Dear Adventurers,
Geas will be convening its Annual General Meeting for the forthcoming year. Business for this AGM will include motions pertaining to Society policy, amendments to the Constitution, Conpulsion 2020, as well as the election of Society office-bearers for the forthcoming academic year. This AGM will be conducted electronically through an on-line ballot.
AGM Agenda
The agenda for the AGM is as follows:
AGM Moving to On-Line Ballot
Due to the closures at the University owing to Covid-19, the AGM for this year will be conducted via an on-line ballot. All of the motions on the Agenda, as well as all of the office-bearers for the forthcoming year, will be voted on on-line. We shall provide more details and instructions of how to vote using our on-line ballot in due course. This ballot will be conducted using the University of Edinburgh’s Office365 system, and in order to vote you must be a matriculated student at the University as well as a paid member of the Society by 28 March latest (24 hours before the official close of the ballot).
Because this ballot is being conducted on-line, you will not need to vote or run for a position by proxy.
Please be aware of the following deadlines:
1) 5 pm on 22 March: Deadline for nominations for elections of office-bearers. This is the last date by which you need to nominate yourselves if you wish to run for a Committee position. More details on this below.
2) 23 March: Ballots open. Voting on the AGM ballots and/or office-bearers begins.
3) 5 pm on 29 March: Voting ends and ballots close.
Running for a Committee Position
All Committee positions for next year will be voted on through the on-line ballot. This is a fantastic opportunity for you to get involved with the running of the Society and to have a chance to shape the events that we run. If you would like more details on what the current Committee positions are and what the roles entail, please feel free to get in touch with us. We would be happy to answer any questions.
We on the Geas Committee recognise that our Society is growing increasingly diverse, and we believe this to be a great strength. We want the leadership of the Society to better reflect the community that it serves. This is why we especially invite women, non-binary and gender non-conforming folx, BAME folx, LGBTQ+ folx, and/or people identifying as D/disabled to consider putting themselves forward for a Committee position, as we believe your experiences and insights would be invaluable in directing which way the Society goes and making it more inclusive for all members.
Because are moving to an on-line ballot, we will be running these elections a little differently this year. If you wish to run for a position, please nominate yourself by emailing the Committee by 5 pm on 22 March. The Committee is willing to formally second all nominations that we receive, so you will not need to find another member to second your nomination. In your nomination, please indicate which positions you are running for and provide a short statement for why you would be a good candidate for that role. If you are running for more than one position, please provide a separate statement for each post. Otherwise, we will use the same statement for both elections. Once we have all the nominations together, we will send out the election statements to our memberships and open the ballot.
Please note that the agenda lists the order in which the Committee positions will be elected. If you are running for more than one position, and you get elected to an earlier role, then your candidacy will be withdrawn from all subsequent roles and the votes cast in your favour will be re-allocated as per their next-preferred candidate. We will provide more information on the details of the voting system once we open the ballots.
Note: You must be a matriculated student during the forthcoming academic year in order to be elected for the core Committee positions (i.e. the ones that are not advisory positions). In contrast, you do not need to be a student to hold an advisory position.
We would like to invite our members to nominate themselves for Committee positions, and we would further ask our student members to vote in the ballot so that they have a say in the way the Society is run. We would also like to convey our humble apologies to our non-student members, and that we regret that they are unable to vote because of EUSA’s regulations.
For Geas and for Glory,
Vivek Santayana
Equality and Wellbeing Officer