What’s this all about?

Your Students’ Union has been transforming, with the launch of a new strategy this year that puts student communities and community organising at the heart of everything we do. The final step in this transformation is for you, our members, to give your final approval to our new direction, what this means for our decision-making processes, and how we are governed.
 

What are we being asked to approve?

Following the approval of a Student Members’ Meeting held in April this year for us to progress this work, we are now ready to present to you the changes that are required to our Articles and Byelaws (aka our governing documents or rule books), and to ask you to vote in favour of these changes. We will publish the full documentation here from 26th Nov, which will include all the details on our plans to:

• Put Student Communities at the heart of our decision-making processes, giving them democratic power to shape the work of LBSU
• Develop how we resource and support Student Communities and other Student Groups
• Change the roles of the responsibilities of the Full-time Officers and the Executive Committee, so they better align with our community organising approach
   

What will happen at the meeting?

The first part of the meeting is known as the ‘Student Members Meeting’ – this is the bit that, under our current rules, has the power to approve changes to our governing documents. During this section we will present these changes to you, invite questions, comments and discussion, and then ask you to vote. Any student of Leeds Beckett University may attend this meeting, and every single one of those students also has the right to vote.

Provided the changes are approved, we will then move into our very first Student Assembly, where we will discuss emerging topics from our community organising work, start developing policy ideas around these, and ask you to prioritise which should be the main focus for LBSU. Any student may attend and take part in these discussions, but for this part it is our core Student Communities that are each given a vote – and each Community will get an extra vote if they bring five members to the meeting.
 

Why should I come?

The Students’ Union is not a building, or a place – it is a collective of all Leeds Beckett students, working together to represent and support each other, and to campaign for positive change for students in the University and beyond. We have staff and Officers whose job it is to support this work, but they are not the Union – our power lies where our student members turn out to tell us what matters to them, and how we can make change. We believe the proposals being put forward at this meeting will make us into a more powerful Union that engages more effectively with the student communities that make us who we are – we hope to see you there!