At a time of noted student apathy towards CUSU, with 14.1 per cent of students casting a vote for the role of President in last term’s elections, the sabbatical team has proposed a referendum to alter the constitution.

The main change involves replacing the current CUSU co-ordinator role with a Campaigns and Societies Officer. At the CUSU Council meeting on Wednesday evening, a motion to hold a referendum was passed by 26 votes to two. The new role will aim to provide better resources for societies, which Flick Osborn claimed are given “very little practical support”.

She added that “CUSU wants to be the body that does that”. The vote has been seen as a bid to show the student body, in the words of CUSU President, Flick Osborn, that CUSU “are doing things differently.”

It is hoped that the new role will help to forge a stronger link between the CUSU sabbatical team and the autonomous campaigns, and thereby ensure greater involvement in the daily lives of students by trying to link the whole system up to the ‘grassroots’ which have made the likes of the Living Wage Campaign such a success.
Dom Weldon, the current CUSU co-ordinator, added that “there’s so much that goes on in Cambridge, and it’s a shame that it’s under-supported.”

James White, CUSU’s Environment Officer on the Ethical Affairs Committee, supported the idea of the new position, claiming that autonomous campaigns such as Ethical Affairs “need the support of a Sab” if they are to achieve any real progress.

Speaking against the motion, Rosalyn Old, former CUSU President, argued that “it’s your choice, not the Sab’s”. She noted that, according to CUSU’s constitution, the announcement of a referendum should not precede the motion having been passed by CUSU Council.

An email sent to the student body on 2nd April first announced the referendum – before the matter had been put to a vote in CUSU Council.

Old added that there should be at least seven days between the motion being passed by the Council and the day of voting. According to current plans, which will see the referendum held on 28th April, students will only be given five days to digest the news, and to decide which way to vote.

Similarly, Robert Cashman, President of St. John’s College JCR, stated that he was “confused and slightly concerned” by the announcement of the referendum: “I don’t really see who’s winning [he said]”, from further “bureaucratic” changes to CUSU’s constitution.

Cashman put forward the accusation that the referendum is a “knee jerk reaction to a bad set of elections” by Osborn, who rejected the claim, stating that these changes “have been on the horizon for a long time now.”

Cashman also raised concerns about the number of full-time sabbatical officers and their salaries – a line of discussion which was stopped on the grounds the constitution forbids discussion of individual officers’ pay.