AGM Minutes: 2017

5th May, 7pm- CLS 2017 AGM

There were 21 Ordinary Members present for the AGM, so the quorum of 15 was met.

1 Treasurer's Report

Accounts can be found here.

The Treasurer said that the Society made a loss of around £300, due to new system costs, lack of availability of cheap rooms and deliberate spending on recruitment. He said that the society still has around £2100 left in the bank however, so finances are okay for the time being.

2 President's Report

The President said that everything has gone fairly smoothly this year and there were no big disasters. She also thanked the Secretary for there being rooms and stuff.

3 Motions for Constitutional Changes

3.1 Bring Senior Treasurer requirements in line with University rules

• Proposed by: Mark Cooper
• Seconded by: Dan Summers

Delete "The Senior Treasurer must be a resident member of the Senate or person of MA standing within the University." from the constitution.

Replace it with "The Senior Treasurer shall be a member of the Regent House or other person approved by the Junior Proctor of the University of Cambridge."

Reasoning: These are the requirements the University places on the Senior Treasurer, and adding them to the constitution will hopefully prevent us electing a senior treasurer who doesn't meet them again.

This motion passed unanimously.

The following 2 motions were withdrawn by the proposer after he found an obscure line in the constitution covering the selection of Senior Treasurer.

3.1a Make the Senior Treasurer an appointed position (withdrawn)

• Proposed by: Mark Cooper
• Seconded by: N/A

Add after the bit about the requirements of the Senior Treasurer: "The Senior Treasurer shall be appointed by the Exec."

Reasoning: This is less of a faff than 1b.

In the event 1a fails:

3.1b Make the Senior Treasurer an elected position (withdrawn)

• Proposed by: Mark Cooper
• Seconded by: N/A

Add after the bit about the requirements of the Senior Treasurer: "The Senior Treasurer shall be elected at a General Meeting."

3.2 Minor text fixes

• Proposed by: Mark Cooper
• Seconded by: Dan Summers

Essentially this consists of:

• Fixing misspelt words
• Specifying units where appropriate
• Removing unnecessary gendered language

The changes may be found here.

Reasoning: The constitution is full of typos etc. If we're going to be changing the constitution, we might as well fix them.

Discussion: The changes were checked by a Member and deemed reasonable.

This motion passed unanimously.

3.3 Introduce a Social Secretary

• Proposed by: Mark Cooper
• Seconded by: Corin Jeffcock

Introduce a 4th Exec position, Social Secretary, whose role would be to organise socials and things like weapons practices etc. and help with organising squashes. Amend the constitution accordingly.

Reasoning:

• This will reduce the workload of the rest of the Exec, especially the Secretary.

• It will introduce some useful slack in the system and mean that there is more flexibility for if a member of the Exec needs to reduce the amount they are doing for whatever reason.

• The job of the secretary is rather diverse, and there is no reason why someone who is good at some of the stuff in the role should be good at all of the stuff. For the right person, Social Secretary would not be a tremendously difficult job.

• Our Exec is rather small compared to other societies (e.g. Compare with DUTT, who have 5 Exec members (inc. a social secretary), 3 Committee members (and these first 8 are all distinct people), and a bunch of helpers.)

• It will mean more socials!

Discussion: There was considerable discussion, including whether there was a benefit to this being an elected position, and to what extent the Society should run socials.

This motion passed with 14 of the 21 Members present voting in favour.

4 Appointment of Committee:

President

• Kim Ward as President, Corin Jeffcock as Junior President.
• RON

Kim and Corin were elected with only Corin voting against.

Treasurer

• Jonathan Cooper
• RON

Jon was more popular than RON, and was elected unanimously.

Secretary

• Mark Cooper as Secretary, Robb Smith as Junior Secretary.
• RON

Mark and Robb were elected unanimously.

5 Appointment of next year's Referee Team:

Proposed Refteam:

• Rosemary Warner (Head Ref)
• Nye Redman-White
• Dan Summers
• Jon Cooper

The above Referee Team was approved unanimously.

6 Other Motions:

6.1 Poll on Weekly Finance and Venues

• Proposed by: Jon Cooper
• Seconded By: N/A because it isn't actually a motion

An advisory poll for members on how to finance the society's weekly outgoings. This year we've lost a lot of money, and a big reason is because we haven't had access to venues other than the UCH, which is expensive. However some members have expressed a desire to stay in the UCH even if we get access to other venues because of its ease of access. Which of these options would the membership prefer?

1. Stay in the UCH
2. Find a cheaper venue

In either case, should we find ourselves in the UCH, how do we cover the cost?

1. Raise the weekly fee.
2. Solicit voluntary donations.
3. Something else.

Discussion: 'Something else' was replaced with Rosemary Warner's suggestion of a tiered waged/unwaged weekly fee so that people who are able to pay more do. It was mentioned that it may not be possible to move to a cheaper room. It was also mentioned that the UCH reserve Friday evenings for us, preventing last-minute room panics. The option of waiting and seeing how we do next year was discussed. The fact that if we have more money we can buy nice stuff was mentioned.

The results for each question are below:

1. Stay in the UCH: 10
2. Find a cheaper venue: 8

1. Raise the weekly fee: 1
2. Solicit voluntary donations: 0
3. Introduce a tiered weekly fee: 20