Talk:Governance of the National Union of Students (United Kingdom)

More background needed for non-experts

Hi, There is loads of information here, but as a student with no prior knowledge of NUS governance I find the article extremely hard to understand. The background section gives opinions for and against the reform, but doesn't explain what the reform was and what it actually changed. Similarly, could the article please explain what is meant by full-time officers, and who the National Conferences are attended by (ie. is it any student, is it one representative from each university?). With better explanation the article would be more interesting and more useful. --Hermajesty21 (talk) 18:35, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

COI declaration

Hey, I'm the current Vice Chair of NUS' Democratic Procedures Committee, a committee mentioned in this article. I wanted to declare that here before suggesting changes. JustLucas (they/them) (talk) 19:46, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Edit suggestions

Summary:

• I noticed that the list of members of DPC hasn't been updated since the 2017 election. None of those people now sit on DPC but the section implies they are the current membership. That wording should be fixed imo, an updated list of membership may or may not be useful.
• There are some dead links at the bottom of the article that could do with being removed or updated
• There are links to non-existent articles that could do with being removed
• The lists of named trustees are also out of date
• The list of zones are out of date - these were changed in governance reforms passed at 2019 Conference
• Liberation campaigns no longer each hold their own conference, but take part in one cross-liberation conference (this was a 2019 change, the first conference in this format is currently happening)
• The national executive council was replaced with a National Scrutiny Council (first one taking office this summer)
• The President is no longer Shakira Martin but is Zamzam Ibrahim (mentioned in Full Time Officers section)
• The recent reforms mentioned in the intro and the 'background' section are actually now old reforms, and more recent (last year) reforms have happened since

Changes I think are easy:

• Full-time Officers:

replace Shakira Martin with Zamzam Ibrahim

add a note that the reason for there being no VP SocCit is due to 2019 reforms, the section needs an overhaul but this would do for now

• Annual Conference: change "Any member of a Union affiliated to the National Union of Students can stand to be a delegate." to "All affiliated Students' Unions are able to send delegates to the conference, the number of delegates each Union can send being proportional to its membership size. Higher Education Unions are required to elect their delegates, Further Education and Small and Specialist Unions are able to appoint."
• Liberation Campaigns: change "Liberation campaigns are autonomous and hold their own conferences." to "There is an NUS Liberation Conference which combines all 5 NUS liberation caucuses."
• Trustee Board:

remove "The current student trustees are:"

remove "Elected Trustees for the next term are:"

not sure whether to leave the two lists or not

• Democratic Procedures Committee

remove "The current make up is"

combine the 2017-19 list with the main table, and remove the smaller one

• remove dead links

Changes that are less easy: this could probably do with some changes to the Background section (which would be a big re-write), citations, updated content around the National Scrutiny Council replacing the NEC, information on the new FTO structure (President, and 3 VP roles: Higher Education; Further Education; Liberation and Equality), and potentially more

JustLucas (they/them) (talk) 20:13, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

@JustLucas: That all sounds fine to me. I recommend you remove the lists. Go ahead and make the changes you mentioned as easy. Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) 23:35, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! JustLucas (they/them) (talk) 10:00, 27 May 2020 (UTC)