a Communications Officer role on the committee? […​] Taking it.

Talyah and Jasmine raise their hand.

Jeffie: Another question specifically for both people running for Diversity Rep. Diversity Rep is an all encompassing role — it could be set up for queer stuff, and it could also be set up for race I’m not 100% sure…​

Felix: The history of the Diversity Rep is that it did used to be the CSSA Women’s Rep, and then we decided that we would like some slightly better representation than that, but we didn’t actually…​ I was very new to the society, and there was politics occurring at the time, so the most I was able to make happen was rename the position to Diversity Rep. So I’ve lumped them with a bunch of stuff.

Jeffie: I guess the question I wanted to ask was, essentially, what are your ideas for stuff outside queer involvement or like women’s involvement, or like anything else relating to diversity?

Dana: I’m keen to do women’s stuff. I’m currently working with Fifty50 to work out some things like that. The big one I want to try and actually do is disability stuff, cause that’s something that just for me I want to get really involved with disability stuff on campus anyway. Obviously I’m not really the person to do race things, but if International or anyone else involved wants to run something around racial diversity and wants a CSSA stamp on that I’m happy to facilitate that in any.

Elias: I will offload the question to Dana because they are way more suited for the role than I am.

(Candidate for Vice-President, for Secretary, for International Representative)

Jon: There was one candidate that could not make it today, pronunciation butcher incoming…​ Nayoon? Their statement is in your AGM thingy if you haven’t had a look at that, page 23. Obviously it’s grossly unfair to candidates who aren’t able to be here and speak and answer questions in that you have no idea who they are, and you haven’t had the opportunity for them to talk to you, so please do carefully read their statement, and make a serious consideration of them when voting. […​] So yeah, I believe our one absentee is a first year student, and probably has plenty to offer the CSSA as well, so take that into consideration.

(Candidate for General Representative)

Abi: Dave also isn’t here but is nominated for Gen Rep.

[...]

Jon: With that, then, I might ask everyone to scribble on your ballots.

Audience votes. There is chatter.

Jon: Alright everyone. Thank you for coming to the CSSA election 2021 committee style. Hope you’ve all made happy votes. But irrespective of whether or not you win or lose positions, generally the way the CSSA works — if you’re someone that like, fuckin’ does anything, you’ll be around and in the channels and in the kind of ‘committee community’, shall we call it. So, yeah if you don’t actually get elected today, don’t be downhearted it’s not the worst thing in the world.

Sophie: Committee meetings are open to the public, so if you don’t get voted in…​

Felix: As a general but not always.

Jeffie: They aren’t publicised?

Jon: The other thing I will mention is that of course the committee always has power to appoint a few more Gen Reps for free, so there’s always room for more useful helpful handy people. End of the election, guess I hand the chair back to Felix now?

Jeffie: I just want to have a motion to have something noted in the minutes…​

(Jokes on you. Didn’t need a motion cause I was taking down literally everything.)

Jeffie: …​essentially that maybe running these during business hours is not the best idea? I think it’s a little unfair to people who have classes on, or work on, maybe having these on a business day during, you know, 9-5, so maybe we can try and make sure for future meetings we run them outside business hours.

Talyah: Didn’t we have to run them during business hours?

Felix: No, it had to be held on a teaching day, but not during teaching hours. I think for a normal meeting we would probably hold them later in the day, but we were constrained in our choices.

[...]

Felix: Any other other business?

Talyah: …​communications role?

Felix: Oh! So it’s not a role that actually exists. At our first committee meeting, we are likely to confirm whether we want it as an unofficial role, and we’ll appoint someone to be de facto in the role. And depending on how the results of the election pan out, there will be a process for choosing who that person is, if the person’s already on committee, they will probably keep their position and we’ll probably have another Gen Rep.

Felix: Yes, we will be organising CROs as soon as it’s reasonable to do so — once we have information from the school about the common room, we can do the CROs. Because either we will be able to open in which case we will look into CROs, or we are not going to be able to open in which case we are going to have to decide on CROs in an online environment.